WWW: Wake

Well, I thought I was only going to have to read four novels this week, since I'd already read and loved Palimpsest, but there must have been a tie in the nominations for Best Novel.  There are six nominees, so I have five to go.  Oops.

First up is Robert Sawyer's WWW: Wake (Ace 2009, serialized in Analog 2008-2009; Ace editor Ginjer Buchanan(?), Analog editor Stanley Schmidt), mainly because I have a physical copy of it that a friend gave me handy.  WWW: Wake is the first in the WWW trilogy, and both book and trilogy take the prize for most-irritating-to-actually-say titles.  Wuh-wuh-wuh-Wake seems to be the most efficient version.  It will be followed by wuh-wuh-wuh-Watch and wuh-wuh-wuh-Wonder, at which point anyone still reading will have a permanent mental stutter.

I admit that after reading Rollback a couple of years ago in a similar Hugo binge, my first thought upon picking up the book was to wonder how many times Sawyer would mention the Atkins diet.  The answer is once, on page 143, though he did find time for other name-dropping here and there.  It wasn't quite as obtrusive or irritating as in Rollback, at least, but was still a distraction from the plot.

And the the main plot really is interesting, involving a teenage math genius named Caitlin, who is blind, and the efforts by a Japanese scientist, Dr. Kuroda, to give her sight via an implant.  This gives Sawyer the opportunity to draw many, many connections to Helen Keller, though it eventually becomes evident -- and this is really quite clever -- that the parallels are not the obvious ones.  And Caitlin's implant works out a little differently than everyone expects: Caitlin begins to see the web.  Points and lines and moving data packets.

There are a couple of subplots that Sawyer returns to regularly.  The first involves a Chinese hacker determined to break past a firewall China imposes on the entire net in order to keep secret their response to a disease outbreak.  The second involves a chimpanzee/bonobo mix named Hobo who has taken a significant conceptual leap and the scientists who are working with him.  I'm being deliberately vague here because these are also interesting enough not to spoil.

Interwoven through all of this are a series of little meditations by some unknown entity which is rapidly growing in both self-awareness and intellect.

Those are the good points, and they are substantial.  This is a much better (and less cringeworthy in its lack of a creepy sexual subtext) book than Rollback and a more worthy Hugo nominee.

On the other hand...it does have some problems.  The Hobo plot is unceremoniously dropped just when it gets interesting, without anything resembling even a temporary resolution, and it suffers from an awkward and unnecessary threat of castration -- okay, maybe we do have some creepy sexual subtext here -- that was introduced, um, well, maybe as a metaphorical foreshadowing for what people will try to do to the mysterious entity later in the trilogy?  And really, exactly how necessary was it refer to a gazebo on an island as a nipple?  Let me offer a hint to authors: it is not necessary in science fiction to always have one of your characters be a guy who's blatantly sexually deprived, and if you do this repeatedly you will make your readers speculate about the whole "write what you know" thing.

The mysterious entity is not particularly mysterious to anyone who's read much SF, and if you're going to walk in the footsteps of Arthur C. Clarke and Orson Scott Card then you'd better offer some truly spectacular execution of the concept.  That's not evident so far.  And some of the entity's process of naming concepts is just painful:

I had no name for this substance consisting of two separate types of material that was [sic] flowing toward me, and so I gave it one, an arbitrary coinage, a term chosen at random: data.

How...astonishing that this random term happens to be the one humans use for the same thing.  Fancy that!  In fact, all the terms it comes up with just happen to be the usual ones, which makes me wish the whole "hmm, what shall I call this" routine had just been skipped over.  Wasn't there a better way to write this?

Also: Sawyer doesn't do a bad job of channeling a smart teenage girl, but he's insane if he thinks a girl would use an online nick (Calculass) that has appears to have the word "ass" in it.  I know exactly what the mean girls would do with that: "Calcul-ASS!!!!"

