Snag Interface Author Neal Stephenson Print

this book again inand it absolutely floors me how relevant it isyears after it was written, The tech, the politics, its all still within the realms of possibility, To say this was an unexpected experience would be an understatement, Stephenson and his colleague put together a story far ahead of its timefilled with extraordinary characters, concepts and plot twists, Given the current dynamic of today's presidential craziness, it raises the question: Is it possible Trump has an implant Of course not, but the concept of being electronically controlled by groups financed by the billionaire boys club isn't far reaching.
The last few chapters get the heart rate up and move at lighting pace similar to a Baldacci or Brown book, I can't recommend this book enough, especially with the current political climate! This is a wonderful political adventure novel, with a thin vein of science fiction running through it, If all political thrillers were this smart, snappy, funny, and thoughtprovoking, I would read a lot more of them, Or perhaps Clancy is a real kneeslapper and I just don't remember, But Interface follows an electoral campaign and along the way manages to ask some very profound, fundamental questions about the ethics of selfimprovement and the nature of identity and life itself, all while being an enjoyable romp of a novel.
The characters are welldeveloped and interesting though from this and sitelinkReamde, we now know never to be a weaselly man with a problem with alcoholism who is ungallant toward women in a Stephenson novel,

the story is wellpaced, the plot is fiendishly clever, and the action is welldone.
All this along with prose that occasionally made me chuckle out loud,

Books like these make me wonder why Stephenson's novels have not already been made into sensationally popular blockbuster movies, The bones are all there: charismatic characters, adventure, special effects, and a joyous buoyancy that doesn't worry too much about being overly pedantic, Maybe people have offered and Stephenson is just being picky, which is laudable, but this would make a phenomenal movie, one I'd love to see, and maybe it would get more people reading Stephenson.
Which can only be a good thing, I recommend this book to those who already love Stephenson, and to those who don't yet know they could, For me this was very hard work, Made worse by authors seeming very smug, Neal Stephenson is one of my favorite authors sitelinksnow crash, cryptonomicon, but he didn't deliver in this one, Maybe because it was coauthored, The premise was interesting, and the first half of the book was actually pretty good, but then it just skipped ahead and I didn't love the ending, . . Приятно все же сознавать, насколько мы продвинулись за последние четверть века вполне на собственной памяти, читая такие книжки. В нем все прото протонёрды, протонанотехнологии, протополиттехнологии. Читается прям как антропологический экскурс в прошлое. Но потом догоняет и накрывает Пинчонпаранойей, и на текст подсаживаешься, хотя а может, и потому, что роман скроен по лекалам и рецептам коммерческого чтива: главы умоподъемной длины, сцены чередуются в своем алгоритме, фигуры умолчания создают саспенс и подгоняют вперед, фонового знания дается в меру, экшн не раздражает.
Фантастики как таковой тут тоже не очень есть, вернее она ближнего действия поамерикански, а не посоветски: т. е. все этот вполне вероятно и допустимо. Обложка да, не врет это честный политический триллер с циничными персонажами, которые отлично знают, что делают, и умеют работать, а лучше таких персонажей я не знаю, что может быть. И еще Интерфейс превосходный взгляд на то, из чего состоит тело американской политики, о котором узнаешь больше, чем из газетных новостей вот, я опять откатился к метафоре четвертьвековой давности ну кто сейчас читает газеты из фидов какихнибудь, конечно.
Квасным патриотам читать его, конечно, совершенно бесполезно, они и слов таких не знают, как выборы: зазр между американским политическим сознанием и его русским отсутствием попрежнему непреодолим. Хотя практически все фигуры на русских политических горизонтах уже давно не люди, а спецэффекты, поэтому поди знай.

оппа. вот они его и не читают. на русском этого романа, оказывается, не существует. Did not start. This is a casualty of my loss of enjoyment for Neal Stephenson's books, My original enjoyment of his books came from a shared fetish for science and technology, The technoutopian view of the scientist/engineer prevailing with technology against a political/bureaucratic organisation is an easy sell to young people interested in technology, I no longer hold this kind of fetish and so a Neal Stephenson book to me now is just an intellectual adventure story with a simplistic world view, Nothing wrong with that, but it is not something I want to read much anymore, Neal Stephenson amp J. Frederick George teamed up to write Interface in, and the result is unquestionably a product of that era of American politics, Seen from the modern perspective as is often the case with "outdated" science fiction, Interface tells us a great deal more about the era in which it was written than it does about the future.


