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Pushing on into the past…
Some of you may recall that I posted a link to Paul Di Filippo’s review of John Birmingham’s new novel, Weapons of Choice. It’s one of several good reviews I’ve seen, and it was enough to persuade me – restricted to my sick bed – to check it out. Sigh. I’ve got to say the first 100 pages are about as dumb a pile of hoo-ha as I’ve seen in a long time. Why? Well, it’s basically The Philadelphia Experiment, with a few new whizzbang terms thrown in to update it, and so far it hasn’t gone beyond the obvious. We’ve had the “Gosh, look at my neat technology” bit, following by the endless military conflict bit (confused people running up and down confused corridors doing confused things, all of which end horribly), and I’ve now reached the part where the folk from the future get to say “Gosh, we’re from the future”, the folk from the past say “No!”, the folk from the future say “Yes!”, and am awaiting the moment where the folk from the past say “Wow!”. I’m hoping that Birmingham can add enough of sufficient interest in the next 300 pages to overcome what I’ve seen so far. At this stage, my recommendation would be that this one’s only for people who want to see how Tom Clancy would have done The Philadelphia Experiment – but, we’ll see. Keeping an open mind, and all that. Sniff. Cough.