Customer Reviews

My Name Is Legion a (Sphere science fiction)

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

 

 

You're a computer employee hooking up every network on earth to fashion the International Data Bank--only to realize it will become the ultimate invasion of human privacy. What will you do? Something creative, invisible, and dangerous... this book was written decades before the Internet got going.

This book is made up of the three novella's published elsewhere. They all involve an unnamed protagonist who has no record of his existence. The first one, "The Eve of Rumoko" is an entertaining suspense story which introduces us to the hero and gives us a thrilling plot without sacrficing style or depth of character. The second, "Kjawlll'kje'k'koothai'lll'kjr'k," is by far the weakest of the stories a not very intriguing mystery not really comparable to the other two. However "Home is the Hangman," the third story is excellent despite it's B-moviesh plot (killer robot from outer space). Zelazny manages to use this set to explore the nature of the human psyche while being thrilling and exciting at the same time.

I don't mind admitting it! "My Name is Legion" is a bit of a puzzle for me. I haven't been able to decide if there was a message of some kind that I missed or whether Zelazny was just having fun writing a few short stories in a spy vs spy mode built around a character with no name.

Nobody who has read science fiction is under any illusion about the loss of privacy we are suffering with the advent of the internet, computerized databases and national identification programs. Long before any of that came along, Zelazny prepared a story about a murky hero (or is it anti-hero) who managed to destroy his punch cards (what does that tell you about how long ago this story was written?), eliminate his credit cards, destroy his birth records and passport and simply drop out of society and into the mists of living by his wits taking on mercenary government jobs from time to time under different aliases for every case.

"My Name is Legion" is actually a collection of three novellas separately written and related to one another only to the extent that the man with no name is the hero in each of the stories.

The first in the collection, "Rumoko" revolves around the rather frightening prospect of the use of nuclear bombs blasting a hole in the Moho layer to create artificial volcanoes. The idea is to release magma to create artificial land surface which can then be made habitable in an attempt to deal with earth's apparent population problem. Some pretty exciting stuff for those sci-fi lovers that like their plots hard and tech-oriented!

The second story (with a title that is quite unpronounceable) moves to the far opposite end of the hard-soft sci-fi spectrum - we're talking here about the sentience of dolphins; whether they dream, compose music or are capable of murder; and even whether they have a concept of philosophy and religion!

The third and final story in the collection, "Home is the Hangman", was, in my opinion, the most interesting story of the three. Dealing with artificial intelligence and robotics, it broached that always interesting subject of a robot's possible self-awareness, whether it could be capable of murder and whether it could feel emotion of any kind. Unlike the rather pretentious feel of the philosophy in the central dolphin story, Zelazny's use of Gödel's unprovability theorems and Turing's Test for artificial intelligence made "Home for the Hangman" a much more convincing story. I suspect that Asimov who virtually made a career out of writing about robotic behaviour would agree.

Three stars for "Rumoko", two stars only for "Kjawlll'kje'k'koothai'lll'kjr'k", and four stars for "Home is the Hangman". Overall rating averaged out at three stars.

Recommended.

Paul Weiss

In an era in which everithing is under computer control
you meet a spy, which accoplishes "dirty" jobs for
the authorities.
This is only the beginning, and it goes on with Zealzny's
style: suggestive ambeintations, characters nicely
portraited and a lot of passages which force you to think.
A good reading, for SF lovers.

My name is legion is a collection of three stories by Roger Zelazny.

* The Eve of RUMOKO - three stars
* Kjwalll'kje'koothai'lll'kje'k - four stars
* Home Is the Hangman - five stars

The stories revolve around a mercenary secret agent that has erased his identity and makes a living doing dangerous investigative jobs using fake names. He can basically assume any identity (legion--many names).

The first story is set in the year 2007. The technology in 2007 is quite astounding with cities on the Ocean bottom, advanced space exploration, and the existence of truly intelligent super robots (the hang man). At the same time as the story is referring to tape drive and punch cards. Predicting the future is difficult. This is a little funny from a 2008 perspective. However, this is to expect. When people attempt to make predictions they typically extrapolate current technology and make the assumption that existing technology will be extremely advanced in the near future (in the 30's people said all cars would be flying by the 1970's). At the same time it is near impossible to predict entirely new technologies.

In the first story the agent is trying to solve a mystery regarding terrorist attempts against the project RUMOKO in which nuclear bombs are used to blast holes in the Moho layer below the Ocean bottom to create artificial volcanoes that will create new land (like Surtsey, Iceland) to mitigate earth's over population problem. Even though the story itself was not bad, I had a few problems with its context that I could not easily accept.

