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The Terminal Experiment Q1: General Impressions
What did you think of the book? It's a technological thriller, and it certainly explores the implications of certain techs, and the implications of invented hypothetical discoveries. But it's also got a suspense element. Did this work for you?
Comments
I thought it was a largely enjoyable, if not overly challenging book. What I would consider a good "beach" read in a Crichton sort of way. These are the kinds of books that I like to read in between other more challenging reads because they don't demand a lot and you can burn through them pretty quickly. Not quite sure it should have been an award winner, but then I have no idea how those things are decided.
Loved it! Sufficiently so that I've started reading other books by Sawyer, in particular the Hominids series (which, briefly, concerns the interaction between our world and a quantum-parallel one in which Neanderthals emerged as the dominant hominid rather than homo sapiens. I particularly enjoy the way he fastens on a philosophical point which becomes a focus for the narrative, without making it polemic or too simplistic.
I too greatly enjoyed the book. The technology was acceptably described, and the people vividly drawn. The explorations of the moral and ethical questions involved were very interesting, Some of which I have explored myself in my SF games, and therefore have a good understanding of. The writing was good enough to suck me in, without being too concerned with being clever. I zipped through in no time and greatly enjoyed it. I will be looking for more of his work, definitely!
Kind of left me cold to be honest. Reminded me of why I didn't like this style of cyber SF back in the day. That said, there was nothing wrong with it. I'll discuss more in the other questions.
I'm sorry, but this was another book I just couldn't finish. I found it very dull and formulaic, with all the characters acting at the surface level and not the slightest hint of any three-dimensionality. It was so bad, it was almost as bad as the fiction I would write! I think it was the wife's visit the the therapist that sealed it for me: three sentences into the conversation and there's a neat package of all her psychological problems, tied up in a neat package for the reader to understand.
I got about 50 pages in, started skimming, and found nothing that sparked my interest in the 50-odd pages following.
The therapist part was really bad, agreed.
I read that as just extremely dated - I don't know how many authors were writing about therapists at all in 1994/5, so it probably needed to be quite simplistic in outline