As I mentioned in my last post, I was asked to read and review Socialpunk, a new novel by Monica Leonelle. After reading the first 10 chapters in the preview, I anxiously waited to receive my copy of the full text. Thankfully it arrived in my inbox early enough last Thursday for me to load it on my Kindle before leaving for the airport to head to Boston.  I just want to give fair warning that the following review may contain spoilers and plot points, so if you don’t like that kind of thing, be aware.

Had I not fallen asleep for the first hour or so of the flight, I probably would have finished the book on the plane. This is huge change of reading pace from Game of Thrones, which I have been making way through (I am in the middle of book five). I suppose my reading speed didn’t really change, so much as the length of Socialpunk is much shorter.

Socialpunk was a fun read, I didn’t want to put the book down while I was in the middle of it.  I haven’t read any  ”cyberpunk” style books before (that I can think of off the top of my head), but  I did enjoy this one.  It seems to me to be a fairly traditional, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi novel and love story. I can see a lot of parallels to other sci-fi stories spanning the years from Logan’s Run to The Matrix, including an almost verbatim reference to The Terminator movies. I have nothing against formulaic stories, I mean six out of seven Harry Potter books had exactly the same story with a slightly different cast and minor details, but I and most of the world still love them.  Socialpunk follows the line of girl meets boy, boy takes here from the fake world to the real world where she breaks out her shell of a sheep to become the leader who will save her friends and the world.

Ima/Cinder is a great character, I enjoyed watching her story develop.  I thought it was a little unfortunate that instead of really learning to change and growing out of her shell, she is “upgraded.”  That area alone leaves so much room for character development, love story development and just more story.  I realize the characters are supposed to be working under the time frame of something like a week, but still.  She is a character who I found interesting to explore and who I cared about.  I have definitely met characters in other books who I really could have cared less about, but Ima/Cinder was not one of those.

One of the other interesting references that I noticed that seemed out of place to me was one to Jane Austin’s Emma. All things considered, had I not just recently worked on the stage adaptation of the book, I probably would not have got the reference.  I only question if the target audience of Socialpunk (and even the character who makes the reference) would really know Jane Austin.  She wasn’t required reading when I was in school, is she now?

I also noticed a host of little technical issues with the book.  To an avid reader you would probably look at them and go “huh?!” and then figure it out and move on.  They really amount to a handful of typos, some pronoun and name inconsistencies and a few other small things.  My hope is that I was just reading a preview copy that was going to get at least one more once over by the author or her editor before publishing.  It didn’t detract from the story at all, but it is something you don’t expect to see in published books.

The last thing that really struck me was length of the book and the ending.  Amazon says that the paperback edition is 400 pages.  I read it on my Kindle, so pages are kind of meaningless. It took me less than a day to finish the whole book, and then it ended in a place where you might expect your favorite TV sitcom to end.  I realize that this is supposed to be the first book in a trilogy, but given the length, I felt you could probably wrap all the books into one and still be happy.  On the other hand, I guess maybe I am feeling this way because I was attached to the story and I want to find out what happens next.  That is a great way to set up a cliffhanger, if your audience is wanting more!

Overall, I would recommend the book. If you like any of the genres or similar stories that I mentioned before, you will probably like Socialpunk. If you are looking for a fairly fast read (at least until the sequels are ready) then this is also a good book for you. The story has likeable characters with a plot line that is pretty easy to follow, and the story is fun.

Socialpunk is the first book in the Socalpunk Trilogy by Monica Leonelle. Monica Leonelle is a well-known digital media strategist and the author of three novels. She blogs at Prose on Fire (http://proseonfire.com) and shares her writing and social media knowledge with other bloggers and authors through her Free Writer Toolkit (http://proseonfire.com/free-writer-toolkit).

I am vey much a sci-fi and tech geek.  I am a gadget guy and many of the TV shows that I follow are found on the SyFy channel.  I love to have the new toys (though I usually wait for the second generation of new devices) and I do try to find a use for them in my life.

Recently I dug up an old Sci-Fi show that competed with the likes of StarTrek:TNG for three-and-a-half seasons.  It was a show that many criticized, though I watched it religiously when it originally aired.  What show you ask.  SeaQuest DSV.  Set in the “near future” which happens to be only a few years from now.  I thought that it had more potential originally, and I think that the concept could still be viable today, but there is probably a reason that I don’t make such decisions.

What I did notice while re-watching the show is how they predicted technology.  It has been a recurring theme recently that many tech blogs have talked about, how sci-fi shows may actually drive the R&D on some of the pieces of technology that we use today.  Looking at SeaQuest, one of the things that stood out was from an episode where they visited one of the main communications network hub.  They talked about the great potential that fiber-optic networking had.  Fast forward to today and we now have companies that are bringing fiber right into our homes.  We are now piping huge amounts of data including HDTV, high speed internet, and voice communications into homes over tiny pieces of fiber optic cable and we are far from the bandwidth limits.

Watching SeaQuest today, though I don’t know much about submarines, much of the technology is believable.  All over the ship you see large, wide-screen displays which, at the time were probably created using a rear-projection technique.  Yet today it is commonplace to see large flat panel video displays.  Much of what they use on the show doesn’t seem like it is far out of reach from where we are today.

Then look at the birth of the tactile tablet computer like Apple’s iPad.  I know that I have seen this mentioned on some tech blogs, but it is basically a working version of the PADDs (Personal Access Display Device) used on StarTrek:TNG.  All thing considered, iOS might almost be a little more sophisticated than anything we actually saw LCARS (Library Computer Access/Retrieval System) do aside from fly starships (though I am sure there is an app for that!).  The groundwork is being laid though and we may meet or surpass some of the technology like that imagined for shows like StarTrek:TNG and SeaQuest DSV.

The here and now is certainly an interesting time to be living in given the current rate that technology is progressing.  While we may not quite be at a place where we can just slide data from device to device like in Minority Report or Avatar, but we are getting there.  With apps like “Bump” you can literally bump two iPhones together to send information between them.  It isn’t quite perfect, but it works.  Do we need the level of connectivity we are headed towards? Who knows, but the ride is pretty cool.

In general I tend to find ways to keep busy. Between work, cooking, eating, skiing in the winter, hiking and camping in the summer it doesn’t really leave that much time. However, it seems that the number of TV commitments that I have continues to grow. Working in theatre, I am usually at work when the primetime shows are on, so having a DVR is kinda handy. Additionally, watching shows on the DVR is so great because you don’t have to watch all the commercials.

The question is, how do you deal with all the shows you want to watch? The list of shows that gets recorded on my DVR is pretty long. I am mostly a Sci-Fi person, so Battlestar Galactica, Stargate and the likes take up lots of my time. Then of course there is Dollhouse, House, Ugly Betty, Mythbusters, Project Runway, Hell’s Kitchen, and the list goes on. Even with some shows having come to an end (like BSG), they are quickly replaced by new shows like Caprica or ABC’s V.