A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
I am enjoying this series more than I remembered. It may be because of time, or because the first novel was more tightly focused, so the many viewpoints didn't feel like they were scattering the plot in every direction. However, I wonder whether the upcoming television series might be less of a time commitment than reading all the novels.
Fables by Bill Willingham
Given my interest in derivatives of fairy tales, this has been on my to-read list for some time. I'm finding it consistently enjoyable but I'm not sure I have a great deal else to say about it. Through 50/80 issues.
The Age of Spiritual Machines and/or
The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil
Reading these two books in tandem (there's overlap) has essentially cemented by generally negative view of singulitarianism. Kurzweil addresses a multitude of technological issues, but often takes one trend and suggests that closely-related subjects will follow the same trends by default. This combined with a tendency to fudge data so as to get a nice exponential curve makes for unconvincing reading.
The book also includes much well-known information that is accurate, like the doubling rates of the computer industry. But then Kurzweil argues as if this supports an extremely complex hypothesis that relies upon many different fields. If he overestimated any one of them, or any field comes across a barrier comparable to the speed of light, a great deal of the theory falls apart. All too often his arguments are forced to end with "the super-intelligence of the future will be able to solve this problem" which is obviously less than satisfying.
All of this is parallel in his timeline of predictions. They are accurate in a few areas but consistently off in others. It is a shame that the timeline from
The Age of Intelligent Machines is much less detailed, and there is no timeline in the most recent book. Being young, I'm content to say "I'll see you in 2045."
Finally, when the book isn't recounting technological details, it frequently feels uncomfortably like wish fulfillment. I'm sad to say that many of the accusations about Kurzweil's psychological issues feel somewhat accurate from his writing (particularly concerning death). There's also a high degree of sentimentalism that I found surprising, for futurism, but that is getting into other issues entirely.
I'll leave this post with a quote I think is revealing. Throughout both books Kurzweil has dialogues between himself and a theoretical woman named Molly, who advances through the changes he discusses and eventually becomes a Post-Singularity super-intelligence. Here is the end of their last exchange, nearly the end of the book:
Kurzweil: Maybe we should kiss goodbye?
Molly: Just a kiss?
K: We'll leave it at that for this book. I'll reconsider the ending for the movie, particularly if I get to play myself.
M: Here's my kiss... now remember, I'm ready to do anything or be anything you want or need.
K: I'll keep that in mind.
M: Yes, that's where you'll find me.
K: Too bad I have to wait a century to meet you.
M: Or to be me.
K: Yes, that too.
This is, more or less, Kurzweil's vision of the future. I'm not confident that a theoretical artificial intelligence would be any more sympathetic to it than I am.