Customer Reviews

The Jericho Iteration

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

While reviews for this book were ho-hum when it first came out, The Jericho Iteration deserves a re-reading in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Just as the federal government uses earthquake-ravaged St. Louis for its experiments in controlling and containing civilian populations, look at the disaster that continues in New Orleans to see how on the mark Steele was in this book written long before the levees were breached. Ten months after Katrina hit and the public schools are closed, the city government is trumped by federal agencies, and the local population slides into despair rather than action. While the sfnel element of a networked AI stands out from today's nightmare, Steele has always had an excellent eye toward political extrapolation. Give this one a read, or a re-read if you glossed over it.

Gerry Rosen clearly has more problems than an ordinary joe should have to deal with. There's the wife he's lost, the deceased son's recurring memory, and the boss from hell. I enjoyed the characterizations, which are seen through Gerry's eyes. The images of St. Louis following a cataclysmic earthquake were compelling. And I was captivated by Gerry's palmtop which might well have been as wondrous as "Box" from "Star Cops" (except it didn't do searches quite so impressively). I'm most critical of Steele's choice of the military, first as rescuers, then as treasonous villains. Surely, there would be huge numbers of Paul Revere's out there to wise the public up to the coup about to happen. What's the Internet good for, otherwise?

Steele weaves an imaginative story of government corruption and corporate intrigue with The Jericho Iteration. I wasn't completely satisfied with his characterizations of the AI. It seemed a bit too human in it's reactions, but Steele's style and tightly paced writing delivered the goods in the end.

After seeing how disasters are dealt with.....this book is not too far off. a good read. actual score 8.7

Ever since Julius Caesar people like Hitler with political ambitions
have been using emergencies as an excuse to take over governments.
In this novel a combination of a government defense contractor ( Tiptree Corporation), a powerful government agency ( ERA) , an earthquake in St. Louis and a governmental crisis come together to produce something new.
Caught in the middle is Gerry Rosen, a very unlikely hero,
who is a nearly completely unknown reporter.
The theory of AI convergence to super-intelligence has been active since
early supercomputers ( sort of like Mathematica or Google becoming intelligent instead of just "expert".)
The idea of a colony of parallel computers like those used by Seti or
the new Cern (the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project )machine becoming more than just a number cruncher is much like the idea that a colony of ants or bees could be intelligent. It hasn't happened yet, but it isn't 2012 yet.When/ If it does we have no idea what such a being might feel about the human race that created it. The reasonable thing is that an AI would seek to control
the environment around it so as to preserve the existence of the AI.
This subject has been the mean plot element in a number of sci fi novels.
Here the resulting AI decides the outcome of the novel, too.

I have read almost everything Allen Steele has written, and I like all of it. The Jericho Iteration is no exception. An imaginative story line combines a disturbingly realistic political environment and government cover-ups with what could be the potential fall of the United States. A fun and easy read, I would assign a PG-13 rating because of language and some innuendoes.

The book, like most paperbacks by the same author is a quick read. An avid reader could get through the novel in just two or three days. Because of this The Jericho Iteration, and other novels by Allen Steele, are great for road-trips and trans-oceanic flights.

The Jericho Iteration takes place in St. Louis in 2013, after a destructive earth quake strikes, leaving the city in ruins. The survivors in the city and the city itself are controlled by the ERA, or Emergency Relief Agency, planning on initiating a new government under their rule. The book is a narrative, and told by the main character, Gerry Rosen. Gerry is a reporter for a newspaper called The Muddy Inquirer. He is trying to piece his life back together when he discovers, by mistake, that his fellow reporter and friend, John, has found out important information on a project called Ruby Fulcrum which the ERA is trying to keep secret. Gerry isn't discouraged; he's used to people trying to cover things up. He doesn't realize who and what he's up against until people he knows mysteriously begin to die, and he finds himself on the run from the ERA.

The Jericho Iteration is one of the best books I have ever read. It is filled with action with some humor and sadness thrown in. The beginning of this book leaves you wanting more and definately draws the reader in. The climactic moment is very exciting, and the ending wasn't what I expected. I couldn't stop reading this book until I had finished it, and even now I am reading it over. I recommend this book to anyone who likes science fiction and/or to anyone who wants an amazing story.

Okay, its not Shakespeare. There are no deep human truths uncovered. Still, this book is a fun, well written page turner that I just could not put down. BTW, I have yet to read a positive review from Kirkus. Do those people actually like books? :)

A St. Louis trashed out from an earthquake on the New Madrid fault in 2012 and under the management of the sinister Emergency Relief Agency forms the backdrop to this well done thriller.

When dead scientists start turning up, Gerry Rosen, reporter for an alternate weekly, realizes that a local defense contractor and the ERA have something to hide. That something isn't a new idea to science fiction, but Steele still tells an exciting story greatly helped out by the setting of a devastated St. Louis occuppied by government thugs.

This one is a real dog. The story line doesn't hold up. OK, St. Louis is wrecked. Where is the rest of the country? If S.L. is the only major city devastated why wouldn't it be rebuilt like L.A. after the quake? Don't any of the people in St. Louis have relatives in the rest of the country that they can go live with? Can ALL of the National Guard types be vicious thugs? Steele obviously has some unresolved issues with the military.