Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter has won a Pulitzer Prize and I believe it is the only thing that ever made me want to read other Pulitzer Prize books. I have to thank Meaflux for pointing me to this book and if he ever writes anything in his blog, you can find it here. Anyway, here is my humble review:

I have just finished reading the book and, in its self-referential spirit, I am also starting reading it. A strange loop of sorts, when starting to read a book follows finishing it. It is not an easy read, but it is certainly worth it. I was instantly both in awe and full of envy on this Hofstadter guy that I have never even heard about before.

What is the book about? I believe the most basic answer is it is about the roots of consciousness, and before you run away thinking this is some sort of new age pseudo (or fully) religious crap, let me assure you it is not. The title itself shows the perspective one gains by reading it: look at the same thing from the viewpoints of a mathematician (meta-mathematician, at that), an abstract painter and a great music composer. It's a definition of abstract thought by intersecting the works of three great abstract thinkers. But it is more than that.

The most intriguing part of the book it is how self referential it is. There are portions in the book that are modeled after Bach fugues while paraphrasing Escher drawings in order to illustrate a mathematical idea of Gödel. It talks about artificial intelligence, consciousness, the workings of the brain, formal systems, computer programming, music, art, science, mathematics, quantum mechanics, biology, genetics and does so in a way that links all these things together in a reasonably easy to understand way. It does not feel like a book made out of separate chapters, but one master-single-piece linked to itself in the most imaginative and twisted ways.

I urge you to buy the book, if you find it. I have read a text OCR version of it and I know I missed a lot. If you can't afford it, there it a torrent on the net with the PDF scanned version as well as the music, paintings and other media the book talks about.

The bottom line is that it is an amazing book. For someone like me, a software programmer dreaming of AI, it was a shame I didn't read it before. I almost believe that you will see me in buses like those old ladies reading the Bible, only with GEB in hand. I can't imagine anyone over 15 years of age that shouldn't read this book. I doubt anyone under 15 can truly comprehend it and, as Frank Herbert's Dune, it must be read every 10 years or less, just to see how much more you can understand from it.

Update: I found on the Internet a full length movie based on Hofstadter's ideas. Interesting, in a geeky/goofy kind of way. Here it is: Victim of the Brain.

Well, I just said I can't wait for the third book, haven't I? :) Anyway, Dexter in the Dark was a bit of a disapointment to me. Apparently, Dexter's inner demons are just that, demons, liked to some ancient deity from the times of Solomon called Moloch which is like an alien parasite thing. Really... What did Lindsay do? Read Snow Crash? Watch Fallen? Try to mix Stargate Goa'ulds with Wicker Man and Eyes Wide Shut? Geez!

When I was getting so comfortable with the character of Dexter, thinking that Jeff Lindsay was a genius for portraying a type of character I was always thinking of writing, he just takes all that inner maniacal urge that both empowered and limited the character and transforms it into an external, fantasy like thing. Bad writer, bad!

Anyway, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the book. I just think that when the third series of the TV show became too far fetched, they were still safe when compared to it. I mean, until now Dexter was a brilliant guy with a dark path and also with a sort of artificial morality, mix in some police stuff, some blood spatter, the weird police seargent sister. It was a perfect setting for introspection and solitary struggle. I loved that! And now demons? As Doakes would have put it "the hell for?".

The fourth Dexter book is supposedly due for february 5th 2009. I hope Lindsay abandons the weird supernatural crap and instead focuses on Dexter's training of his adoptive children into the art of killing. Otherwise I can only see it turn toward so many bad directions like Blade or Hellboy or other green "hybrid saves the planet" thing.

Dearly Devoted Dexter is much darker than the first Dexter book. Maybe it is just because all the facts about Dexter are clear and it starts with a gruesome murder, insane special forces style. The title comes from the fact that he helps his sister, now partially in the loop about his Dark Passenger, to solve the newest serial killer case. Of course, Deb, now a seargent after Laguerta has died, has a personal stake in this, since one of the people the murderer abducted and intends to do bad things to, is her boyfriend, with whom she is very much in love.

It is interesting to develop the Dexter character in this way, especially since he is described as totally indifferent to the horrible fate of people he doesn't care about, yet he is still compelled to help his sister out.

I was a bit disapointed by the police work involved. If I were to believe Lindsay, the Miami police are a bunch of morons, following (badly) a set of procedures without any real talent other than badmouthing.

