I Evoke Brow IV: Evoke This!

Pat Cadigan's Dervish is Digital. I read Tea from an Empty Cup, the first book in this series, for a great class in college (thanks Prof. Yaszek) and loved it, though it took two readings to understand the ending. Dervish is Digital revisits the incredibly well crafted future Cadigan created in the first novel. I enjoyed the first book much more, but this was still an excellent read. What Dervish lacks is the "Through the Looking Glass" quality of Tea, in which it's possible to see the "real world" as another layer of simulation and the "out door" as, well, whatever you want. The 2nd novel is more concrete both in and out of AR (Artificial Reality). What Cadigan excels at in both books is skewering the "Johnny Mnemonic"/"Matrix" versions of AR and instead building on a framework of non-stop commercialization. I seem to have run out of steam. Enough of this book report, back to work (maybe). Edit: I forgot to include this great quote from Dervish: "Never chalk up to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity or greed or both." Thus endeth the argument over whether Bush is playing dumb or really is the village idiot. ----- Listening to: Pgroove 2005-09-22 Decepticon Structure