Electronic OtherRealms #22 Fall, 1988 Part 6 Copyright 1988 by Chuq Von Rospach All Rights Reserved OtherRealms may not be reproduced without written permission from Chuq Von Rospach. The electronic edition may be distributed or reproduced only in its entirety and only if all copyrights, author credits and this notice, including the return addresses remain intact. No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author. Just for the Fun of It Alan Wexelblat Copyright 1988 by Alan Wexelblat Consider Phlebas Iain M. Banks St. Martin's Press, 0-312-01752-9, 467pp, 1987 [***] The Forge of God Greg Bear Tor, 372 pp, 1987 [****+] Computers in Battle: Will They Work? edited by David Bellin and Gary Chapman Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 0-15-121232-5, 362pp, 1987 [****] Chanur's Homecoming C. J. Cherryh DAW, 349pp, 1986 [****+] FirstFlight Chris Claremont Ace, 0-441-23584-0, 243 pp, 1987 [***] On Stranger Tides Tim Powers Ace, 312pp, 1987 [*****-] Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology edited by Bruce Sterling Ace , 0-441-53382-5, 239pp, 1986 [*****] Involution Ocean Bruce Sterling Ace, 0-441-37206-6, 179 pp, 1977 [****-] The Crown Jewels Walter Jon Williams TOR, 0-812-55798-0, 247pp, 1987 [****] This summer has been hot. The local paper is running cartoons about the devil taking a plane flight out of town because of the heat. It's far too hot to do much serious reading, if you ask me. I don't know how you deal with the heat where you live; around here we like to kick back and relax with some iced tea and some books that are just plain good reading. This month we'll take a look at several of those, as well as couple of more serious endeavors. The Crown Jewels This offering from Walter John Williams is not, according to the list inside the front cover, a novel. It is, we are told, one of his "divertimenti;" literally, a diversion. The Crown Jewels is a light-hearted science fantasy set in the far future. Humanity has been conquered by a race called the Khosali. These aliens are so immeasurably superior to all the other races that their conquests are ho-hum affairs. As conquerors go, they're not that bad. They allow the subject species a great deal of freedom, asking only that they accept the Khosali Imperial System and the hereditary aristocracy that goes along with it. In return, the conquered get access to the advanced Khosali technology and to the many other races that the Khosali have conquered. However, the ungrateful humans manage to pull off a galactic first by staging a successful revolution. The story opens in the time of an uneasy peace between the Khosali Empire and the human Constellation. Our hero, Drake Maijstral, is a thief. Not a criminal -- the law allows him to steal provided he takes care not to actually get caught. And provided, of course, that he does it with sufficient style. Maijstral always gets points for style. Unfortunately, that's about all he's been getting lately; consequently, he's almost broke. He doesn't hesitate (more than style requires, anyway) to take on a seemingly-insignificant job for Amelia Jensen. All she wants is a sealed box from a collection of war-era antiquities. Nothing could be simpler. Unfortunately, a lot of other people from both sides of the Khosali-Human border seem to want that box as well, and Maijstral finds himself in the middle of a complex jumble of robbery, kidnaping, and... well, let's not give too much away. The Crown Jewels is a lot of fun to read. Williams' style lends itself easily to the humorous situations he sets up. From the ear-sniffing greetings of Khosali High Custom, to the Elvis-impersonator performances which are one of the only relics left of Old Earth culture, the tone of the novel kept me just below the level of a constant giggle. The characters are realistic, fun people. They are not quite stereotypes and not quite self-parodies, but they tread humorously close to both. Speaking of the characters, there are quite a number of them. The supporting cast numbers close to a dozen, and I am impressed at how well Williams handles them. In particular, he manages to introduce most of the major players in the first chapter via a complex dance sequence that allows the reader to quickly become familiar with most of them. Don't be fooled into thinking that the fun of this book indicates a lack of writing skill. On the contrary, the writing is excellent as I have come to expect from Williams. Put this one on your must-read-some- weekend list. On Stranger Tides Now this is a fantasy. Listen up, all you fantasy lovers who've been numbed by Generic Fantasy Trilogies. This book is for you. Tim Powers is ready to take you on a swashbuckling ride over the Caribbean seas. And what a ride! On Stranger Tides is the story of John Chandagnac -- how he sails for Jamaica, how he is captured