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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the 5 I'd take on a desert island, February 16, 1997
By A Customer
The title comes from Alvin Toffler's "FutureShock." In the best of his books (Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, and Shockwave Rider), Brunner takes one problematic element of modern society and extrapolates into the future. In Stand on Zanzibar it is population pressure; in The Sheep Look Up it is environmental pollution; in Shockwave Rider it is the increasing rate of change and its effect on us. (BTW, the rest of his books are very different; and he's written some of the most depressing SF I've ever read; it might have been therapy for him but his "Total Eclipse" might send me into it!)
The increasing rate of change has sent most Americans into mental distress. The most obvious cause (i.e. the most identifiable thing with an increasing rate of change) is the internet (Brunner doesn't call it that, but he has it right nonetheless) -- everything one does is subject to scrutiny by the Feds and by anyone who can hack the net. The flip side is that oneself is rarely able to find out important information. In other words: there are those around one who know things they shouldn't, are improperly profiting from it, and one can't do anything about it. The protagonist is a goverment-trained programmer who becomes hacker extraordinaire.
The structure of the book takes getting used to, but is also the reason its a desert island book. Shockwave Rider is arranged in short sections, the shortest only a paragraph, the longest rarely more than a few pages. The scene jumps around and there seems to be no continuity. Stick with it! It will become clear soon enough, and it worth plowing on till it does. One hint: one type of section is commentary, not plot. Each section has a heading -- a quote or a reference. I would spend my time on my hypothetical desert island reading this book; but most importantly tracking down the references and discovering the relevance of the heading and commentary to the plot.
Writing about Shockwave Rider makes me want to reread it; I think I'll do that now.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mildly Interesting, November 4, 2000
I'm going to focus my thoughts on the visionary event that everyone seems to have missed in their reviews of this book. Certainly along with Vinge (True Names), this book predicts the rise of the Internet, but there is another prediction in there that people don't seem to be paying attention to. The Plug-in lifestyle. Corporations as a game, and not a source of all that is good. People leave and change companies and towns as easily as... you and I do today. Remember when switching jobs wasn't regarded as a smart career move and a chance at promotion? It's easy to forget that even as recently as the 80's (ack. It's not recent to me, but it is in certain senses) the corporation was a place to spend life and retire with a pension and a gold watch. Since then, the concept of a pension is foreign to most of us, as is life-long employment. The early 90's took care of that. The 50's and 60's were the time of the "organization man", not one who could or would switch places or jobs easily, and easily meld in with the newest grouping. It's a shallow lifestyle, but how many people do you know that are experienced at it. After Chainsaw Al (among others), how many people owe loyalty to a company? A far-reaching vision. The book is worth reading to see how true it has become in certain senses. Predicting the future is a hit or miss proposition. This book is a solid hit. At least for me - in the Internet/Information Technology industry.
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I demand a reprint, November 27, 2001
By A Customer
Little is to be added to the other reviews. This 28-year old book not only decribed the internet as it will become very soon long before its inception, but computer viruses (called "worms" by Brunner) before the first PC too, plus a few other things and issues not even mentioned yet. Since a friend gave it to me to read many years ago, I've bought every copy of it I could find. I have kept one German and one English version and as I will not let them out of my bookshelf under no circumstances I gave all others away as gifts, still looking for more copies to give away. It has been sold out so often and for such a long time, each time and in each of those two languages available to me, that if one were to be a follower of conspiracy theories, well, the fact that this book is not reprinted as often as some other books of Brunner are would be reason for suspicion.
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