Digital Leatherette [Paperback]

Steve Beard (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Codex Books; 1st ed edition (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 189959812X
• ISBN-13: 978-1899598120
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,213,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New Age Voodoo Tech, February 27, 2001

By 

David Tonhofer (Luxembourg/Europe) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Digital Leatherette (Paperback)

So, you want to know how to obtain a digital leatherette?

- Take a large dose of Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" with its hinting at occult forces and synchronicities unknown to most but used by a few to further their generally unwholesome goals.

- Include a take on history which illustrates the subtile prevalence of said forces.

- Add the 'post' cyberpunk atmosphere (complete with Raves and Trips to the Other Side) of Jeff Noon's "Vurt".

- Spike with of stock-market voodoo and some quantum-mechanical goobledygook.

- Add distillations of shamanism, millenium fever, gnosticism, new-age mythology, a society obsessed with surveillance and Fox Mulder.

- Enhance with references to contemporary cultural icons (like I just did)

- Powder with techspeak and lotsa acronyms. Zap through the channels.

Taste the enjoyable result. Do not look for a story -- let the text sink into you. Match, cross-correlate, flip through the book. Check out your history books. Don't go for linear -- you have been warned!

If you need it, here's the attempt at a

Resumé:

Stardate: 2012. We are reading through a folder of e-mails transmitted to (intercepted? obtained by?) some unspecified entity.

The "authors" of the e-mails include: a reporter interviewing the Last English Pop Star in Antartica, a modern-day voodoo priestess performing at Raves in Battersea, Ukanian (sic) Government snoop units, an intelligent settop box (?) also acting as mole for Special Intelligence, net d00Dz hanging out in a cyberspace autonomous zone, drugged-out chatroom yakkers and excerpts from a text-based MUD which somehow seems to be an allegory of real- life events (but maybe Steve Beard just wanted to fill some pages with that one ?-)

What's it lead up to? The occult forces of good and evil (or just power and antipower?) are playing out their never-ending poker game well hidden behind the facade of real-world political events. The truth is out there! Ukania gets its comeuppance as Queen Elizabeth II is (maybe) assassinated and London financially taken over by the Chinese after the biggest market crash in history.