by pirates and becomes Jack Chandy, a pirate in his own right. And how Voudun magic and mystery lead him closer to and farther from Beth Hurwood, the woman he loves. Her father, it seems, is some kind of serious wizard, and he has plans for his daughter that certainly don't include Jack Chandy. Mind you, this is not highfalutin' magic we're talking about here. This is down-in-the-dirt, gut-wrenching Caribbean magic: spit and mud and the blood of beheaded chickens. Loas with real totems that any man can use, if he knows how. Bocors that can summon up the spirits of the dead. No outright miracles, but power enough to stop a pistol bullet, if you take the right precautions. For me, this magic has a certain, if you'll pardon the word, reality to it. I can imagine myself, like Chandy, slowly learning to believe in and to use this sort of magic. This sense of "that could be me" is one of the things I liked best about this book. It's hard to say much about the plot of this book without spoiling it for the reader. Powers writes extremely good swashbuckling non- stop action. Just when you've forgotten a plot thread, he weaves it back in. It's exciting and involving and lots of fun. As with the Williams book, Powers doesn't take the lightness of the book as a chance to slack off. His writing talent is evident throughout. Jack Chandy and the other characters are well-rounded human beings. They grow and develop and we cheer (or boo) them in large part because they are so real. Powers also has a keen eye for historical detail; he has done his homework and it shows in the rich background fabric of the story. This one is a page-turner; don't start reading it just before bedtime. Chanur's Homecoming Let's see... the last time we checked in with Pyanfar Chanur and her crew, they were riding the crest of the wave of conquest spawned by the war between Akkhtimakt and Sikkukkut. They had managed somehow to avoid being squeezed between the Hani secret policewoman Rhif Ehrran and her intended quarry, the pirate Hani Dur Tahar. But now Ehrran was running for the main Hani port, Gaohn station, and her report would finish off the politically crippled Chanur clan. They had also managed to get back the human, Tully, though they were not sure what secret message he bore. That message had gone on to the Mahen homeworld of Maing Tol with the hani captain Banny Ayhar. Tully and the Pride of Chanur's junior crewwoman, Hilfy, had been returned by Sikkukkut in return for Pyanfar's promise to help him take Kefk station -- and act of outright piracy that would be sure to upset the already-jittery Stsho. Meanwhile, the mahen hunters Jik and Goldtooth have had some sort of falling out, resulting in Goldtooth heading for gods-know-where, possibly bringing a fleet of human ships into Compact space. If you're getting a mental image like that of the surfer riding the tsunami in Lucifer's Hammer, you're on the right track. Chanur's Homecoming is the final chapter in the story started in The Pride of Chanur, and continued in Chanur's Venture, and The Kif Strike Back. If you haven't read those books yet, go out and get them. If you have read them, you know what a treat it is to visit Compact space with Cherryh as tour guide. This book is by far the most hair- raising of the quaternary. The tension runs high throughout the story, and the pace just keeps getting faster. I am continually amazed at Cherryh's ability to handle all the elements of the narrative. The things I mentioned above are only some of the major plot elements. The characters are equally numerous, and equally well-drawn. Despite their numbers, Cherryh allows each one room enough to grow. There are no stereotypes, no two-dimensional players on this stage. I also like the way Cherryh shows us the female (some would say feminist) point of view of her protagonist without engaging in male-bashing. I think I've said before that I consider the alienness of Cherryh's different species to be excellently done. Her work is a yardstick against which I compare other authors' efforts. These are not just humans in funny skins; these are four distinct races of sentients who think and act in their own self-consistent, but very unhuman, ways. As with the Powers book, it's hard to say much about the plot without spoiling it. It's a wild ride, and a fun one. There are so many irons in the fire it's impossible to say who will survive. And, take my word for it, I think you'll like the ending. It's logical. The loose ends are tied up in a believable way. This one's another page-turner, guaranteed to keep you up past your bedtime. FirstFlight Many of you know Chris Claremont as the author of Marvel Comics' phenomenally successful series of X-Men comics. FirstFlight is his first foray into non-graphic, novel-length material. Coincidentally, C.J. Cherryh is quoted as giving it an "...enthusiastic recommendation." And considering the poor quality of many of the first novels I've seen recently, I'm inclined to agree with her. Certainly Claremont has the wisdom to draw on his strengths. Many of the characters will be easily recognizable to X-Men readers as analogues of characters he's developed in the past. The protagonist, Lt. Nicole Shea, is an extremely talented young space pilot. She's so talented that NASA administrators are willing to overlook her occasional carelessness in the hope that experience will mature her and her talents will shine through. In the not-too-distant future of FirstFlight, humanity has established outposts on the moon and in the asteroid belts. A newly-developed FTL star drive makes visiting nearby systems practical, and development of colonies there is beginning. However, the solar system is so poorly mapped that using the high-power, high-speed starships in-system is dangerously impractical. Shea is given captaincy of the conventional-drive spaceship Wanderer and its crew with a mission to chart a volume of the solar system and leave marker buoys along the way, allowing the starships to navigate safely. Now you just know this is far too tame a scenario for Claremont. First our heroes tangle with a mess of asteroid-hopping pirates. As you might expect, the long arm of the law barely touches the uncharted outbacks of the asteroid belt beyond Mars. Then the aliens arrive. Yes, this is a first-contact novel, too. The aliens have their own problems, and they team up with Wanderer's crew to solve them. The plot is pretty simplistic. Claremont's strength has never been in the kind of intricate intrigue that Cherryh is so adept at. However, his talent with the novel's characters is not to be taken lightly. He has trouble dealing with the large number of them, but Shea and the other major players are well-handled. He deals with complex themes of love (including sex) and responsibility, and allows his major characters to grow together in a team. His aliens are about what you'd expect. They are technologically slightly more advanced that the humans. Since they come from closer to the center of the galaxy, their transmissions were lost to us against the background noise. Earth, seen against the relative quiet of inter- galactic space, stood out like a beacon for them. Claremont has clearly put some effort into making them real; unfortunately there's only one major alien character. The real weakness of the novel is the villains. They are one- dimensional cutout bad guys with cliche motives who act in standard bad-guy ways. I almost expected them to chortle evilly. This is not a great novel by any means, but it is a respectable first effort and is fun to read. I'm looking forward to seeing if Claremont continues writing in this universe. There are some obvious loose ends left over at the end of the book that make me think he's got at least one more related story up his sleeve. Mirrorshades It's hard to know what to say about a book that purports to define a movement which many deny the very existence of. However, the debate over the existence and/or meaning of cyberpunk inevitably acknowledges the force and importance of the introduction to this collection. The essay, written by anthology editor Bruce Sterling, is an attempt to define a movement by taking a kind of snapshot of it. By attempting a coherent articulation of principles that had guided writers yet remained unexplained to many readers, he drove a stake into the ground around which a debate could be built. His compelling vision and the collection of stories accompanying it form a portrait of a new dynamic in science fiction. With any dynamic process, static representations are doomed to be incomplete. Just as no one Beethoven symphony presents the entirety of orchestral composition, no single story or collection of them presents the entirety of that thing Gardner Dozois dubbed "cyberpunk" and Bruce Sterling calls simply the "Movement." As I noted, the preface to the collection is a seminal explanation for the mass-market public of what it is that makes up the Movement. Sterling touches on many of the themes and many of the inspirations for the mirrorshades group. He acknowledges their debt to many who came before, as well as to many who are still at work in the field today. He tries to explain what is new and compelling about this thing called cyberpunk. He also coined the phrase that has become symbolic of a great deal of the Movement, and grail-like to its imitators: "...the realm where the computer hacker and the rocker overlap." If you read nothing else in this volume, read the preface. For those who venture on, there's a wealth of good material, from Gibson's "Gernsback Continuum," which is really an embodiment of the principles in their starkest form, to the Sterling/Shiner collaboration "Mozart in Mirrorshades." In my opinion, there's not a bad story in the lot. There are ones that qualify as hard-core cyberpunk, like Tom Maddox's excellent "Snake Eyes" -- about a human mind forced into an interface it's not equipped to handle -- and John Shirley's rock- and-roll Eclipse excerpt titled "Freezone." Then there are ones that, in addition to being good Movement stories, are almost philosophical treatises on the themes of the movement, like Greg Bear's beautiful but disturbing story about the death of God, "Petra," and the Sterling/Gibson collaboration "Red Star, Winter Orbit," about the real movement of humanity into outer space. In between are other sorts of Movement stories: In Pat Cadigan's "Rock On," the rock ethic and the business ethic collide to the detriment of a rock and roll sinner. Rudy Rucker's "Tales of Houdini" is a nail-bitingly exciting short about Harry Houdini, alive in an alternate history. "The 400 Boys" brings together the worlds of post- nuclear mutations and street gangs in a bizarre combination that would be totally hokey if done by someone less talented than Marc Laidlaw. James Patrick Kelley's entry, "Solstice," is a sad story of love and loss set against the background of a pharmaceutical Wonderland. Similarly, Lewis Shiner's "Till Human Voices Wake Us" is about love and loss, but it is set against a background of corporate politics. The same sort of politics gives Paul Di Fillipo's "Stone Lives" its hard edge. "Stone Lives" is perhaps the prototypical cyberpunk coming-of-age story. I think this is an excellent collection with a wealth of good material. It's not easy reading by any stretch of the imagination, but it repays the effort ten times over. Involution Ocean Some of you may be wondering why the preface to Mirrorshades is in the back of this book. Well, it's sort of complicated... The original edition of Involution Ocean was an Ellison Discovery novel. It was prefaced with an essay written by Harlan describing Bruce Sterling, as Harlan saw him in 1977. That essay is somewhat dated by now and doesn't bear reprinting. So when Ace went to republish the book in anticipation of the imminent releases of Mirrorshades and Islands in the Net, they found themselves with a rather slim volume. In order to expand it (and to promote Mirrorshades), they included the Mirrorshades preface. Naturally, they didn't bother to consult Sterling about any of this. So goes the merry world of publishing! (Actually, Sterling tells me he doesn't mind, though the juxtaposition is a little odd.) Involution Ocean begins as the story of John Newhouse's search for the source of syncophine, the drug to which he is addicted. The drug is produced only by refining portions of the viscera of a unique creature -- the dustwhale of Nullaqua. Nullaqua is a planet without water. It has no oceans of liquid; however, it does have a large ocean of fine dust, in which live a number of creatures, including the dustwhale. These whales are carefully harvested by the whalers of Nullaqua -- for each whale taken, three fertilized eggs are dropped into the ocean. However, the whalers' interest is not in syncophine; in fact, the planet's rulers have made the drug illegal. Thus, in order to get the raw materials to make the drug, Newhouse must sign on to a whaling ship himself, steal the needed whale parts and create the drug himself. He rapidly becomes caught up in what can only be called the 'Ahab-like' insanity of the ship's captain, Desperandum. The captain is certain that great mysteries lurk in the dust sea, and is determined to prove himself right. He leads the ship into danger time and again, holding on to his crew and command by force of personality and physical strength. Newhouse must walk a tightrope between offending the captain, an unpredictable temper, and offending the xenophobic crew. Inevitably, he is forced to choose sides and become deeper enmeshed in the insanity aboard ship. Involution Ocean is certainly a significant cut above the average first novel. Despite its obvious homage to Moby Dick, there are a number of interesting new ideas in the story. The characters are burdened a bit by being symbols -- everything in this book is symbol-laden, even down to the names. Still, they manage to exist in three dimensions. Even Desperandum has an originality beyond the stock mad-sea-captain character. The story is interesting. Newhouse's struggles to survive and succeed make good reading. However, it suffers from a weak opening and an unbelievable ending. The ending in particular seems out of control. Sterling throws in a number of new ideas and events and expects the reader to keep up -- a task I found difficult. Still, Involution Ocean was fun and interesting. The Forge of God I confess, I have a tendency to hate end-of-the-world novels. They're usually full of impossibly