Very early in the book, during the rising action, campaign strategist Cy Ogle a James Carville/Karl Rove/Fu Manchu hybrid says the following, which captures the Interface's political world perfectly:

"We are in the Age of Scrutiny.
A public figure must withstand the scrutiny of the media," Ogle said, "The President is the ultimate public figure and must stand up under ultimate scrutiny he is like a man stretched out on a rack in the public square in some medieval !hole of a town, undergoing the rigors of the Inquisition.
Like the medieval trial by ordeal, the Age of Scrutiny sneers at rational inquiry and debate, and presumes that mere oaths and protestations are deceptions and lies, The only way to discover the real truth is by the rite of the ordeal, which exposes the subject to such inhuman strain that any defect in his character wil cause him to crack wide open, like a flawed diamond.
It is a mystical procedure that skirts rationality, which is seen as the work of the Devil, instead drawing down a higher, ineffable power, Like the Roman haruspex who foretold the outcome of a battle, not by analyzing the strengths of the opposing forces by groping through steaming guts of a slaughtered ram, we seek to establish a candidate's fitness for office by pinning him under the lights of a television studio and counting the number of times he blinks his eyes in a minute, deconstructing his use of eye contact, monitoring his gesticulations whether his hands are held open or closed, toward or away from the camera, spread open forthcomingly or clenched like grasping claws.
"

This lengthy monologue is typical of the book, which was published before the Lewinsky scandal and before/, The story is an artifact of an era where both parties were so close to center that there was no telling them apart, so the only thing that mattered was showmanship.
In various tones and forms, the reader will be reminded of this political reality over and over again,

The story itself is, as mentioned above, a rehash of the Manchurian Candidate, with a twist, Independent presidential candidate William Cozzano has had a stroke, and his miraculous recovery is due to computer chips in his brain that are being tweaked by a nefarious transnational conspiracy.
Effectively, Cozzano is under remote control, saying the best thing at any given moment, Meanwhile, a new "instant polling" technology reads the emotional reactions of a sample of voters in real time, so Cozzano literally respond to their concerns instantaneously, As the back of the book puts it: "Forget issues, Forget policy. Cozzano is more than the perfect candidate, He's a special effect. "

This central storyline forms the spine of the book, but the narrative focus shifts constantly, At least ten characters wear the "protagonist" hat over the course of the book, which runs in many directions at once and takes a long time to get any momentum.
Parts of the book resemble the very best passages of Cryptonomicon, racing at breakneck speed through really gripping subject matter, Others feel like the most amateurish moments in Stephenson's much rougher Zodiac, Whether this irregularity is due to Stephenson's relative inexperience at the time he is clearly a much better writer now or due to the collaboration with George is impossible to tell.


The story's narrative drive is equally irregular, Some characters especially antagonists are introduced but never elaborated upon, dropping like loose threads, The "main story" of the book doesn't even begin to take recognizable form until at least/of the way through the book, leaving the reader wondering in the early sections what the point of this or that tangent is.
Usually, that point becomes clear over time, but not always,

Perhaps most annoying is the Interface's slightly selfrighteous tone, especially when combined with how dated and naive its depiction of politics is, There is no question that money and media remain the deciding factors in a candidate's election, but the idea that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans was a myth from the Culture Wars.
As relevant as the monologue above remains to the electoral process, it can't be the whole story, as recent election suggest, Americans do care about issues and about policy,

Despite these problems, Interface is still an amusing political thriller, Its unevenness does make it hard to predict which is something of a plus, and ever stodgy passage is matched by a gripping one, Parts of it are brilliant, Anyone who likes their political thrillers light on the politics or their science fiction light on the science will find this book entertaining, It's a good book. But it is far from great, .