jon
Loved so much about this book. The story overall, the characters, the plot, the fictional world and its details (the questions, in the end, of sentience and whether we can ever know if an artificial version is distinct). And the fact that it was written in early 1980s is amazing.
I absolutely hated the writing style. It was so difficult to follow and purely because so little was explained. I think that's what made it so good, maybe? (That it was a blurry, outsider's view of this other universe) Nevertheless, I'd not recommend this book to anyone but a SciFi-obsessed avid reader.
I loved the story, I just hated the book. Ok, let me rephrase. I loved the plot, the overall concept, the characters, the sub-stories that take place. They were all fun. I hated how long it was. It could have been written in ½ or less of the length seen here. So much of the book is just the main character talking about his inner feelings repeatedly and with only the slightest variation.
If it weren't for that (feeling it was dragged out), I'd give it 3-4 stars. Not 5 stars, because I found the main character unbelievably helpless and lacking in any planning capability. I don't just mean in the obvious reaction to Frankenstein about taking responsibility for your creations, but the fact that he's told repeatedly what his adversary's actions will be. Instead, Frankenstein plans zilch and then is devastated when his adversary follows through exactly as promised. Come on.
Of course, I think some of these things are just the book being from 1818, so I'm guessing if I'd have read it then, I'd have enjoyed it 5-stars much.
Loved the world, and the characters weren't bad. I felt like the core medium for tension - the game of Azad - made for super poor reading experience. All of the tension and struggle at key points in the book revolve around the a character making some blunder or some brilliant move on the game board. The problem is that the game itself is abstract and not something we can actually follow as readers, so we're left to totally see the game as a series of emotions and generic actions like “saw an opening” or “slowly beat back his enemy” and this got really boring. I found myself skimming so many of these parts eventually that it felt like a shame the core of the book had to be so abstract.
A little slow through the first half, but picks up pace in later sections. Great story and perspective. Fun to see little flashes of NYC from the 70s and 80s. Also interesting as a historical fiction involving the CIA and America's Cold War and “counter insurgency” tactics (trying to squash any developments of big bad communism - I enjoyed reading [b:The Imagineers of War 30780220 The Imagineers of War The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World Sharon Weinberger https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1476317653l/30780220.SX50.jpg 51368531] alongside this book).
In the top ten books I've read this year. Such a fast journey through so many different topics.
Just a bulleted list of enjoyable stops on this journey:
- pansychism- consciousness as merely observation of events- double slit experiment- behavior vs sentience- split brain syndrome- zombie rats- locked-in syndrome- lots of citations- some healthy skepticism
My one nitpick is I wish the author took some time to distinguish the word “sentience” from “consciousness” - but definition 1 here (consciousness) is satisfying follow-up and explains why maybe she ignored the word sentience: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/4687