Elements from this second book in the Dexter series were clearly used in the series, but it is already a completely different story. The FBI agent that Deborah briefly dates in the series was inspired by the character of Kyle, shady government agent that she falls in love with in this book. The stalking of Dexter by the grumpy seargent Doakes is also mirrored from this book, although the motives and the outcome are completely different.

Again, the series evolves the Dexter character more and the story is more complex than the book, but by now it is obvious the TV show and the book are going in completely different directions.

All in all, a bit better than the first, darker, but also funnier. I have never laughed as much reading a book for a long time. Can't wait for the third book now.

I have been watching this TV Series called Dexter and slowly but surely I fell in love with it. It features a psychopathic serial killer that has a hobby of killing other killers. The story is long and I suggest you watch it to get it fully. Anyway, the series has reached season 3 and stars Michael C. Hall, which you may recognize from the Six Feet Under TV series. I've also noticed that the series is based on a book! So, naturally, I got the book and started reading it. It's Michael C. Hall on the cover there.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter is the first in a series of Dexter books by Jeff Lindsay. While it starts pretty much the same as the series, the series quickly moves away from the script in the book. However, the spirit is there, even if, of course, they had to make the lead character a little more likable in the series and the whole thing less bloody.

Imagine an emotionless killer, raised by his cop father to kill according to a code and also to be thorough and attentive to the details so that the police wouldn't catch him. He is also working for the Miami police department as a blood spatter analyst. The inner dialogues are really delicious, the way he sees the world as a cynical dark Data is both funny and deep. Lindsay manages to portray an alien being, silently watching the world we take for granted, hunting on the edge of our own morality.

And while I do enjoy the book, I have to say that the series is more complex and the story a bit more realistic. So, there, finally a movie or series that surpasses the book!

Wee! Another Peter F. Hamilton book has been published. This time it is the second part of the Void trilogy, an ongoing series set up in the Commonwealth saga universe, but much later. Many characters are rented from said saga, so it would be a good idea to read that one first. Besides, as is Hamilton's style, the second book starts abruptly from the end of the first one and ends abruptly awaiting the third part.

And, again, like in the Night's Dawn trilogy, the plot is a combination of stories, one set in the technological future of mankind and one in a feudal, fantasy like, universe. Hamilton's talent is to combine these two in a believable common narative. They are not so linked as in Night's Dawn and, I have to admit, I like the fantasy arch better, even if it is the classic Messiah myth. Maybe because it is not contiguous, but rather made up of small stories that have a beginning and an end.

Well, either way, it was a great book and I am waiting for the third part, due to be released in far away late 2009 or even 2010 :(

Brisingr is the third book in the Inheritance cycle (now a cycle because the author could not end the story in only three books). While I enjoyed reading it and I know that Paolini had all the best intentions writing it, I would not recommend it.

I have too little recollection of the first two books, to tell you the truth, but I do remember I was captivated by the action in them, if nothing else. The "magical technology" also had a great lure for me. In the third installment, all of these are missing or of poor quality. Roran is far more interesting than Eragon in this book, while the bad characters have lost a few dimensions (from the few they already had) and have become pathetic. T'Pol (sorry... I meant Arya) is docile and closer to the human heart, making her completely uninteresting, while the elves in general (and Oromir and Glaedr in particular) act like Asgaard on pot.

Why use StarTrek and StarGate terms to describe a fantasy book? Because it seems that's the only real inspiration of the third book of the Inheritance cycle. I could have done without the Doctor Who references in it, as well.

You can see a little YouTube video of Christopher Paolini talking about Brinsgr here, where an "unofficial" fan club is trying to earn money from said YouTube by disabling the embedding option.

Zodiac is an environmental eco-thriller. It's Stephenson's second novel and it started in a similar way to The Big U, which I couldn't really read through. But I had nothing else to read so I kept going until it got funny and good. If you read it, try to get over the bad start, because it is not a bad book at all.

The basic plot is that of a pragmatic environmentalist with a chemistry background working against the waste dumping industry. In the end he uncovers a plot of global implications and, of course, foils it. But the story itself is more important than the ending. This is not one of those books you read in half a day, driven by the need to know how it all turns out, but one of those you read waiting to see what the main character is going to do or say next, while going towards the predictable finish.

Here is a much better commentary than mine, what I can say is that the book was definitely not sci-fi, rather a thrill-fiction, but it was well written. It makes for a good train book.

