The posts are flying fast and furious over at the LBC as the boys discuss Lance Olsen’s 10:01. Here’s the first in the series by World Fantasy Award nominee Matt Cheney. Like Matt, I was heavily reminded of Geoff Ryman’s far better 253 (which I urge you to read as soon as you finish all those posts):
What this book reminded me of again and again, and to its detriment, was Geoff Ryman’s 253, which started out as hypertext and eventually was published. 253 can be both (or alternately) tedious and addictive, but I generally feel that the writing is better than in 10:01, perhaps because it is less intent on creating various voices, a technique I find cloying unless the writer is a particular sort of ventriloquistic genius. Comparing the two works is unfair on the whole, though, because they are quite different, but that’s one of the dangers that comes with writing a book primarily driven by its structural concept — it begins to look a lot like other books primarily driven by their structural concepts.
Next week’s discussion is of Kirby Gann’s Napoleon in Rags and I’ll be participating in that one (because it was my favorite). That’s probably it for this fine, blustery Friday. Good weekends all round.