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Michaelmas
The eponymous protagonist, Laurent Michaelmas, is an ex-hacker who had, early in the computer era, left back doors in many key pieces of software which run vital government & commercial computers. As a result, by the turn of the millennium, he's become one of the most powerful men on earth, because of his ability to spy & influence through the world wide computer network.
By the time of the novel, Michaelmas has successfully used his power to create & sustain a powerful version of the UN to ensure world peace. He stays in the background, however, as a journalist, albeit a highly influential & respected one whose opinions can still influence public opinion. However, as the novel progresses, he slowly learns that a possible extraterrestrial presence may be interfering with the new world he has worked so hard to create.
The novel is remarkable for its prescience, because it appeared less than a decade into the Internet era, long before its current prominence & ubiquity. Its description of journalism & its professional culture are likewise highly developed, mainly due to the late Budrys' residence near Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, which appears in the book.
By the time of the novel, Michaelmas has successfully used his power to create & sustain a powerful version of the UN to ensure world peace. He stays in the background, however, as a journalist, albeit a highly influential & respected one whose opinions can still influence public opinion. However, as the novel progresses, he slowly learns that a possible extraterrestrial presence may be interfering with the new world he has worked so hard to create.
The novel is remarkable for its prescience, because it appeared less than a decade into the Internet era, long before its current prominence & ubiquity. Its description of journalism & its professional culture are likewise highly developed, mainly due to the late Budrys' residence near Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, which appears in the book.
247 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
19 people are currently reading
497 people want to read
About the author
Algis Budrys
363 books69 followersAlgis Budrys was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He was also known under the pen names Frank Mason, Alger Rome, John A. Sentry, William Scarff, Paul Janvier, and Sam & Janet Argo.
Called "AJ" by friends, Budrys was born Algirdas Jonas Budrys in Königsberg in East Prussia. He was the son of the consul general of the Lithuanian government, (the pre-World War II government still recognized after the war by the United States, even though the Soviet-sponsored government was in power throughout most of Budrys's life). His family was sent to the United States by the Lithuanian government in 1936 when Budrys was 5 years old. During most of his adult life, he held a captain's commission in the Free Lithuanian Army.
Budrys was educated at the University of Miami, and later at Columbia University in New York. His first published science fiction story was The High Purpose, which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1952. Beginning in 1952 Budrys worked as editor and manager for such science fiction publishers as Gnome Press and Galaxy Science Fiction. Some of his science fiction in the 1950s was published under the pen name "John A. Sentry", a reconfigured Anglification of his Lithuanian name. Among his other pseudonyms in the SF magazines of the 1950s and elsewhere, several revived as bylines for vignettes in his magazine Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, is "William Scarff". He also wrote several stories under the names "Ivan Janvier" or "Paul Janvier." He also used the pen name "Alger Rome" in his collaborations with Jerome Bixby.
Budrys's 1960 novella Rogue Moon was nominated for a Hugo Award, and was later anthologized in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973). His Cold War science fiction novel Who? was adapted for the screen in 1973. In addition to numerous Hugo Award and Nebula Award nominations, Budrys won the Science Fiction Research Association's 2007 Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to speculative fiction scholarship. In 2009, he was the recipient of one of the first three Solstice Awards presented by the SFWA in recognition of his contributions to the field of science fiction.
Budrys was married to Edna Duna; they had four sons. He last resided in Evanston, Illinois. He died at home, from metastatic malignant melanoma on June 9, 2008.
Called "AJ" by friends, Budrys was born Algirdas Jonas Budrys in Königsberg in East Prussia. He was the son of the consul general of the Lithuanian government, (the pre-World War II government still recognized after the war by the United States, even though the Soviet-sponsored government was in power throughout most of Budrys's life). His family was sent to the United States by the Lithuanian government in 1936 when Budrys was 5 years old. During most of his adult life, he held a captain's commission in the Free Lithuanian Army.
Budrys was educated at the University of Miami, and later at Columbia University in New York. His first published science fiction story was The High Purpose, which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1952. Beginning in 1952 Budrys worked as editor and manager for such science fiction publishers as Gnome Press and Galaxy Science Fiction. Some of his science fiction in the 1950s was published under the pen name "John A. Sentry", a reconfigured Anglification of his Lithuanian name. Among his other pseudonyms in the SF magazines of the 1950s and elsewhere, several revived as bylines for vignettes in his magazine Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, is "William Scarff". He also wrote several stories under the names "Ivan Janvier" or "Paul Janvier." He also used the pen name "Alger Rome" in his collaborations with Jerome Bixby.