The Cobweb is not a sci-fi story, just a fiction thriller. It happends in modern day America, where a small town cop slowly unravels a plot of international proportions and implications. He has to foil it with no help from (or rather against) the corrupted systems of university academia and government security and diplomatic agencies.

Actually, this is the main subject of the book, if I can say so: Throat cutting internal politics inside the CIA, the rule that CIA operations cannot take place inside the borders of the USA, and they ways to bend that rule, university scholarship stewards that live off foreign student exchanges (real or not) and bogus grants, etc. It was a bleak picture, the one painted of the CIA employees who cannot exceed their assigned duty, even if they have plenty of reason to, else face career stop or even dismissal.

In the end, of course, Deputy Sheriff Clyde Banks saves the day, but I can't help noticing that I knew this would happen from the very start. The real information is in the path to the end result and that is what I've appreciated in this book. The reader is taken away to discover the filthy world Stephenson and George expose.

It starts a little slow. It also provides plenty of information for would be terrorists :) So I recommend it to everyone, even if it is not a sci-fi book, it's a solid well made story.

H.P.Lovecraft was one of the favourite writers in my childhood. I remember reading (some of) his stories and being mesmerised by the darkness and desolation of his writing, but also by the prospects of scientific inquiry "solving the puzzle" that layman minds cannot possible achieve.

The Call of Cthulhu was written in 1926 and is part of the Cthulu Mythos, which was started by Lovecraft but expanded by many of his writer friends and disciples. It presents the slow unravelling of a dark story by the heir of a deceased profesor. It is both thrilling and funny to discover the mindset of an upper class man from 1925, with some scientific prowess, trying to grasp the reality of slimy uncomprehensible ancient gods, waiting for their resurection from death, upon which the world will be destroyed by madness and horror.

That's about it. The guy finds some clues and follows them, bestowing upon the reader his strong emotions and easily disturbed victorian sensibilities. No meeting the monster, no special effects, no girls. It is so old a mentality, it is refreshing.

I couldn't rediscover the amazing feeling I had when I was a child, reading Lovecraft, but then again, I've grown a bit since then. Nevertheless, it is one of Lovecraft's most famous short stories and it is worth a read.

Now this is a good book. It has it all: a fairly detailed description of a future world; magical kingdoms; the love between fathers, daughters, siblings; a thorough research for the book, allowing for elements of Victorian and Confucian philosophy; good writing style.

I felt it was way better than Snow Crash. I think it overlooked the transfer of energy to the nano scale devices that it describes. I loved the way it described the collapse of borders and the adoption of economic reasons why an ethnicity should have or not teritory.

Definitely a worthy read.

I started reading Neal Stephenson at a friend's recommendation. That reminded me of the cyberpunk novels that I used to read in my teenage years and enjoy so much. However, I remember them slightly more fun :) That's why I would call Snow Crash more of a Cy-Fi novel, a piece of cyberpunk with a slightly overexagerated plot. Even Wikipedia calls it a post-cyberpunk novel. You see, when Gibson wrote about hackers and the artificial intelligences and the future, he was actually trying to convey a believable, predictable future. I believe Neal Stephenson actually crossed the line and pushed the vision a little in order to put some ideas on the table.

However, it was still a good novel, with interesting characters, fantastic vision of the future and quite a bit of research, which he modestly attributed to a lot of his friends.

The story revolves around Hiro Protagonist, a sword wielding computer hacker, and Y.T. (Yours Truly - a 15 years old skateboard courier), both caught in a complex plot that I cannot reveal without spoiling the read. It has some of the standard cyberpunk motiffs like the collapse of governments and law, the world being ruled by corporations like the Mafia, the church and Mr. Lee's greater Hong Kong (to name a few) and a focus on the services individual people can provide rather than the material benefits of technological items.

I recommend reading it, although some parts of the "future" are already old and silly by now. I've also read some short novels like The Great Simoleon Caper and Spew, that were both good reads, especially the latter. I am moving on to Diamond Age now.

Oh, no! After such a glorious second volume, Baxter regressed for the third volume of the Destiny's Children series, Transcendent. What you get is basically a continuation of the first volume, but without the emotional content or the cool ideas of Coalescent. Same awkward family relationships that no one really cares about, same main character who is actually driven by the actions and thoughts of people around him, rather than his own, same single final moment that shapes the world without actually making the reader feel anything, same lengthy dialogue that brings important issues into discussion, but without drawing the reader in.

