Reviews and Comments

I'm researching World's Fairs and Expositions for a project.

A novel called "World's Fair" seemed like a sure bet.

Warning - the World's Fair only turns up at the very end of the book. If you're buying this based on the title, prepare to be a little disappointed.

However what this novel is, is an increadibly detailed snapshot of a Jewish family during the back end of the Great Depression, on the edge of the Second World War, from the viewpoint of a young boy. You get a day to day view of what life looked like, from the brands of record players through to the makes and the look of the cookers as the family move between homes. Styles change, and the family changes with them. This family changes over time, from younger and hopeful, to older and dare I say weary?

An excellent novel to get a real feel for the period.

As a fencer and coach, I've read plenty of books which focus on the technical aspects on swordplay. This was the first book really looking into the history of a sport I've been involved with for over a decade. There was quite a bit of fanfare when this book was released, due to the prominence of the author - an established veteran of the UK fencing circuit. I've fenced Richard Cohen a few times at opens, and he still has a damningly fast hand.

The first two-thirds of the book deal with classical fencing and duelling, presented as a series of anecdotes and stories, revolving around themes. They are interesting and provide insight into the rich history of the sport. The final third is concerned with modern Olympic fencing, from its inception at the first games, through the introduction of wireless equipment, the dominance of the original powers and moving through the Soviet era into the modern generation. It answers questions many fencers have about why things work in such a way - strict FIE rules due to numerous attempts at cheating, why Hungarian coaches are such hard work and why Russians hit quite so hard. For those focused purely on the technical aspects of the sport, there is very little for you here. If you wish to add some context and texture to your understanding, this book is invaluable.

As a child of the 80s, and a learner of the 90s, I grew up in an exciting era in personal computing. I literally cut my teeth on a ZX Spectrum, and then after learning how that worked inside and out, as a family we eventually upgraded to an Escom IBM compatable PC. I started hacking BASIC programs when I was old enough to type and moved on to Pascal, Delphi and Visual Basic when I was in secondary up to Java, C# and more modern languages as time went on.

I've been in this industry a while. I know the struggles of the UK home computing industry, between Sir Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry and the inevitable demise and arrival of Atari and Amiga. When we moved on to IBM PCs, I started to follow what was then the relatively mature industry, with Gates and Jobs as very prominent icons.

Whilst all this was going on, I had very little idea of the early history of personal computing, the things that happened before the Z80 processor and Clive Sinclair's little black box. Fire In The Valley is a history of the personal computing from the MITS Altair through to the present day. I expected a dry history, a page by page presentation of facts and was pleasantly surprised by quite a compulsive page-turner giving a sense of real excitement to the early and developing industry.

Whilst Fire In The Valley claims to be a complete history of personal computing, it clearly thrives on the early years, with a distinctive focus on MITS, IMSAI, Processor Technology, Apple, the companies and cultures of the 1960s through to the 1990s. The late few chapters do focus on the rise of Windows, Apple and the post-PC era but the bulk of the book is on these early years.

The book is organised mostly around subjects rather than presenting a chronological history. Where one chapter will deal with the development of the computer manufacturing industry from the 1960s through to the mid 1970s you'll then find yourself cast back to the mid 1960s for a discussion of early computer publishing. Check the dates whilst you're reading to make sure you're when you think you are and you'll be fine.

I found this book surprisingly inspiring. It's full of stories of geeks starting out businesses with very little, mostly from their garage sheds. Some rise, some fell, and it was interesting to see how much hard graft went in to building these empires. As someone coming in to the IBM PC era during the 90s, it was very easy to see these people as having it all handed to them on a plate, where the realities were lots of late nights, dodgy deals, fallen ventures and near bankruptcy.

It's excellent reading, and really fills in the details for those of us working in the industry today.

A pleasure to read.

Try to come to the book with only the most basic of expectations. Come knowing (hopefully) that Redshirts are the basic expendable unit in the Star Trek universe. Bring your knowledge of tropes and poorly thought out plots and thingymagics, because they'll become essential reference material for this novel.

Then let it completely defy your expectations. Most Hugo winners have an air of grandeur about them. They set out to be morality tales, or epic space operas. This one doesn't. When I first started reading I couldn't work out why this would have won such a prestigious award. By the end I was in complete agreement. It's ease of humour and air of familiarity makes this one of the most accessible science fiction books I've read for a long time. Hell, I'd almost class this outside of the SF genre and closer to satire. Can a novel be both? Definitely, but if taking away one label and leaving the other gives it a further reach, then I would be glad to see it in more hands.

Superb.

Hindsight is 20/20, and the author's notes at the beginning act as an apology for the book to follow. There are a number of Le Guin's books that focus on exploring diametrically opposite viewpoints - The Dispossessed reached from ordered societies through to Anarchy, and The Left Hand of Darkness looks from traditional sexuality to bi-sexuality (as in the ownership of both sexes, rather than neither). A great idea for a novel, that's unfortunately bogged down with 1960s misogyny that constantly paints "female" qualities as distinctly inferior to their male counterpart, whether physio- or psychologically. Which is a shame, as the story is an excellent driver, exploring the efforts of one off-worlder to open up a new world to extra-planetary trade.

The short story "The Coming of Age In Karhide", which is added on to this edition, makes for a much more balanced view of gender, and a more enjoyable read. This story explores a teen coming in to kemmer (fertility) for the first time and is an excellent exploration of teen anxiety in an excellent analogue to puberty. This was written in 1995 and makes me wonder what further work done in this universe today could also bring.

That said, I did enjoy the novel. Novels of this period need to be read with an understanding of the context in which they were written, as Le Guin reminisces at the beginning of the novel. She read as much as she could on gender before starting writing the novel, and admits her own shortcomings. It's worth reading, since the ideas are interesting, but the unintentional misogyny sticks out like a pair of tits on a female in kemmer.