heroic or impossibly stupid people doing stereotypically heroic or stupid things. And the reasons given for world destruction, if any, are usually pretty strained. On these counts alone, Greg Bear deserves a round of applause. He has managed to put together an end-of-the-world story with real people acting in real ways. And he's got a frighteningly good scenario for blowing up the Earth. There's a current in SF thought that hypothesizes that we might be doing ourselves a disservice by broadcasting as noisily as we do out into the interstellar medium. What if, they ask, there were not just aliens out there, but hostile aliens? Perhaps these aliens are Mongol-like and bent on conquest, or xenophobic like late feudal Japan, and actively resent contacts with other cultures, or... well, you get the idea. The Forge of God starts off with a bang. Except that it's in the vacuum of space, so there is no sound. On June 26, 1996, Europa -- Jupiter's sixth moon -- disappears. Gone without a trace. There's no explanation possible except extra-solar effects. Arthur Gordon, astronomer and retired science advisor to the president can only wonder "... maybe somebody's collecting moons." Three months later Edward Shaw, a geologist from the University of Texas, is leading a hiking party through Death Valley when he spots a hundred-meter tall cinder cone that isn't on any of the maps of the area. It's too big to have been missed by hikers and by satellite surveys; therefore it's new. The problem is that no one seems to have any record of an eruption or impact that might have produced it. The mound appears to have no life forms of any kind until Edward and his companions stumble onto what appears to be the first honest-to- god alien being on the planet. Naturally, they and it quickly wind up in the custody of the US Air Force and government, who set about trying to figure out just what the alien is and how it got there and what it wants. Naturally, they can't just let Edward and his group wander around telling the world what they'd seen. Three days later, the Australians announce to the world that they, too, have some sort of extraterrestrial visitor, ensconced in a duplicate of Ayres Rock. From there the action moves at a considerable clip as Bear begins to bring the threads of the plot together, blending them in with the background of a cynical, post-presidential-assassination America. There are a number of first-class supporting characters: there's Harry Fineman, a brilliant scientist now fighting a battle with cancer; there's Trevor Hicks, a mainstream author and journalist, now riding a small wave of fame from his publication of a science fiction novel about first contact. These two come to play important parts in the investigation of the aliens and in helping shape America's reaction to it. As I said above, the real strength of this novel is in the characters. There's not much doubt for most of the book that the earth is going to be destroyed. Even though the aliens' technology is only a couple centuries beyond ours, it's enough that we don't have a way to stop them. What matters in this story is how the people deal with that impending event. Bear's writing style is very involving. He draws you in first by the simplicity of his scenes and backgrounds. They are comfortable, almost down-homish, even when he's talking about alien settings like military bases and the inside of the White House. His characters are enhanced by the settings, and you are drawn further in by the combination. It's also noteworthy that the 'bad guys' of Forge of God really don't appear on-stage. It's a tribute to the strength of Bear's talent that he doesn't need evil aliens in stormtrooper suits to make his tale work. Oh, and don't walk away thinking I've given away the plot of the book; I haven't. There's an ending that I think will rock your socks off. Consider Phlebas A four-hundred-seventy page novel is pretty daunting to start with. When I open up to the table of contents and find three appendixes, two purporting to give the "Reasons" for the two sides of a war and one purporting to be an "abstract of main text" of the novel, I get the shivering willies. But I have to at least give it a try, right? Fortunately, the prologue is pretty good. Sentient ship-guiding machines called Minds, produced by a star-spanning confederation called the Culture; hyperspace; Planets of the Dead. Hmmm... this might not be so bad after all. In fact, it's not nearly as bad as it might have been. Iain Banks has produced a fairly good science fantasy about the very distant future and a war between the communistic Culture and the fanatically religious Idirans. The story revolves around the actions of one Bora Horza Gobuchul, a mercenary in the service of the Idirans. Horza is a member of a race called Changers, so named because they have