#38 Imposter (1953)- Philip Dick

The earth is involved in a brutal war with the Outspacers.  Spence Olham, an engineer working with The Project is arrested and accused of being an enemy spy.  According to intelligence, because of his high level access he was chosen by the Outspacers to be killed and replaced by a robot carrying an animated u-bomb.  Of course Olham denies any of this is true and we spend the whole story wondering which side is correct.

“There wasn’t anyway I could demonstrate that I wasn’t myself.”

This is an OK story, which apparently inspired two different feature films, the last of which was released in 2002 and starred Gary Sinise…who knew?  It has some typically fun Sci-fi elements like warring alien races, humanoid robots, space stations on the far side of the moon, etc.  Overall it’s a satisfying read although not at the same level as Dick’s more important works.

Among the myriad nitpicking one can do while reading sci-fi stories, was a fun little moment when Olham escapes capture on the moon.  We are in a society so sophisticated that we can travel to the moon in an hour by ourselves but security is so lax that a war criminal of the highest order can elude his death sentence by the equivalent of a “look at that pink elephant over there” distraction prank.  Amusing.

 Notable Passage: “Everyone was frightened, everyone was willing to sacrifice the individual because of the group fear.”

Rating: 7-7-7-6 Total= 27

#30 Spew- Neal Stephenson

#30 Spew- Neal Stephenson

I’ve only just stated reading Neal Stephenson this year, having just finished his impressive Speculative Fiction (SF) novel, Anathem. I found Spew in a collection of his notes, speeches, and short writings called Some Remarks.

The Spew is some version of the internet. Like many SF pieces, this deals with human interaction with machines and privacy in some undetermined future reality, or in an alternative current reality (current at least for 1994 when this story was written). In this world our protagonist is a rookie Profile Auditor 1, monitoring people’s lives through their consumptions, trying to win a promotion to Profile Auditor 2.

He ends up profiling a woman who appears to be too normal and follows her to the Hotel where she works. It appears her “normalcy” is as he expects fabricated, as she turns out to be some kind of mid-nineties hacker.

Its reads like one of those Kurt Vonnegut sketches where he delves into human’s meta-relationship with technology.  Just by talking about what we watch on TV, we are in a way studying our own psyche.  There is a fun moment when he is monitoring the front desk clerk monitoring his minibar activity.

This doesn’t really break any ground in the genre, but its still a decent read. Like a lot of Sci-Fi conceptual pieces, once real technology catches up to where the story is, half of the story is lost.  The questions over internet privacy, and some nebulous entity knowing our entertainment, and consumer trends is, of course still very much relevant…and in fact for 1994 is pretty ahead of its time (at least for the non SF community).

The story has no conclusion and doesn’t really feel completed. Like I stated earlier it feels like something from a Kurt Vonnegut notebook, which is praise enough.

Rating: 7-6-6-5 Total =24