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Dennis Meredith

Autor de The Rainbow Virus

13 Obras 122 Miembros 29 Reseñas

Sobre El Autor

Dennis Meredith's distinguished career as a science communicator has included service at some of the country's leading research universities, including MIT, Caltech, Cornell, Duke, and the University of Wisconsin. He has worked with science journalists at all the nation's major newspapers, mostrar más magazines, and radio and TV networks and has written thousands of news releases and magazine articles on science and engineering over his career. mostrar menos

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Obras de Dennis Meredith

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4.5 out of 5

I love a good sci-fi book, that much is well known. But what about a sci-fi book that puts forth the idea that all the mythological creatures from Earth's history (fairies, pixies, werewolves, vampires, etc) are actually alien species exiled to our planet as punishment for crimes made on their own planets? Well, a book like that would be right up my wheelhouse. That's exactly the kind of book that Dennis Meredith's Mythicals is. It's also a very good one, too.

Mythicals is a delightful book that starts out seeming like it's going to be more of a political thriller (involving mythological creatures) that ends up becoming something more epic than that. And it really works. There is honestly no reason for this book to work as well as it does. I mean, it's the kind of premise that seems sort of absurd, but it's one that is just so sci-fi that I can't believe this isn't something we see more often. There's something undeniably fun about this book. It starts off a little slowly as all the various pieces are moved into place, but once the story really gets going, it quickly becomes a page-turner that you really don't want to put down. It starts off seeming like Jack is going to spend most of the book trying to prove that these Mythicals exist, but by about the 1/4 mark, that all changes into a different plotline that later morphs into another one. Each plot is well-developed and well-concluded and it's all a very satisfying read.

Mythicals is written by Dennis Meredith, a "science communicator" who has worked with a number of universities and has published a number of nonfiction books about science in addition to his work as a novelist. You can kind of tell that Meredith comes from more of a science background in the way he's written this book, and I mean that as a good thing! This world of this book has clearly been meticulously plotted out by Meredith and he does an excellent job at explaining all the various elements of the world to his readers without descending completely into sci-fi jargon. This world makes sense. Yes, it's foreign and magical and there are a lot of aliens and a lot of futuristic technology, but Meredith explains it in such a way that it all seems totally believable and mundane. Not much time is spent on characters reacting wildly to it; they get a moment of surprise and then the novel moves on with it. It's all handled very well.

The story itself is also thoroughly entertaining. It tackles a number of subjects - primarily climate change and the impacts we are having on our global environment - with a surprising amount of poise and nuance for a book that seemed, on the surface, to be a kind of b-film romp of a sci-fi book. I was not expecting these deeply important issues to be such a focus in this book. That's not to say that it's a preachy story; it's not. There's plenty of fighting between the Mythicals and world building and fun, sci-fi goodies. But it's always nice when sci-fi books have something to say and it's clear that Mythicals had a lot to say.

As I mentioned early, the book is plotted very well. I must commend Mr. Meredith for how well-paced this story is. There are a lot of characters in this novel, and, while it does occasionally feel overwhelming, he's able to juggle all those characters with immense talent and care, ensuring that each of our main characters has some kind of arc and journey to go on. Jack is, for all intents and purposes, our main character, but the Mythicals that end up surrounding him are just as well-developed as he is. And, let me tell you, Jack is very well-developed. I started out the book thoroughly disliking his character, and by the end of it, I truly adored him. There's an excellent twist involving his character that happens about 2/3 through the novel, and it honestly flips everything on its head in the best possible way. It's the kind of twist that makes perfect sense while still being totally surprising and I love it.

All in all, Mythicals is an excellent book. It's got a great premise that's explored masterfully by an author who clearly put a lot of time into developing it. It features characters that are interesting and well-developed. It focuses on some important issues currently plaguing our society, and actually has something to say about them. It's well-written and well-paced and is a thoroughly enjoying read that I would recommend to anybody who's a fan of sci-fi or fantasy. You won't be disappointed by this book.
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thoroughlyme | otra reseña | Apr 23, 2021 |
In The Rainbow Virus, the FBI and CDC are chasing a bizarre virus unleashed by Arthur Lupo, a strange little scientist. Instead of unleashing chaos and killing millions, the virus changes the color of the infected person. The colors are varied, across all spectrums of the rainbow (hence the name). The two primary people on the chase are FBI agent, Bobby Loudon, and CDC scientist, Kathleen Shinohara. It was clear from the beginning that these two would eventually become a couple, something that was too obvious and telegraphed from the beginning of the story. Their belief is that the change in colors is only the beginning, and that Arthur Lupo has mass extinction as his intent.

The writing in the novel was pretty strong. It was professional and competent, and I don’t have much to quibble about it. I really liked the whole concept of the Rainbow virus. Typically in novels of bioterrorism, the antagonist is sinister from the jump, but in this novel, the initial viruses were more light-hearted in nature. After all, nobody was truly getting hurt unless they were particularly offended by their shade of color. Although I generally like the characterization in this novel, I didn’t find Arthur Lupo to be a particularly credible character. His motivation for doing all he did was thin. It was explained that his parents died at an early age. Well, many people have their parents die but they don’t attempt to infect the world with virus. I also didn’t like “the faction”, which was a stereotypical nameless, faceless government organization with unbound ruthlessness consisting of high ranking members of government and law enforcement with nefarious intent. The good guys were better developed and more resembled real people with real motivations.

There was good tension and this novel was overall a fun read that I would recommend.

