From rec.arts.sf-reviews Tue Jul 2 09:14:04 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!know!albert.physics.arizona.edu From: LNH@albert.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: _Clarke County, Space_, a rant Message-ID: <30560@know.pws.bull.com> Date: 27 Jun 91 13:57:14 GMT Sender: wex@pws.bulL.com Reply-To: LNH@albert.physics.arizona.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf-lovers Lines: 66 Approved: wex@pws.bull.com _Clarke County, Space_ by Allen Steele Review Copyright (c) 1991 Larry Hammer R.a.sf-reviews seems a bit tame so far; time for a heavily spoiled rant. On the Francis Bacon scale (taste, swallow, or digest), this one should be thrown out. At least Allen Steele knows how to put sentences together to make a paragraph. And there is one character who, by the end of the book, shows some signs of being interesting and more than just flat (however, we then leave her, never to see her again). These are about the only good things I can say about _Clarke County, Space_. For one thing, the plot was ridiculous. Well, the bare bones of it aren't. A absentee-corperate-owned space station goes through a political and personal crisis, and decides to declare independence. However, the details are just *not* believable. [Heavy spoilers follow] In the end of the book, we find out that all the events were orchestrated the central AI of the space colony, which has gone self-aware. *Why* it's self-aware is not explained. And where are the Turing cops or whatever they're called in that universe? Surely if self-awareness can happen, someone is watching for it? And if the AI wakes up and decides to have a personality, why couldn't it have a *believable* one? Sheesh. However, this is far from the worst hole in the plot. The AI has a human mentor who turns out to be from the future. He is there to make sure the future happens. This totally out of the blue, a ridiculous plot device. And so much for human free will. Sheesh. I think what Steele wanted to do with _CCS_ was to show how, in the right circumstances, community opinion could polarize overnight, and decide to revolt. But Steele shows us how the people of Clarke County feel only once; we spend the rest of the time with the movers and shakers of this revolution. To get me to believe the speed in which it happened (four days), he needs to *show* me, in detail. Until then, I'll take _The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_ as a much better version of the idea. And at least Heinlein was good at world-building. Steele isn't. In 2050, society has changed zilch. Nil. Nada. Late 20th century middle America uprooted and transplanted onto a space station as if nothing had happened in 60 years. Throw in a weird cult of Elvis and a collective, and you have Clarke County. (There is a university but we don't learn of its existence until the end; students involved in a revolution? Horrors! Of course not!) High technology has continued to develop, but are society or customs affected? No. About the only thing that touches people's lives is the universal portable computer. Which they treat like cellular phones. Language is static, too. *One* new slang word has been invented. And it was used *once* in the entire book. Sheesh. If you want to see good world building of the near furture, read _Queen of Angels_ or _Synners_. Yes, you have to work to read them; that's the *point*. At least Greg Bear and Pat Cadigan know that things, including language, CHANGE, and that changes lead to changes. If Allen Steele does, he doesn't show it. %T Clarke County, Space %A Allen Steele %I Ace Science Fiction %O paperback US$4.95 Larry "ranter" Hammer From rec.arts.sf-reviews Thu Jul 18 14:47:44 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!news.funet.fi!fuug!mcsun!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!samsung!know!albert.physics.arizona.edu From: LNH@albert.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: _Clarke County, Space_, a rant Message-ID: <30515@know.pws.bull.com> Date: 27 Jun 91 13:57:14 GMT Sender: troot@pws.bulL.com Reply-To: LNH@albert.physics.arizona.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf-lovers Lines: 66 Approved: wex@pws.bull.com _Clarke County, Space_ by Allen Steele Review Copyright (c) 1991 Larry Hammer R.a.sf-reviews seems a bit tame so far; time for a heavily spoiled rant. On the Francis Bacon scale (taste, swallow, or digest), this one should be thrown out. At least Allen Steele knows how to put sentences together to make a paragraph. And there is one character who, by the end of the book, shows some signs of being interesting and more than just flat (however, we then leave her, never to see her again). These are about the only good things I can say about _Clarke County, Space_. For one thing, the plot was ridiculous. Well, the bare bones of it aren't. A absentee-corperate-owned space station goes through a political and personal crisis, and decides to declare independence. However, the details are just *not* believable. [Heavy spoilers follow] In the end of the book, we find out that all the events were orchestrated the central AI of the space colony, which has gone self-aware. *Why* it's self-aware is not explained. And where are the Turing cops or whatever they're called in that universe? Surely if self-awareness can happen, someone is watching for it? And if the AI wakes up and decides to have a personality, why couldn't it have a *believable* one? Sheesh. However, this is far from the worst hole in the plot. The AI has a human mentor who turns out to be from the future. He is there to make sure the future happens. This totally out of the blue, a ridiculous plot device. And so much for human free will. Sheesh. I think what Steele wanted to do with _CCS_ was to show how, in the right circumstances, community opinion could polarize overnight, and decide to revolt. But Steele shows us how the people of Clarke County feel only once; we spend the rest of the time with the movers and shakers of this revolution. To get me to believe the speed in which it happened (four days), he needs to *show* me, in detail. Until then, I'll take _The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_ as a much better version of the idea. And at least Heinlein was good at world-building. Steele isn't. In 2050, society has changed zilch. Nil. Nada. Late 20th century middle America uprooted and transplanted onto a space station as if nothing had happened in 60 years. Throw in a weird cult of Elvis and a collective, and you have Clarke County. (There is a university but we don't learn of its existence until the end; students involved in a revolution? Horrors! Of course not!) High technology has continued to develop, but are society or customs affected? No. About the only thing that touches people's lives is the universal portable computer. Which they treat like cellular phones. Language is static, too. *One* new slang word has been invented. And it was used *once* in the entire book. Sheesh. If you want to see good world building of the near furture, read _Queen of Angels_ or _Synners_. Yes, you have to work to read them; that's the *point*. At least Greg Bear and Pat Cadigan know that things, including language, CHANGE, and that changes lead to changes. If Allen Steele does, he doesn't show it. %T Clarke County, Space %A Allen Steele %I Ace Science Fiction %O paperback US$4.95 Larry "ranter" Hammer From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Jan 30 16:25:32 1998 From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: ALL-AMERICAN ALIEN BOY by Allen Steele Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 14 Jan 1998 10:45:50 -0500 Organization: none Lines: 42 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!genius.dat.hk-r.se!news.lth.se!solace!