But these are all fairly modest quibbles.  It's still a pretty good book, which I enjoyed, though I didn't find it overwhelmingly exciting.  I might even bring myself to read the other two.

I'm not only blogging about the individual books this week; I'm also blogging my thought process as I work out my ballot.  I'll be filling it in and moving books up and down as I read through the nominees.  Palimpsest is already firmly ensconced at #1, so Sawyer may have the second spot...for now.  My Best Novel ballot so far:

1. Palimpsest
2. WWW:Wake
3.
4.
5.
6.

Shopping link:

Comments

[Serge]

how necessary was it refer to a gazebo on an island as a nipple?

It always amused me that the USA has a park named the Grand Teton. If the Puritans knew what it means, it'd get renamed pronto.

That being said... Have you read novels that you read that were published in 2010 and which I can nominate next year, since I'm going to the worldcon? I'd rather not do a last-minute marathon.

[Susan de Guardiola]

I had to look up Grand Teton, but...snicker.

The easiest way to see what I've been reading is to look at the Books category archive, which is mostly complete (I have to remember to tag posts, and not everything I read gets posted about) or the Comics archive if you're looking for that. The Rixo Bookstore (link at upper right) is a more efficient way to look.

But looking back at those categories, I don't see anything I've read published this year that would be something I'd nominate. YMMV. But I often don't nominate much, since I don't make a special point of keeping up with the field.

[Neil W]

In New Zealand, they pronounce www in URLS as "dub-dub-dub". Which would make this "dub-dub-dub-wake". Other than making people think that one is a kiwi, this probably is not of much use.

[Serge]

Neil W... I also say 'dub dub dub'. By the way, that may make the book obsolete (like 'the Questor Tapes') because it seems like fewer and fewer site names now start with 'www.'.

[Serge]

Susan... Thanks for the reminder of where to look that up. I don't keep up with the field's novel-length stuff (except thru reading about it in Locus) because most of it comes out in those bulk/pricey hardcovers and I'm more a paperback person. Besides, I read enough short fiction to keep me busy.

[Allison]

Once again, I'm impressed by your ability to speed-read! I'm also jealous that you have the TIME to read this much in one week. Fortunately, I'm really enjoying reading your reviews, so please keep posting them. I'm not a big Sawyer fan so this review didn't surprise me.

[Marilee J. Layman]

I stopped reading Sawyer years ago. He always has female characters as underneath.

Serge, all URLs still have www in their formation, it's just that the internet has changed and will let that go. Many places use a subdirectory there, like my http://beadwork.mjlayman.com (it can also be www.mjlayman.com/beadwork)

[Serge]

Marilee... Do you remember why they even had the DubDubDub as part of site names in the Dawn of Cyberspace?

[Mary Aileen]

Wasn't it (isn't it still) 'www' as opposed to 'ftp'?

[Paul A.]

Serge, what it comes down to is that the World Wide Web is not the whole internet. Web addresses began with 'www' to distinguish them from any of several other kinds of internet service (of which, as Mary Aileen has mentioned, ftp was and is a common one). An internet server like rixosous.com might have www.rixosous.com, the web site, and ftp.rixosous.com, the FTP service, and gopher.rixosous.com and telnet.rixosous.com and...

It seems to be the case these days, though, that for much of the general public the Web is the internet, and increasingly the web site has become the default service. This web site still has a 'www' on the front, but if you type just 'rixosous.com' into your web server, that will get you the web site too. Or then there's nielsenhayden.com, which doesn't have a 'www' on the front.

[Paul A.]

Incidentally, the host of Radio National's weekly language programme pronounces in "vuvuvu". In case that strikes you as more appealing than any of the already-discussed alternatives.

[Serge]

Paul A... Thanks for the explanation. Of course I had to look up gopher.rixosous.com...

[Marilee J. Layman]

Yeah, I remember using gopher a lot -- nothing like google!

[Marilee J. Layman]

I got the SFBC catalog today and they show all the WWW: books as having just the final name, like Wake.