I Evoke Brow VIII: The Sequel's Sequel

Chris Moriarty's Spin State. One advantage of working at the library: snagging interesting books that you run into. Of course, this makes it even harder to make any progress on the reading list. In this case it was a mixed blessing. I was warned by the patron returning it that the book had a lot of unfamiliar terms without a lot of explanation. While I really enjoyed this book, the patron was right; it's not-quite-fatal flaw was in how explanations for the distant future technologies were doled out: either too confusingly, too late, or not at all. If you are quantum physicist, this could be the best book of the year; for a layperson, there's a good bit of stumbling around in the dark. Unlike Morgan's Altered Carbon, in which the lack of explanations are intriguing, in Spin State they are just plain confusing, critically so at times. Perhaps I should have said everything I liked about this book first--the above makes it sound pretty bad when really it's very good. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars over at Amazon: very good, but not perfect. In fact, it's probably because everything else about the book is so excellent that I'm bothered by its flaw. Here are some for the plus column: it feels very real, not an easy trick for distant future Science Fiction; the crackling tension between ex-lovers is well done and a nice change from the standard love story; each portion of the story is entertaining in it's own right, the pace starts off fast and Moriarty keeps throwing twists at you. 8/10 ----- Listening to: pgroove 2005-11-19 Three Weeks. Band just keeps getting better and better, it's hard to believe how much sometimes. The setlists from the Northeast tour are amazing as well: someone made a phish fall-95 comparison on TIP. It really does feel like following phish in the early 90s must have been like: hearing a band that plays like 4 fingers on a hand, continually pushing their limits, and growing a larger and larger fanbase. What a luxury to be able to listen to faraway shows a few days after they occur these days.