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.syd.connect.com.au!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1727 ALL-AMERICAN ALIEN BOY by Allen Steele Ace, ISBN 0-441-00460-1, 1997 (1996), 267pp, US$5.99 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1998 Evelyn C. Leeper There is no story in this collection titled "All-American Alien Boy," but the subtitle of the book gives us the answer to the title: "The United States as Science Fiction, Science Fiction as a Journey: A Collection." Who is the "All-American Alien Boy"? It's Steele. But it's also each of us. Well, some of us are All- American Alien Girls, but you get the idea. After all, isn't there something a bit alien in the idea of renting out your body for science ("The Good Rat")? Alien, yes, but also very capitalist and, well, American. Whether it's the shopping mall, the demolition derby, or Rock City, Steele takes something very American, and shows us how alien it is at the same time. As if that isn't enough, Steele's introductions actually add something to the understanding of the stories. Too many authors, when confronted with the task of introducing their own stories, resort to either a bald description of how they came to write the story, or some brief -- preferably humorous -- anecdote about it. Steele uses this opportunity to talk about the ideas behind the story -- what he thinks about UFO abduction stories, for example. What this means is that even if you have all the stories from their original publications, this book is still worth getting. %T All-American Alien Boy %A Allen Steele %C New York %D 1996 %I Ace %O paperback, US$5.99 [1997] %G ISBN 0-441-00460-1 %P 267pp Evelyn C. Leeper | eleeper@lucent.com +1 732 957 2070 | http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824 "Being gay, the last time I looked, had nothing to do with reading a balance book, fixing a broken bone or changing a spark plug." --Bill Clinton From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Aug 18 15:27:11 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.xinit.se!nntp.se.dataphone.net!newsfeed.online.no!uninett.no!news-feed1.eu.concert.net!btnet-peer!btnet!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: "The Jericho Iteration", Allen Steele Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 10 Aug 1998 14:51:46 -0400 Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Lines: 72 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2084 The Jericho Iteration, by Allen Steele Review Copyright 1998 Robert M. Slade "The Jericho Iteration", Allen Steele, 1994, 0-441-00271-4, U$5.50/C$6.99 It's rather amazing how little science there is in science fiction. Even in stories of the near future, such as this one, technology takes a very distant backseat to politics and plotting. Which is probably as it should be, but it does make you wonder why it's called science fiction. Let's get rid of the plot first. Lone individual against the mighty forces, conspiracy of the elite plotting to overthrow the last bastion of democracy, and a rogue program takes over the defence forces and uses force against the defenders. However, the rogue isn't the bad guy. Steele does give us some technology. I purely love his personal/palmtop/ vest pocket computer/personal digital assistant. Given the advances in time and technology, it seems just a little bit shy on memory and storage space, but we'll let that ride. Having both keyboard and voice command is undoubtedly the way to go, for reasons very similar to those in the book. Of course, the author does not seem to realize that you can track any cell phone, as long as it is on, to a very close area. Also, nobody seems to have done much work on encryption over the next few years. Lastly, I don't think much of the disk format. I suspect about 7 cm is about as small as you can get before people start losing the disks, which would be an annoyance. Human factors, doncha know. (And CD-ROMs are already optical disks.) I'm glad to see that email is tagged as the way to get the word out fast and far. However, the expert geeks involved in the story don't seem to have fully cottoned on to the fact that you can send partial info if you're short of time, and you can set up systems to send automatically. The tension in the climactic scene as our intrepid heroes are facing the end is somewhat reduced when the reader keeps on thinking "just use chron, OK?" But, of course, my real interest is in the iteration of the title. A repeating, self-reproducing program. In other words, a virus. Well, they have to be other words, if you want to be pedantic about it. The virus in the book is P1 all over again, a fairly classic Shoch and Hupp type segmented worm program. And, like P1, the bigger it gets, the smarter it gets, until it becomes self-aware. Now, there are a couple of points here. This is the classically mythical "just-wave-the-disk-near-the-computer-and-it-gets-infected" type virus. For those of us who have been battling the "Good Times" hoax for years, I can't be overjoyed about this idea. Of course, just as we have started to get people to realize that you can't get infected just by reading email, Microsoft comes along and fixes that bug, so I really can't argue too strenuously against it. Never underestimate the stupidity, and cupidity, of large software vendors. But it avoids detection, elimination, and access control by dealing with the "source code" of security programs. Repeat after me: once it's compiled, it's object code. Source code doesn't matter, and isn't kept with the executables. Of course, if it could find, and associate, the source code with the target executable, that would give you a leg up on disassembly. But a virus cannot be undetectable. In fact, this one isn't. Early on in the game a fairly simple file management program, with no particular special features, is able to detect the virus and infected programs. So how come it is so hard to detect? Hard to eliminate I might grant you, but it certainly seems to be easy to find. %A Allen Steele %C 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 %D 1994 %G 0-441-00271-4 %I Ace/Berkley/Boulevard/Charter/Diamond/Jove Books %O U$5.50/C$6.99 +1-800-788-6262 online@penguin.com %P 279 p. %T "The Jericho Iteration"