Clarke's speculative fiction pleases

It's a good thing to have a Washington insider write a work of speculative fiction. Richard A. Clarke's second novel, Breakpoint, is thankfully in this (my favorite) genre of books.

Check out the comments in this article about the novel. Clarke has put together a powerful combination of very sober near-future circumstances in this book. It's a nice combination of bioengineering and computer advancements (in this case, they hook up to the brain and help engineer "special" children).

Recently, Peter Dingus also pulled together these same elements in his novel Proteus Rising -- but the setting and circumstances were vastly different. This is not surprising. Advances in biotechnology are indeed humming along and we are also constantly barraged with news on the computing front. Even if some big computing announcements are for sluggish operating systems that are mimicking developments that other brands released 2 or 3 years ago.

Regardless of the fact that the story elements can sometimes be redundant, I've found that the stories themselves are typically fresh. I'm glad that Richard A. Clarke has joined the ranks of the speculative fiction writer. He's got a number of insights into our government's experiments with cutting edge technologies. So, it makes his fiction even more interesting knowing that it's grounded in recent research.

Keep up the good work Richard.

Follow up on Crichton

On my January 7th post about Michael Crichton's latest fictional outing, there was a follow up comment regarding his book prior to "Next." More has just been published regarding Crichton's work so I thought I'd post this new link to keep the string alive.

Check this out. A writer up in Canada, Robert J. Sawyer, differs from the previous post on the appropriateness of the message conveyed by "Next." He makes meaningful statements about fiction, in my opinion, and makes deft comparisons to some of the earliest science fiction writers in the process.

However, he stays consistent with Peter Dingus (author of Proteus Rising commenting on the Jan. 7th post) on the horrible fallacy of "State of Fear." it seems that no matter where I turn, a recurring message is omnipresent: no one appreciates this book. It's routinely considered a grand disservice to the informed scientific community that is globally certain on the subject of our warming earth. Crichton should be ashamed for jumping aboard the anti-movement and for writing what appears to be his worst and most damaging opus in "State of Fear."

With any luck, he'll be a bit vindicated by other reviewers now and again for "Next." I've enjoyed reading earlier books of his and it would be a shame if his horrible misstep on global warming ended a meaningful career.