Category Archives: Fiction

2013, Book, Fiction, Manic, Novel, Prophetic

The Circle (2013)

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From Wikipedia:

A young college graduate named Mae Holland unexpectedly gets a job at The Circle, a powerful tech company that serves as the novel’s Google analogue. The Circle is an internet and social media company specializing in Internet-related services and products. Mae is impressed by the trappings of corporate life on The Circle’s California campus, and devotes herself wholeheartedly to the company mission. A chance encounter with a mysterious colleague, however, introduces an element of doubt into Mae’s experience, even as her role at the company becomes increasingly high-profile.

Reading this novel caused me to delete my Facebook account.

Remember the novels “1984” and “Brave New World”? You should probably add “The Circle” to this list of books that imagine a not impossible and decidedly unpleasant future.

Do you think privacy is important? Do you have any secrets? Then you would not want to work for the company called “The Circle”. Perhaps I should call it a cult.

You will be guided throughout the entire novel by Mae as she submerges herself deeper and deeper into the company culture and philosophy. Read quickly as you experience all the minutiae of her various positions in the company. But you need to relive those details so that you feel like the smartphone automatons we see all around us in this year 2013. If you think Facebook can consume much of your time, just try and keep up with Mae’s work life.

What would happen to you if your smartphone, pad, and social web sites all disappeared? Would your world collapse?

What present day company is the model for “The Circle”? Is it Google, or Amazon, or the NSA? Does any of this make you feel a bit paranoid? Smile, some camera is watching you.

After you have raced through this nightmare (it is OK to race, this is NOT great literature) and have reached what was for me a wonderfully written ending, please let me know your reactions to Dave Eggers’ viewpoint.

Book Review, Fiction, Post-apocalyptic, Science Fiction

Wool (Hugh Howey)

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Amazon lists this book (which I read on my Kindle) as “Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1 – 5) (Silo Saga)”. Under Amazon this book received 5895 customer reviews from many happy readers.

To call this “science fiction” seems for me a stretch. Nor are either “fantasy” or “apocalyptic” entirely accurate. Judge for yourself in this summary:

In a post-apocalyptic Earth the story takes place in a silo. But this silo is an inverted silo that begins at ground level and descends for something like 150 stories. To travel in this silo you must WALK on the spiral metal staircase. Inside this silo world unto itself there are living spaces, farming spaces, mechanical maintenance spaces, and the list goes on. Technology has not advanced from the time of the apocalypse so you will be familiar with all the terms.

From the start you are witness to one of the regularly occurring death sentence executions known as a “cleaning”. Only from observation windows can the inhabitants see the outside world. “Cleaning” means you are sent out of the silo to clean those observation windows. You always die during the effort.

After settling into this very confined atmosphere you learn of a suspicious death. At about this time Juliette, the heroine of the story, emerges.

That is all I will tell of the plot which unfolds with incredible descriptive attention to detail. Think of the story as a mystery one of whose goals is to discover why and how this silo came to exist. After 550 pages you too can know the answer.

Book Review, Clever Use Of Words, Fiction, Funny at times

Cloud Atlas (2004)

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“Cloud Atlas” is David Mitchell’s third novel. See Ghostwritten (1999) and Black Swan Green (2006). Much like “Ghostwritten” this fiction novel consists of several independent streams each of which has some connection with at least one other stream. Somewhat unusual is that one stream (chapter) (such as a conspiracy story about corruption and poor design relating to a nuclear reactor) ends suddenly in the middle of a sentence only to pick up several chapters later. Mitchell is a clever and somewhat trendy wordsmith. Scattered throughout are fun phrases such as “prostitute Barbie” and “Andrew Void-Webber”. In general he seems to be very pessimistic and cynical about human beings although he allows some happy endings.

I must admit that there was one (independent) chapter in the middle of the book that I did not have the energy to read. It is written in a heavy and strangely spelled dialect that seems to originate somewhere in the far south of the United States. I could be wrong. But I really enjoyed the rest of the novel. Don’t be put off by the first and last chapters (which are also the first and second parts of a story about missionaries taking advantage of natives) which are written in a somewhat older, archaic style.

“Ghostwritten” and “Cloud Atlas” have similar constructions. I never finished “number9dream” which did not appeal to me. “Black Swan Green” is more traditional in construction and is about a bullied young boy. Eventually I will get around to reading “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet”.