the ability to change their form and appearance. This ability makes them dangerous infiltrators and assassins, and Horza is a well-trained assassin. His employers rescue him from almost certain death at the hands of a Culture-allied group called the Gerontocracy. He had been exposed by a Culture agent, Perosteck Balveda, who is captured when he is freed. His employers want him to go to a Planet of the Dead called Schar's World and capture a Culture Mind that has managed a previously- impossible feat -- warping from outer space into the tunnel system under the planet's surface. Planets of the Dead are normally forbidden places. They are maintained as monuments to the races that occupied them and exterminated themselves. The maintainers are an extremely advanced race called Dra'Azon whose technology allows them to establish impenetrable energy fields called Quiet Barriers around these Planets of the Dead. On occasion the Dra'Azon, for their own unfathomable reasons, will allow lesser races to visit these planets. Changers have been allowed to maintain a research outpost on Schar's World; in the past, Horza served at that outpost. The Idirans hope that the Dra'Azon will allow Horza back onto the planet where he can retrieve the now-trapped Mind and its unique knowledge. The Culture has no comparable agents, but they can attempt to stop Horza until they can persuade the Dra'Azon to allow them to retrieve the Mind. Consider Phlebas is the story of Horza's attempts to get to Schar's World and capture the Mind, and of the Culture's efforts to stop him. It's a complicated story. There are lots of obstacles to be overcome. Banks throws one sidetrack after another into the plot, visiting several strange cultures and giving us glimpses of the unusual universe he has constructed. Unfortunately, Banks overcomplicates things. There are whole sections and irrelevant characters that could easily have been deleted, bringing the novel down to more reasonable size. The other problem with Consider Phlebas is that Banks is concerned with more than just writing an SF novel. He is also interested in producing a socio-political treatise and he feels free to use long passages of the words of the characters to express his premises. It's deadly dull, and only marginally relevant to the action of the book. There's some rip-roaring action and lots of good writing at the heart of it all, but wait for the paperback. Computers in Battle There's a lot to be said for knowing your science. Many SF readers will debate with authors over the minutest details of physics in the stories they read. Yet they continue to accept much sillier fictional suppositions about the capabilities of computers. I suppose this has something to do with the large overlap between those who work with computers and those who read SF, particularly what we like to call hard SF. Working with them, we see computers as our 'babies' and gloss over their flaws. We are also aware that computers are not bound by the same sorts of laws as physics. What today seems computationally impossible may be solved by a faster processor tomorrow or a new learning algorithm next year. Past leaps in the field make it seem like nanotechnology and true artificial intelligence are just around the corner. And in our optimism, we forget that there are some realities that have been brought home to us by experience and by the mathematics associated with computer science. Bellin and Chapman's book is a good cure for that sort of overoptimism. In the eleven essays that comprise this volume, thirteen authors take a hard look at the realities of computer capabilities as we see them today. They probe the use of computers by and for the military with an eye toward questioning the 'accepted wisdom' about the burden computers will be able to bear in the near future, and perhaps for an indefinite time beyond. The book is aimed at the general public; it assumes that the reader knows almost nothing about computers or about the military's use of them. The first essay, "Computers in Battle: A Human Overview" by Severo Ornstein, gives a detailed look at some of the principles of what computers can do, at the basics of software engineering, and gives a simple, but good, explanation of what the past can and cannot teach us about the future. Paul Edwards follows this up with a short history of the interaction between computers and the military, listing and giving the background of some of the systems that will be talked about in later chapters. Gary Chapman then dives into the world of the next war, the one that's supposedly going to be fought by and with a new generation of high-tech weapons. His essay gives broad coverage to the programs underway in the Army, Air Force, and Navy. Unfortunately, most of these systems are still not combat-tested, so all we (and the Pentagon) can do is