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joshlwdavis's review
3.0
An inside look at LambdaMOO, an early 90s online community. Fascinating in terms of the detail, and particularly how closely the issues that beset LambdaMOO map onto today's online experience: male hostility and verbal violence towards women in online discourse; the fluidity of gender and sexuality when anyone can be who they choose; pronoun choice for non-binary individuals; and the inflation of virtual currencies (including an accidental but entirely accurate prediction of the economics of FIFA Ultimate Team).
Where the book fails is in the prose, which is florid and flabby. The author acknowledges the influence of Cormac McCarthy in the afterword - a different Cormac, surely, since the writer of No Country For Old Men could not inspire these meandering, nails-on-a-blackboard sentences. Through the prose comes the insipid character of the author, who presents himself as pretentious, repressed and desperate for others to acknowledge his intelligence. Also from the prose comes the pace, or rather lack of it. The book is a slog.
If you can accommodate yourself to the writing and to the author's presentation (I'd grown almost fond of him by the end) there is plenty of detail to engage with about a forgotten world that bears a striking resemblance to our own.
Where the book fails is in the prose, which is florid and flabby. The author acknowledges the influence of Cormac McCarthy in the afterword - a different Cormac, surely, since the writer of No Country For Old Men could not inspire these meandering, nails-on-a-blackboard sentences. Through the prose comes the insipid character of the author, who presents himself as pretentious, repressed and desperate for others to acknowledge his intelligence. Also from the prose comes the pace, or rather lack of it. The book is a slog.
If you can accommodate yourself to the writing and to the author's presentation (I'd grown almost fond of him by the end) there is plenty of detail to engage with about a forgotten world that bears a striking resemblance to our own.
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