With the emerging Webmind, an living entity that resides on the internet helping people an communicating with various social media.  It even eliminated worldwide SPAM!  I love this continuing story with the 16-year-old Caitlan and her genius parents and awesome Waterloo tech savvy neighbourhood.

I just picked up book 3 today.  Too bad I couldn’t get it finished for 2011.  Webmind, if you are out there, help me to speed-read!

Great compelling reading.  I loved that it was unapologetically Canadian, referencing Blackberry, RIM, University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute.

The story takes place in the near feature in Waterloo, Ontario and the lead character is a 16-year-old blind girl.  She travels to Japan for an implant for her optic nerve to help her see and simultaneously she begins a connection with an entity that is “born” on the web.

The girl, Caitlin, has moved with her father, an Asbergers who works at PI as a theoretical physicist and her mother, an under-employed PhD in Game Theory.  They land in Canada from Texas, so Sawyer has a great platform to explain Canadianisms and it’s a lot of fun.  Yay Tim Hortons!!

Loved this book, and immediately took out the next book in the Trilogy when the Guelph Public Library opened on the 27th.

This is the first book I have ever read of Spider Robinson’s and I am saddened that I have not read anything by him before.  This book is like a Sci-Fi version of a Terry Pratchett fantasy novel.  Fun with lots of clever puns, double-entendres and cool science fiction.

The book takes place in a little bar in Key West called “The Place”.  It is run in a co-op fashion where the patrons are assumed to put the correct amount of money in the till for what they are drinking.  I guess you can say this is a utopian novel.  :)

The main character, the bar owner, and his wife have a daughter, who, at age 7 can teleport and has the cumulative knowledge and brain power of the entire internet.  The main storyline is that a huge “hulk-like” gangster is shaking down the bar and the hijinks in trying to stop him.

Loved the book, I think I will have to read a few more of his to keep my spirits up and a smile on my face.

The best way to describe it is to say it is a complete mashup of dystopian ”The Handmaid’s Tale” and the Afro-Caribbean “The Serpent and the Rainbow” with a little magical realism of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” thrown in.

I loved this book.  It takes place in the not-too-distant future where the central core of Toronto is closed off and let to fend for itself – meaning infrastructure such as water, sewer, power, 911 services and basic human needs are shut down.  The outer ring is wealthy and closed off the mostly Caribbean and easter European.

The main character is a young woman with a child who lives with her magical/healer/shaman/nurse grandmother.  She helps her grandmother care for the local sick with a combination of homeopathic and traditional medicine.  Her nemesis lives is a powerful man with a ”zombie” for a maid and a posse of criminals.  He is tasked but the outside Premier of Ontario to get her a heart from some unwitting habitants of the Toronto core.

Through a lot of Vodou and spiritual incidents the book climaxes in the warlord’s lair, the CN Tower.  Very cool!

The idea behind the book is quite interesting.  In 2009 at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) the search for the Higgs boson (God Particle) caused a 2 minute flash forward.  This flash forward enabled every human on earth to see through the eyes of their future selves for 2 minutes.  Those who were dead or asleep did not get to see anything.  The fallout of seeing yourself 21 years in the future caused much concern and some good changes.  For example, after seeing that there was no point in fighting, India and Pakistan came to a peace agreement.

The lead scientist behind the experiment, Lloyd Simcoe believes, and shared his belief that, the future is fixed and absolutely determined.  His junior scientist, Theo Procopides, discovers that his brother kills himself after realizing his artistic dreams do not come true and will work at a restaurant in the future.  This leaves both scientists to concede that the future is not fixed or the brother would not have had a future vision.

This book has a lot of Canadian references and the lead scientist, Lloyd, is Canadian.  I particularly love the note about Presidents Choice brand not being Prime Ministers Choice at the local supermarket.

This is a fun book and I loved reading it.  I am going to find other by this author.  Oh, and I also discovered that this book was made into a TV show of the same name last year.  Perhaps I will see if I can find it in re-runs!

The concept is a “what-if” scenario postulating what would happen, if during the Victorian era, Babbage’s machine not only worked, but was a fully functional computer.  A full century ahead of its time, the engine required huge power and space requirements and used hard punch cards much like the mainframes of the ’60s.

It really is an epic book that would easily introduce the uninitiated to the “steampunk” genre.  I love the idea of steampunk where modern-day gadgets (phones, computers, LCD Projectors) have been invented and created using Victorian technology (i.e. steam power).

The book follows three distinct characters:  Sybil Gerard, Edward Mallory and Laurence Oliphant.

Sybil, is a daughter of disgraced Luddite leader who was opposed to the mechanization of England.  She was reduced to surviving by becoming a courtesan.  England has become a meritocracy where technological “savants” rule.  Sybil teams up with a swashbuckling “adventurer” who passes some very secret punch-cards to her before his untimely death.

Not much of heard from her through the rest of the book.  Instead, we follow Dr. Edward “Leviathan” Mallory for the bulk of the story.  He is a paleontologist who well-known for his dinosaur finds in the Dakotas.  Teaming up with Laurence Oliphant, they try to track down the culprit who is both trying to destroy Dr. Mallory’s life and reputation, as well as, stirring up class riots within London.

The punch-cards and the code they represent, do not actually reveal themselves throughout the book.

There is an implied idea that the code that within the cards Sybil had, created a self-referencial (I would say virus) program in the French Difference Engines that, when flash forward to 1991, created a “sky-net” like society of digitized humans run by the all-seeing “eye”.

I really wanted to love this book, but boy was the ending unsatisfying.  I did enjoy much of the journey. What is was wondering was, except for a brief meeting of Sybil and Laurence at a cafe in Paris at the end, what purpose did Sybil serve?  I found the book was pieced together in 3 parts (Sybil/Dr. Mallory/1991)  and the two bookends were way too short without much integration into the main plot.

I think one must read this if you want to understand the whole steampunk canon, but be prepared for a little disappointment.