The Hyperboreans: A Subversive Sci-Fi Thriller

I couldn't believe how good this book was when I got an advance copy. So now I'm buying it to have proof! For me, as a sci-fi fan, it's got everything - adventure, mystery, romance, science and prophecy - empathic heroes, quick movement, and a prophetic, archetypal hero journey to boot. I just wish someone would "get up on this" and make the movie too. <br />Great work and a fun, quick read 'cause you can't put it down!

One of the highlights of my family's annual excursion to our beach house is the paperback novels that we devour and pass around and talk about by the grill. We're a family of bookworms and on vacation we really cut loose. <br /> <br />When we picked our daughter up at college she had "The Hyperboreans Podcast" on her iPod and we plugged it into the stereo and listened to it on the way to the beach house. By the time we got down there my interest was piqued so I went online and ordered the novel and had it shipped in. <br /> <br />I enjoyed this book immensely. I could compare it to things by other cyberpunk authors but I hesitate to do so because there is a subtle sense of humor in this novel that other popular works lack. It's a very enjoyable book with hidden depths and a big heart, and it was the subject of several heated discussions after my wife and children managed to pry it away from me so they could read it, too. <br />

A professional programmer with a penchant for hard science fiction, I often find myself rolling my eyes at the casual grasp of computer technology that a lot of popular works display. For example: the beginning was NOT the command line, and a butterfly flapping around on a monitor was never a part of UNIX (as one popular film about would a dinosaur theme park asks us to believe). Because of my vocation, technical "leaps-o-faith" that are no problem for the general public are serious obstacles to my enjoyment of some Sci-Fi. <br /> <br /> Not so here. "The Hyperboreans" is informed by a "to the metal" understanding of computers and software engineering that apparently stretches all the way back to John McCarthy and the Lisp community at M.I.T. in the early 1950's. Technical terms like "self referential," "integer overflow," "three-way handshake" and "paging" crop up in this book, and only when they are perfectly appropriate, and never in a heavy-handed or pretentious way. The chapter in which flow-of-control is traced through the mind of a robotic bulldog subroutine-by-subroutine delighted me, as did the one in which the messaging protocol of a web of satellites is described. This author knows computers. <br /> <br /> Impressively, he's not just showing off his knowledge to gain the reader's trust, either. The technical details all serve to advance a plot that is as rollicking as a million-line 3D shoot-em-up, but crafted with the care and economy of device driver coded in C. <br />

They say good sci-fi depends on good characters. This series definitely fits the bill! Dark, ominous, and pleasingly violent, the story is as compelling as it is subversive. The only improvements I would make is to have someone read it to me. Though I believe Harvey has beat me to the punch...