We here at Classical Values try to move product on a daily basis. When we don't, management has harsh words for us. I have been ordered to blog, and today, dammit! Well okay then. I have a dauntingly gigantic Rifkin post in the works, but it's not...quite...ready. You may be sorry when it is.

Till then, how about I step up to the plate with a book report? Just a short little placeholder of an entry, to satisfy my beastly overlord. Hear that Scheie? Eat hot death! Try paying me!

Anyway this book won't be for everybody. First, you gotta love science fiction. And not the easy stuff, either. This book is disorienting for the non-aficionado. Or dull. Either way, you have been warned. Second, it ends rather abruptly, as in a major cliffhanger. Did I mention it's part one of a trilogy?

With those caveats in mind, let me just say that this is one of the best sf reads of the last couple years. Title? "The Golden Age" by John C. Wright.

Mr. Wright USED to be a lawyer. Just one more positive thing about him. And he might have been quite a good one if this book is any indicator. He methodically and entertainingly throws in the kitchen sink, the upstairs tub, and every other piece of relevant plumbing he can grab onto. I mean, this book has everything.

Nanotech, neurotech, cognitech, life-extension, space travel, artificial intelligence, telepresence, virtual reality, a libertarian as-close-to-utopian social order as you can imagine, well, it reads like a Glenn Reynolds wish list. As they say, read the whole thing.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that a good salesman should let the product sell itself.

As and when I get more time, I'll add some excerpts to whet your appetite. Here's the first.

Staring up at the night sky, Phaethon opened his hearing to include ground-based and satellite radio. Information flowed into his brain. There were countless signals and communications radiating from Earth, from the satellite city-ring, the houses of the moon, and green Venus in her new cooler orbit, already shining with the radio noise of civilization. The collected asteroids of the remade planet Demeter had fewer cities, but brighter, as the scientific communities and experimental modes of life there used more energy than sober, older Terra. The Jovian moons, a solar system in miniature, were a beacon of immeasurable energy, life, motion, and noise; some people considered it the real center of the Golden Oecumene. At the Leading and Trailing Trojan points, the million space-metropoli of the Invariants pulsed with calm and steady rhythms. At the edge of night, the Neptunian energy-webs and communication systems extended out to the Oort and Kuiper belts. There were a few distant flickers from remote stations beyond that; one beacon from the Porphyrogen observatory at 500 AUs, like a last spark in the dark.

UPDATE: From virtual space to the real world.

Phaethon was surprised to find himself in blank thought-space. His self-image was gone. His body was nothing but a pair of floating gloves, here. To his left and right were red and blue icon cubes, representing basic routines...A half-dozen black slabs, like shields, represented security, anti-intrusion and privacy-guarding routines. There was a yellow disk-shaped icon representing communication circuits. And that was all....

The barren emptiness was oppressive. And it certainly ignored Silver-Gray traditions of detailed utter realism. There wasn't even a "wallpaper" image here-no room, no desktop....words appeared unsupported in the air:"WARNING. You are about to disconnect from all Rhadamanthine systems and support. Do you wish to proceed?"

He touched finger to thumb, spreading his other finger: the yes signal.

A moment of disorientation floated through him. For a moment, his mind was clouded; the sensations in his body changed, slowed, became somewhat numb, and yet more painful. He opened his eyes and winced.

Phaethon was awake in the real world.

The medical tubes and organs wrapping him were made of hydrocarbons, and slid aside, re-forming themselves into water and diamond plates for easy storage. Phaethon stood up slowly from his coffin, surprised and shocked.

The room was small and ugly...the walls were dumb-walls, not made of pseudo-matter, not able to change shape or perform other functions...

Despite silver-gray promises of total realism, his self-image in mentality was represented as being stronger and more agile than his real body in reality...

A second shock came when he looked down at his body. The skin was a dull, leathery substance; it looked very much like inexpensive artificial skin. He pressed his fingers against his chest, his stomach, his groin. Beneath the flesh, he felt, or perhaps he imagined, that some of the organs under his fingers had the hard, unyielding texture of cheap synthetic replacements.

His senses were duller. Distant objects were blurred; his hearing was restricted in pitch and range, so sounds were dull and flat. Perhaps his skin was slightly numb as an aftereffect of the crude medical care he had been under. Or, what was more likely, the sense impressions directed by the computer stimulated his nerves more thoroughly and precisely than his natural organs...