Budrys's 1960 novella Rogue Moon was nominated for a Hugo Award, and was later anthologized in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973). His Cold War science fiction novel Who? was adapted for the screen in 1973. In addition to numerous Hugo Award and Nebula Award nominations, Budrys won the Science Fiction Research Association's 2007 Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to speculative fiction scholarship. In 2009, he was the recipient of one of the first three Solstice Awards presented by the SFWA in recognition of his contributions to the field of science fiction.
Budrys was married to Edna Duna; they had four sons. He last resided in Evanston, Illinois. He died at home, from metastatic malignant melanoma on June 9, 2008.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
December 25, 2008
4.5 stars. Excellent story by one of the best SF writers of the 60s and 70s. This is an underrated gem that deserves to enjoy a much wider audience. Recommended!!
April 6, 2018
Too much dialogue that was mundane and went nowhere. I read it through to the end in order to understand what was going on. If you hold out you will find out but I can't say it was worth it.
Michaelmas is a media personality with a little black box that is a computer that can tie in data from all over the world. It is an intelligent computer and Michaelmas can have conversations with it, which they do. Mostly the conversations comprise of the box, named Domino, informing Michaelmas of news events. I could not discover what was important about any of these newsworthy items or how they moved the plot along.
Because Domino allows Michaelmas to be practically omniscient, he is confused when certain things happen outside his radar. More conversations occur, in fact the book is mostly dialogue, for the next couple hundred pages until we are finally enlightened. I won't give away the ending and maybe other readers out there would enjoy the book because it is futuristic and the back drop allows one to imagine a world with intelligent computers. But the mystery was not mysterious enough to hold my attention.
The one positive was that it was a quick read and will be one more book toward my book reading goal.
Michaelmas is a media personality with a little black box that is a computer that can tie in data from all over the world. It is an intelligent computer and Michaelmas can have conversations with it, which they do. Mostly the conversations comprise of the box, named Domino, informing Michaelmas of news events. I could not discover what was important about any of these newsworthy items or how they moved the plot along.
Because Domino allows Michaelmas to be practically omniscient, he is confused when certain things happen outside his radar. More conversations occur, in fact the book is mostly dialogue, for the next couple hundred pages until we are finally enlightened. I won't give away the ending and maybe other readers out there would enjoy the book because it is futuristic and the back drop allows one to imagine a world with intelligent computers. But the mystery was not mysterious enough to hold my attention.
The one positive was that it was a quick read and will be one more book toward my book reading goal.
August 30, 2017
This was my third read by the author and by far the least favorite. The first two were interesting, intriguing, good if not great. This one was managed to hit none of those highs, even though the quality of writing itself was still present. Something about the story just didn't work for me, first it reminded me of the (superior) Who? with the questioned identity aspect of it, but then it just got muddled with the politics of it all. This novel (published barely into the digital age in 1977) is known as being prescient in its description of the technology, but I found it read dated, the author still (much as with Who?) obviously hung up on the competitive relations with the Soviets. The narrative was wildly discursive and prone to monologues, a weird feature for such a relatively slender volume and it did nothing for the general pacing. It still read quickly enough, but it just didn't engage at all and, frankly, were it not for the completist in me, there'd be no reason to finish it. The extraterrestrial angle comes in much too late, though it does salvage the story to an extent. This hasn't put me off the author, but while I picked this one up based on his previous works, I might not have pursued his other books had this one been my first choice. Read a month too soon (Michaelmas being generally celebrated on September 29th) and to no apparent reward. There's a chance I just wasn't in the right mood.
January 29, 2023
The Cold War has ended, and the world is experiencing peace. UNAC, a UN-like global organization, is planning a joint interplanetary mission to the far ends of the solar system on behalf of all mankind. (And yes, if you like the Ronald Moore-created show For All Mankind, you should like this book). The lead pilot of the upcoming mission crashed, and was presumed dead, before the novel began, and the task of piloting the mission has been passed to one of the victim’s colleagues, a Russian cosmonaut. But now, the famous director of a high-tech and secretive medical facility claims to have rescued the pilot and to be nursing him back to health. This announcement causes an uproar, since the Russian cosmonaut had been promoted to the top position, and now what, they’re just going to push the Russian aside and let that resurrected American be in charge again? Over someone’s dead body.
