Customer Reviews

Portal: A Dataspace Retrieval

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

 

 

I played the game, Portal, when I was in gradeschool. I had a Commodore 64 and the game was 3 disks, 5 sides total. Wonderful depth and imagery, the book is told from the perspective on a space traveller sent off at near light speed who returns to find Earth deserted; about an AI computer program named Homer who desparately wants to remember what happened and about how all of it ties together with the expansion of human experience. I would highly recommend this book as a good read for everyone from 8 to 80 who likes sci-fi. Larger libraries should have this, including the DownTown Fort Worth library.

Not much to say, other then Portal was one of the first Interactive Fiction game, that REALY succeeded telling a story. This is the Novel that came of the Game. Highly recommendable. A truly great read.

It does not matter how long ago this book came out. When I noticed that there was no review I thought I had to correct this terrible injustice and write one myself. The book is certainly not perfect by sci-fi standards, but there are few books that I've read which got me enchanted like this one. A little like reading Peter Pan when I was ten years old. It transports you into its imaginative world, making it so real that when you close the book you actually ask yourself if the real world might not actually be inside the book. Did I read "out of print"? What a shame. But don't give up so easily. ASK for it. With luck they'll get the press rolling again.

Despite being an avowed sci-fi fan (check out my other reviews folks!) and always being appreciative of originality and innovation, I'm sorry, but I just didn't get this one.

Perhaps not having played the computer game that spawned this novel places me at an irretrievable disadvantage, but after ploughing through a 100 or so pages I had to give up, as the world of Portal simply didn't grab me and was becoming extremely tedious.

The striking cover art (on the UK release) and the blurb on the back cover promised much, as did the glowing praise from the late Timothy Leary. This has great potential, I thought, and couldn't wait to read our hero's narrative as he explores the eerily deserted Earth. Rather than reconnoitre this spooky new world, however, our prodigal astronaut devotes every geek-like waking hour to interrogating a computer system analogous to the Internet. This may well be the rational and logical thing to do, but it makes for interminably dull reading. The way Peter gradually masters the unfamiliar user interface and how the computer expert system gradually re-establishes itself is competently described, but sadly failed to hold my interest. One wonders if the book would have sold so many if the cover pic had depicted someone hunched over a computer terminal? To plagiarise an advert on UK TV, this one certainly doesn't do what it says on the tin!

Thus, I feel Portal is worth a couple of stars for the bold and innovative concept alone, but the paucity of any dynamic, let alone exciting, narrative allows no more than this.

I note that the other reviewers have heaped much praise on this book and awarded it maximum stars. I therefore expect my rather less than complimentary review may provoke indignation amongst the die-hard fans, however it would be disingenuous for me not to tell it as it is. If you ever see this novel in a charity shop in Hampshire, it may well be my old copy.