All Fiction Books for you! - Science Fiction

You are here: Home

Science Fiction

Written by Our Reviewer
Thursday, 12 June 2008
Unholy Domain: Where Science and Religion Go to War Reviewd by Stuart Nachbar Dan Ronco’s Unholy Domain is a science fiction story that is very much a mix between George Orwell’s 1984 and Philip Dick’s Minority Report. Unholy Domain This is a story where an innovative technology has supposedly gone haywire, killing a million people and plunging the world or at least American into economic collapse. Domain’s main character, David Brown, is the son of the developer of PeaceMaker, the technology that started the downward spiral and created a nation (or world—I was not sure from the story) divided between factions for religious leadership—the Natural Humans--and technology. Both have their political capital, and both have their terrorists--or freedom fighters—depending on which side you are on. Members of both factions are about to form an even more powerful order known only as the Domain. I loved the movie Minority Report, so I was anxious to read Domain, and it did not disappoint. While the author is a technologist himself, he doesn’t get the reader lost in technical and computer jargon; that is often a distraction with similar “intelligent” science fiction novels that assume the reader already knows most of the science before he opens the book. His descriptions of robots and PeaceMaker, the killer app were quick and to the point and made me want to continue reading the story.
Read more...

Written by Editor
Monday, 05 November 2007
Lauren Smith: What is your book about? The cover describes it as "Mormon cyberpunk." Hunting Gideon Jessica Draper: The jacket copy gives a good summary: "Hunting Gideon is a near-future cyberpunk novel with an optimistic Mormon twist. Incorporating elements from the hard-boiled detective novel, film noir, and postmodernist prose, much of the novel's action takes place online in cyberspace, blurring the border between actual and virtual reality." "Cyberpunk" refers to the genre of science fiction that novels like Neuromancer and movies like The Matrix trilogy belong to—stories that take place in a near-future world where societal order is breaking down and technology is inescapable. It may be a bit of an exaggeration to call HG pure cyberpunk, but it fits the genre, a tale of digital cops 'n robbers in a full-immersion virtual world. That's a bit more precise than labeling it as simply "science fiction," let alone "Mormon science fiction." It's full of visuals and events that anybody who's played Second Life or World of Warcraft will relate to. In fact, when I first started writing, the idea of an "avatar" was really exotic, but since then has become commonplace; I feel rather proud of myself for anticipating trends so well! Lauren Smith: Where do you get your ideas from?
Read more...