speculate based on the results of tests and war games. However, Chapman shows some principles that might help to predict success or failure. "Computer System Reliability and Nuclear War" by Alan Borning looks at the problems that have plagued this country's early-warning systems in the past and tries to give an explanation of why the latest and predicted future systems are not likely to solve the problems. Touchy issues such as "launch on warning" and "limited vs protracted nuclear war" are discussed. Borning shows how political impositions can distort the supposedly-unbiased realities of computer science, for better or worse. Then Eric Roberts and Steve Berlin try, in just twenty pages, to cover the interaction between computers and the newest nuclear war player, SDI. Their chapter is one of the weaker ones in the book; fortunately, it works well in conjunction with Borning's excellent piece. Jonathan Jacky takes a look at the Strategic Computing Program, an adjunct to SDI that has received comparatively little publicity, despite it's potentially enormous implications. David Parnas contributes the first of the theoretically-oriented essays, "Computers in Weapons: The Limits of Confidence." Parnas is well known for his public abandonment of $1000/day of SDI money. In this essay he largely avoids SDI, concentrating instead on 'conventional' computerized weapons systems. He shows, in simple non-technical language, how increasingly-sophisticated weapons systems must deal with higher and higher levels of uncertainty and how that uncertainty proportionally reduces the level of confidence we can have in the computerized systems. Parnas is a practiced speaker and essayist and this is easily the best chapter of the book. Tom Athanasiou looks at "Artificial Intelligence as Military Technology." Unfortunately, he spends too much time criticizing AI in general instead of showing why it will not be able to fulfill the role the military claims it will. While it is true that if AI in general fails to live up to its promise, it will mean failure for many proposed military systems, I would have preferred to see a more focused discussion. One of the things I find exciting about Movement science fiction, and find depressing about much of what passes for computer science, is their treatment of the interrelations of computer systems and those systems' environments. In the 'classical' computer science I was taught, computer systems are considered separate entities from the environment. In Movement fiction as in so much of reality, high technology is inextricably bound up in the web of life. Lenny Seigel and John Markoff look at an important aspect of this in their chapter, "High Technology and the Emerging Dual Economy." They provide an informative counterpoint to the conventional wisdom that military production 'creates jobs,' 'promotes prosperity,' and 'produces spinoffs' and thus is a beneficial thing to be sought after. Another facet of the same interaction is examined in Clark Thompson's chapter "Role of Military Funding in Academic Computer Science." Thompson examines the trends in funding over the last ten years and probes into the question of why it has become so hard for non-defense-oriented computer science professors to get funds. Coupled with Seigel & Markoff's essay, this gives us some interesting insights into where our high-tech economy may be heading in the next decade. SF readers who wonder why much speculative fiction these days predicts a rising Japanese sun and a disintegrating American middle class should definitely make a point of reading these two chapters. The last chapter is John Ladd's essay "Computers and War: Philosophical Reflections on Ends and Means." Ladd compares the approaches to war taken by Carl von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, the two people who most literally can be said to have 'written the book' on war. He contrasts the goals for war each sets forth and reflects on the implications of each set of strategies. He then examines some questions raised by the use of computers to attain these ends. For a philosophical treatise, it's a little lightweight, but it makes thought-provoking reading for the mainstream public. Overall, I was favorably impressed by the volume. It's no secret that the editors and most of the authors come to this collection with preset points of view. However, this doesn't detract from the quality of most of the chapters, which are heavily footnoted and referenced. If the authors set out to prove a point, they did so armed with a mass of data and experience that makes their conclusions hard to ignore. I recommend this book to anyone who like to look critically (and knowledgeably) at the scientific premises behind the fiction they read. Despite its flaws, it's a useful book for layman and computer scientist. ---- End of Part 6