As Stalin said, one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic. Same thing applies to humans 500.000 years into the future, going back into the past to redeem the sins of humanity. No one cares! The Earth is pushed to the edge by global warming and the lead character is championing a great hydrate stabilisation engineering project. Who cares?!

Bottom line: the book was well written, but badly designed. It's like an engineer doing a great job building something that is fundamentally flawed. I struggled to finish the book just as I've struggled to finish Coalescent, which was far more interesting to begin with. The reason is simple: the reader cannot really empathise with any of the characters, except in disparate fragments of the storyline.

Exultant, the second book in the Destiny's Children series felt a lot better than Coalescent. Not without its own flaws, it made the entire experience better, but maybe that's just me.

The book describes a universe twenty thousand years into the future, when human kind has infested the galaxy, destroying all sentient races they encountered with their immense war machine. They are currently at war with a technologically superior enemy called the Xeelee, which are trapped at the core of the galaxy, pushed back by the sheer size of human forces. The war has waged for 3000 years and continues with no advancement of any kind, with the entire human philosophy focused on spewing more and more cannon fodder for a war that is neither to be won or lost, just endured.

A rather bleak vision of the future, but fear not, there comes hope! Somehow, an excentric aristocrat comes with all the ideas and resources to create the ultimate weapon that will destroy the Xeelee! And in the pages of the book it is described how they go at it. This is where the book actually fails, because at a such immense space and time scale, a solution of this simplicity is just not believable. You don't feel it in your GUT! But the book is well written, the style bringing memories of Asimov, and the ideas in it pretty interesting.

Stephen Baxter is again applying Universal Darwinism to his universe, bringing more and more species and types of lifeforms out of his magician hat. The ending of the book is terribly naive, but without a bit of naivite, you cannot finish great space sagas in a single book.

Bottom line: if you like space fights, military stratagems, character development, time travel, large scale galactic intrigues and a lot of techno babble (and I know I do! :) ) you will love this book. I do think that some of the great ideas in the book would have mixed nicely with late David Feintuch's writing. Anyway, on with the next book in the series: Transcendent

In 1973, Frank Herbert wrote a book called Hellstrom's Hive in which it described a sect of people that lived underground, in a system much alike insects, with individuals specialised for different tasks and all living for the big hive organism. The book did not explain how it all got there, it just quickly described the situation and then delved into the action.

Jump to Stephen Baxter's Coalescent, the first book of the Destiny's Children series, which pretty much details how a group of humans would reach a plausible hive like society. Unfortunately, the book is more descriptive than anything else, failing to deliver in the action part. A lot of characters are developed and a lot of history (both personal and general) is detailed, but in the end the characters vanish as if they never mattered. It is, after all, the whole point of the novel, that ignorant individuals following certain rules lead to the emergence of patterns, but it did not fit well within a book.

Not that the book itself is not fascinating and well written, because it is, but the pace is very slow at the beginning, accelerating to a snail pace in the end, while the different parts of the book seem fractured, too little related to one another. I intend to read the rest of the books in the series, but I might just give up, too.

Bottom line, I think it would be a nice read to start with Coalescent and then read Hellstrom's Hive, although I do think the second book to be much better.

Infected is a typical American sci-fi book, including small town mentality, a sports and US centric view, lots of government agencies, all working for the good of the citizens, keeping them all safe and ignorant and the warped morality that tells people they should destroy before they understand, just because they fear it.

That is something to be expected from an American author, though, and the book itself is not bad. It felt like it was inspired a lot by Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, which featured a similar personal dillema of alien infestation while the gov'ment was on the chase, but that one had more oompf. Of course, you can't compare aspiring Sigler to King, but then again, King's writing was never so great to me to begin with.

What I found really astounding is that a civilisation that uses biological machines to create a beach head on another planet would be so easily thwarted by a college athlete, a trigger happy black ops CIA agent and about a doctor and a half. Oh, and some Apache helicopters. What bothered me to no end is that I also felt this was a plausible scenario. I hope I am just stupidly influenced by similar literature, but would it really help to destroy the enemy before you get to at least understand it? What about the technology that was so easily recognisable as foreign and above Earth's current scientific level?

As a conclusion to both book and my own feelings: it was a nice read; not spectacular, but good enough to keep reading till the end. It is also available in podcast format and I myself have read it from a text file saved from a PDF that was gracefully provided free of charge by mr Sigler on the Escapepod podcast site.