I thoroughly enjoyed this mind-spinning portrayal of a seismic shift in reality and how we, as fallible humans, respond to a new reality.
The premise of the book borders on unbelievable, but Wilson carries it out in a spectacular and ultimately believable fashion. How would humans respond to a fundamental change in how we view ourselves in the universe? It is a great “what-if” piece of writing that will captivate you on multiple levels.
After witnessing the onset of an astronomical event that has caused the sun to go black and the stars and moon to disappear, Tyler, Jason, and Diane learn that the darkness has been caused by a time-altering, alien-created artificial barrier and that the sun will be extinguished in less than forty years. Reprint.
Hyperion is stimulating, mind-blowing, and always surprising. It is loaded with fantastic storylines but also somehow easy to read. You will never know what will happen next—a spellbinding world.
The narratives of the seven main characters could each be a book of their own. Mesmerizing world-building. No wonder it is a science fiction classic! I immediately went next to its sequel.
Crouch is near the top of my list of favorite authors. His recent science-fiction books are spectacular. Abandon was written before his sci-fi and is a different genre (thriller, horror, western mashup), so I went into it with some trepidation.
Totally unwarranted, though. This is a page-turner of a book with a cast of characters doing unspeakable things—lots of blood and killing that will shock the reader and keep you reading.
I read this book on a solo 360-mile backpacking trip, and my nightly read I always looked forward to. It kept my mind off of bears in my campsite. The reason why the entire population of a small mining town disappeared in the late 1800s is horrifically shocking.
On Christmas Day in 1893, every man, woman and child in a remote gold mining town disappeared, belongings forsaken, meals left to freeze in vacant cabins; and not a single bone was ever found. One hundred and thirteen years later, two backcountry guides are hired by a history professor and his journalist daughter to lead them into the abandoned mining town so that they can learn what happened. With them is a psychic, and a paranormal photographer - as the town is rumoured to be haunted. A party that tried to explore the town years ago was never heard from…
All appears hopeful after the cessation of the authoritarian interconnect supercomputer in 2051. Genocidal warfare, a period inspired by algorithmic stimulation of human grievance via chip implants, has mercifully ended. A majority of citizens have undergone re-education to lessen their destructive computer addictions.
And when interconnect re-emerges in 2058, it has mutated and inserts in citizens a seemingly benign program of ReForm. Yet, this mutation is not what it seems. Instead, it has implanted in its unaware recipients numbing and fabricated senses of hope and reformation that conceal the continuance of manipulated reality.
In ReForm, we experience a near future where independent human thinking is dissolving, and a small group of dissidents constitutes the sole challenge to the machine's ever-mutating reach into the human mind.