First, creating artificial land by having magma bubble up from the Ocean bottom is most likely counter productive since the magma below the Ocean surface is likely to push away enough water to reduce the coast line land area in excess of the tiny land you gain from the new Islands. To gain land the average depth of the Ocean must actually increase (because the Ocean water will not vanish). Let's make a calculation.

If we put 100 cones that are 5km tall and has a bottom radius of 50km in 4km deep water (crust is thin in deep water, like the Atlantic crust) then the amount of water pushed away is 100*(50^2*5*pi/3 - 10^2*pi/3) = 1,298,525 km3 of water. 50km radius at the bottom makes a steep slope (10%) so this is probably an under estimation. Reality would likely be worse. The Ocean surface is around 361 million km2 so we get that the Ocean rises 1,298,525/361,000,000 = 0.0036km = 3.6 meters. According to GIS statistics the World's coast line is around 900,000km. Since it is flat coast land that will be flooded, not the fjords of Norway, it is the flat coast land we should consider. If we assume 200 meters rise on 100 km for flat land (actually not very flat) we get 0.15 degrees. 3.6 meters (12 feet) divided by the sine of 0.15 yields 1.375km and assuming half of all coast line is flat land we get a land loss of 1.375 * 450,000 = 619 thousand km2 (size of Texas). If we use the formula for the lateral surface of a cone (the 100 volcanic cones we added) we get that we just added 100*315.7 km2 of land area to the world which is about 20 times less than what we lost on the coast line.

Secondly, exploding nuclear bombs on the Ocean floor and allowing massive amount magma to flow up into the Ocean cannot be good for the eco system of the Ocean, and the people living on the Ocean bottom (the Ocean bottom cities) are likely to complain.

Thirdly, you can much more easily create new land by building floating cities which will not push away lots of water, and you can irrigate the Sahara desert and other deserts. New volcanic islands have to be made fit for life anyway. Allowing this to happen naturally will take a very long time. These other approaches would be cheaper, quicker, safer, and not likely to be counter productive (in the sense described above). So why would anyone choose this silly and dangerous approach? I don't buy it. I say three stars.

The second story "Kjwalll'kje'koothai'lll'kje'k" was beautiful, thought provoking, and philosophical. This story revolved around the sentience of dolphins and whether they can compose ideas or music or have a concept of spirituality, and also whether they are capable of murder. If you love Dolphins you will love this charming story, but I found the story to be a little bit too "dreamy" and speculative for me. If you love Dolphin salad you will not like this story (since it humanizes Dolphins).

The third story "Home Is the Hangman" was my favorite story. The "Hangman" was a space robot possessing what seemed to be "real autonomous intelligence" and perhaps self awareness. Having worked in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence myself I had a few objections, but not anything that most readers would care about. The story was believable (if set in the year 2057 or 2107 instead of 2007), and very exciting. The story took a few unexpected turns that took me by surprise, and explained the story at a deeper level. I love that sudden moment of dawning comprehension that explains what is going on and makes the story better. It shows that the plot was very well thought through.

Overall this was a good book, but not good enough to go on my list of favorite classic Science Fiction, and the author does not match up to Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, James Blish, and Robert Heinlein in my opinion. Well, I have only read one Zelazny book, so far, so that may be a hasty judgment. The book is recommended to hard core Science Fiction fans but not recommended to those looking for only the best of Classic Science Fiction.

Roger Zelazny is one of my favourite authors, and this is one of my favourites of his work. Thought-provoking but not too much so, with reasonably fast-paced action and moderate depth.

I didn't know what to expect with this book, but I certainly enjoyed reading it. This book is actually three related stories revolving around the same character who has erased his identity and makes a living doing odd jobs for a private investigation agency, while using faked names to get through life. Each story is better than the previous, with the third story, featuring the Hangman, being the most powerful, and Zelazny at his finest. There are plenty of good, quotable lines in these stories and the ending is just awesome.

I enjoyed reading the story as well because the technology used in the books reflects the 1960's with the tape run all the way to the end. Tape drive technology is still used here, despite supposedly being 2007. It is enjoyable seeing a snapshot of how people viewed technology in Zelazny's day.

As other reviewers have pointed out, this is a lighter book than say the Amber Series or Lord of Light, but it's a great weekend read, and well worth the purchase. Enjoy!