52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
64. Rainbows end.
Humanities scholar Dr. Julie Thompson-Klein loaned me this one a few months back. A Hugo award-winner about the near future, where wearable networking equipment allows you to overlay reality with your own digital constructs, and the digital and biological definitions of ‘viral’ are beginning to overlap. Vinge is credited with the concept of the technological Singularity, when machines become self-conscious, and he explores that concept gracefully here, without ever once calling attention to his idea. Turns out the Singularity may be curious and fun-loving and completely amoral. A terrorist plot is foiled by a few bright high-schoolers and one rejuvenated octogenarian poet, who learns a few life lessons along the way. Vinge has plenty to say about how our relationship to technology can physically, psychologically, irrevocably change us. An engaging, though not earthshaking, novel.
