To skim or not to skim
I'm finding myself really struggling to read Doomsday Book all the way through without skimming or just skipping ahead to the end. It's not the length, and it's not the slow-moving plot (I'm quite fond of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell; 'nuf said on those points).
It's that the "modern" half of the book suffers badly from Antique Future Syndrome. I can roll with the idea of a future with time travel and everlasting gobstopper candy and enhanced immune systems, but I just can't roll with a future with all those but no cell phones, especially when the lack is being pointed to every page. Having video phones* but no mobile communications is a very antique future indeed, and the "we can't contact this person with this vital information!" went out as a plot point over a decade ago.
I hope the other books aren't that dated. Blackout was at least written after the invention of the cell phone, pocket computer, and ipod.
*Random factoid: My father worked on one of the original videophone concepts back in the 60s and 70s, but the project was abandoned because "nobody wanted that; what if someone called as you got out of the shower?" Much like the ipod resurrecting the dying audiobook market, video communications needed a whole new delivery paradigm.
It's that the "modern" half of the book suffers badly from Antique Future Syndrome. I can roll with the idea of a future with time travel and everlasting gobstopper candy and enhanced immune systems, but I just can't roll with a future with all those but no cell phones, especially when the lack is being pointed to every page. Having video phones* but no mobile communications is a very antique future indeed, and the "we can't contact this person with this vital information!" went out as a plot point over a decade ago.
I hope the other books aren't that dated. Blackout was at least written after the invention of the cell phone, pocket computer, and ipod.
*Random factoid: My father worked on one of the original videophone concepts back in the 60s and 70s, but the project was abandoned because "nobody wanted that; what if someone called as you got out of the shower?" Much like the ipod resurrecting the dying audiobook market, video communications needed a whole new delivery paradigm.