BookStalking

An interesting, but only mildly so, account of an attempt by a school board to put Intelligent Design on the science curriculum. 

We’ve gone live today. Let’s see what starts to trickle in.

I liked this one. But then, I’ve always been a sucker for idealistic over-the-top pessimistic policy wonk fiction. The main character, Cassandra Devine, modestly proposes on her blog that baby boomers be given hefty tax incentives to “gracefully transition” at age 65. Intended as an outrageous proposal to spur debate about the awesome bankruptcy of social security, and the concommital pressures placed on Generation Whatever, Cassandra finds herself swept up in political debate at the highest levels.

I couldn’t help envisioning a friend of mine in Cassandra’s place. I have no recollection of what she is described as (No wait, I do recall that is is blonde and beautiful) but I picture her instead as my buddy LK, also a young and impossibly competent member of our military spin forces. I’ll have to see what she thinks of the book, as she knows what it is like to have generals and senators bat for you.

This is the first of Buckley’s books that I have read, though I did see and enjoy “Thank you for smoking.”  I haven’t done too much research into the premise of the book, because while enjoy a good delving into the world of governmental accounting as much as anyone, I must confess a certain fearfulness at what I might find. It is all too easy to envision the 30% payroll tax hike on under 30’s enacted. But rather than assaulting the gated communities of the wealthy boomers, I expect that the actual members of my generation would shrug and say “Whatever.”

This is a collection of short fiction by David Drake. Perhaps it was just me, but I found some of them more accessible than others.  I had a hard time following nearly all of the “bug” style stories that featured any sort of monster creatures. I just couldn’t picture them.

I imagine that Ringo is pretty upset that there is a scifi authors workin group that helps the us government plan how to fight future wars. He is probably muttering sullenly to himself in his underground bunker as he polishes whatever firearm is his weapon of choice. Anyway, Ringo is probably a bad choice for a policy advisor since he could easily be replaced by a magic 8-ball that had choices such as “Nuke them Now”, “Pre-emptive assault”, or “Research Lasers”. Who knows, maybe they already have one. (based off the Heinlien model that has the additional choice to “study more calculus”.

I get irked by books where the main character’ guesses, hunches, or impulsive decisions are never wrong. Like Fox Mulder. Man, he’d come up with the wildest guesses ever, and he’d be right every single time. Every single character in this book is like that. “Hey, Mars looks different.” “It’s probably alien probes self-replicating with the aim of destroying America.” Yup, they are!

Also, when faced with a global disaster, I hope that China, Russia, and maybe the rest of the world get to participate. Heck, maybe there could be a summit or something. In this book, the rest of the world does nothing. Well, they bravely nuke themselves so we don’t have to, after losing to the probes. I know we’re awesome and all, but if there is a country on Earth right now that could mount a last ditch defense with minimal use of metal, my votes for the country that doesn’t blow the budget on aircraft carriers. Seriously, the rest of the world may not exist as far as this book is concerned.

I did like the “Ret Ball” device used through the story. It was a good way to break up the otherwise unrelieved earnestness of the main story-lines. Using it more often would have made it irritating, so it was the right thing to do.

More things I thought were crazy:

-Six-plus foot black guy. Huge. Dangerous. Who nicknames him “The Gazelle?”

-Not one, but TWO brilliant research students working at Hooters. Their role is to serve beer and bounce, and sometimes think. Not as much as men though. That wouldn’t be right.

-Forgetting the rest or the world, what is America doing when the economy is nationalized and state of global emergency declared? I mean, aside from the armed forces and the rocket scientists? Everyone seems pretty calm about the destruction of the planet. No riots. No looting. No complaining.

The fight scenes are good, as they should be, since they comprise most of the book. Ringo’s global politics are terrible. His small unit tactics are pretty good.  The climactic fire-fight is exciting, full of lasers, experimental machine guns, and infinite waves of alien probes. It would be a good movie ending. Very “Independence Day”.

I would have liked a bit more closure. So we fought off some of the infinite probes on Earth. They still own Mars, and a bunch of Jupiter’s Moons. What are we gonna do about that? Also, where did they come from? What are they doing? Do we have any future plans? Perhaps this will be addressed in a future book.

The Sum up:

The plot is ludicrous, but the action scenes make up for it. It would be a decent movie or videogame plot. Not bad.