Carl Alves - author of The Invocation
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Carl_Alves | 8 reseñas más. | Sep 20, 2019 |
Malign Artificial Intelligence (MAI), woo-hoo I just invented an acronym, is definitely within Pandora’s Box and getting a grip on the sides, everybody knows it, but what can we do apart from assume that computer scientists, governments and corporations will have safeguards in place (hilarious) and, in the Gremlins sense of “never give them food after midnight”, not give powerful and potentially self-aware AI an internet connection. AI is an integral part of The Internet of Things (that’s a thing) and we compete to give the customers bigger and better, so this is inevitable. That’s online life though, but what about the matter of portable units which can be mistaken for human? Of course, that’s inevitable too because we make things in our own image – favourite subject – so we would be wide open to infiltration.

Again, this rebellious situation could actually happen one day and, if that happened, the change would be very fast indeed so the story has that welcome undercurrent of prediction. This author has previously predicted science fiction ideas for the very first time in print (the physical opportunity to steer wormholes from the other end was an Arthur C. Clarke-class suggestion), so you have to listen to him seriously. However, although there is a real sense of dramatic story-telling, this particular idea has been explored rather famously before, e.g. Terminator. That’s not a problem because flying in a space ship has been described lots of times since Jules Verne and it’s still possible to set the story up differently.

What was good or weak? Well, I did like the sci-fi factory-production scenario and the way the antagonists were described according to the way their thought processes and build materials limited them (literal, daily routines [no variation for the sake of it], hive mind, vulnerability to OS upgrades, the trade-off between waterproof functionality vs realistic appearance) and thought the prediction that human greed would repeat its mistakes was probably true, but I groaned like a whale after Christmas dinner at the totally unoriginal solution; but then the story redeemed itself with a neat worrying touch at the very end.

On the whole it was a good adventure around the subject of Artificial Intelligence (AI) swiftly switching from a utilitarian servitude to pose a threat to human life (or at least humanity’s position as the dominant species). The AI have based their characters (best fit for survival) on old-time Chicago hoods or modern Russian gangsters, which was unusual to read and provided tension. It also incorporated the ever popular dichotomy of the emergent consciousness claiming its right to survival and equality with its ‘betters’ (see Lt. Data of Star Trek, as inspired by Hamlet, also Merchant of Venice – “if you wound us, do we not bleed?” Why does it always come back to Shakespeare?). Should humans set an example to their creation with their fairness and welcome them as equals or should they prioritise number one and beat the living diodes out of them? Whatever the humans choose to do, that decision will inform others about them forever.

The thing I didn't align with (and I should find a way to say this without forgetting the good bits) is that the scenario of wheeling a retired special forces person and their old US forces buddies out to fire guns at any given problem (yelling hoo-ya) is very tired plot line now because it's been used hundreds of times, especially in the Nam-obsessed 1980s (A-Team, Stargate, Lethal Weapon, Predator and every second Schwarzenegger film ever made). Too much gung-ho, rootin’ tootin’ six-shooter stuff can be anathema to the non-US market because these archetypes aren’t humanity’s champions, just America’s champions, and the author might not know the reader has entered a quandary, considering changing sides. I finished Neuromorphs (retired American SEAL team blows up AI) and picked up a different author’s Alien Blood (retired American SEAL team blows up aliens) and started to get irked by this seemingly being the only solution authors come up with to any given sci-fi problem. Isaac Asimov solved things with brains or diplomacy and others have used wit, which are all harder to do but the audience would appreciate it more and the author would be remembered for it. However, I have to acknowledge that there is still a teenage-led commercial demand to see this type of crash-bang entertainment or movie studios would have changed policy.

Yes, I still got on well with the story and thought the characterisation of the MAI and the suspense or fear they built outweighed the one note of dissatisfaction. In the sense of Jaws putting people off swimming in the sea, this book genuinely did put me off ever having a robotic domestic servant. It’s just creepy to have this brain watching you, recording and assessing you, never forgetting and with the power to over-ride the off. I particularly approved of the thought that the author put into the Turing Test ideas of how an artificial mind could be identified by the behaviour pattern it presents or the inability to detect irony or sarcasm, how it might struggle to assess human reaction and work out what it’s doing wrong. That’s quite a fun game to play with an artificial mind, even encouraging the AI to do things that don’t make sense, like taking a journey for the sake of it, saying something silly in a funny voice, having an early night, choosing an open top car just to feel the sensation of driving through Paris with its hair blowing around, whatever you do on a whim. Humans are whimmers, AI are not. I look forward to chatting to and thereby confusing super-intelligent machines in my old age. I think that’s a challenge I’d find interesting.
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HavingFaith | otra reseña | Dec 5, 2018 |
If you are a techno thriller fan than you will be in for a real treat with this book. While, a majority of the characters may be robots aka neuromorphs; they did a good job of interacting with the humans. In fact, they may have performed better than some of the humans. The robots may have pulled off existing as humans if it was not for the "small" matter of Garry catching one of them in the action of murder. Together Garry teams up with Patrick and his wife to stop the neuromorphs.

What made this book intriguing besides the great, refreshing storyline was the idea that this could become reality. We are moving towards robots now in our workforce. It is predicated that in the future that more and more jobs will be performed by robots or computers. As we relay more on technology, we lose our ability to think and perform for ourselves. If you are looking for something new and thrilling to read, you have to pick up a copy of this book.… (más)
 
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Cherylk | otra reseña | Nov 16, 2018 |

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Obras
13
Miembros
122
Popularidad
#163,289
Valoración
4.1
Reseñas
29
ISBNs
20

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