So begins a fascinating Cold War thriller. The main character is Laurent Michaelmas, world-renowned reporter and journalist, who, unbeknownst to everybody, secretly controls the world, with the help of his assistant artificial intelligence, Domino. World peace exists because Michaelmas and Domino have been ensuring it, and indeed, the creation of UNAC itself is the result of years of careful manipulation and control behind the scenes on the part of Michaelmas and his AI. With the sudden return of this presumed dead American pilot, Michaelmas knows that, if something is not done quickly, the Russians and Americans will jump at each others’ throats, UNAC will tear itself apart, and the world will plunge once again into unending conflict and war. At all costs, UNAC must be saved.
Something, however, appears to have other plans. Through Domino, Michaelmas is used to having control over everything on Earth. Now, though, an equally powerful and invisible entity seems deliberately to be trying to destroy all that Michaelmas has accomplished. The original crash of the American pilot is suspicious. His miraculous rescue and reappearance is even more mysterious. Is that even him? Is he the genuine survivor? A clone grown in a vat? Something else? What is really going on in that medical facility? Meanwhile, one of Michaelmas’ journalist-colleagues dies in a helicopter accident, and was he asking too many good questions? At the same time, somebody has planted incendiary devices in fifteen different places around the hotel room where the Russian cosmonaut is staying. Certain politicians are in bed with certain media companies for mutual benefit, to help drive certain narratives for political purposes, and Michaelmas needs to unravel exactly who is doing what, and for whom, and how to stop it, before the joint mission is called off, and world peace crumbles.
Michaelmas may have an AI with which he tries (and mostly manages) to control the world, but he is not an evil overlord, or even a morally corrupted man. He is a good and selfless man, who has sacrificed companionship and a life of ease, in order to personally bring about a human utopia. The novel never questions or gives us reason to doubt Michaelmas’ intentions. He spends most of the novel acting as detective and puppet master. He knows what is required for peace. At one point, the Russians are implicated in sabotaging the American pilot’s vehicle to get their own cosmonaut into the command chair, and Michaelmas knows that if this fact were revealed, UNAC would fall. There is no hand-wringing, no extended Trekkian moral dilemma. He simply silences the truth, using every power at his disposal. And we go along with it, since Michaelmas is such a good and wise man. Of course the world can’t know the Russians are behind it! That would ruin everything! And then, we’re not even sure the conclusion is true. Are the Russians being framed?
This is a smart, complex thriller, heavy on dialogue and political intrigue, replete with commentary on the media (what other science fiction thriller spends 60 pages building tension toward an explosive….press conference?), and with a simple, reliable protagonist who we like and want to win. The final twist may appear to come from left field, but if you think about it, it is the only possible explanation for what has happened, and that possibility was built into the book’s plot from the very beginning. Parts of the dialogue in the first quarter of the novel may feel somewhat obscure, but the novel picks up, and clears up, and by the time the press conference comes along, I believe you’ll be hooked.
So begins a fascinating Cold War thriller. The main character is Laurent Michaelmas, world-renowned reporter and journalist, who, unbeknownst to everybody, secretly controls the world, with the help of his assistant artificial intelligence, Domino. World peace exists because Michaelmas and Domino have been ensuring it, and indeed, the creation of UNAC itself is the result of years of careful manipulation and control behind the scenes on the part of Michaelmas and his AI. With the sudden return of this presumed dead American pilot, Michaelmas knows that, if something is not done quickly, the Russians and Americans will jump at each others’ throats, UNAC will tear itself apart, and the world will plunge once again into unending conflict and war. At all costs, UNAC must be saved.
Something, however, appears to have other plans. Through Domino, Michaelmas is used to having control over everything on Earth. Now, though, an equally powerful and invisible entity seems deliberately to be trying to destroy all that Michaelmas has accomplished. The original crash of the American pilot is suspicious. His miraculous rescue and reappearance is even more mysterious. Is that even him? Is he the genuine survivor? A clone grown in a vat? Something else? What is really going on in that medical facility? Meanwhile, one of Michaelmas’ journalist-colleagues dies in a helicopter accident, and was he asking too many good questions? At the same time, somebody has planted incendiary devices in fifteen different places around the hotel room where the Russian cosmonaut is staying. Certain politicians are in bed with certain media companies for mutual benefit, to help drive certain narratives for political purposes, and Michaelmas needs to unravel exactly who is doing what, and for whom, and how to stop it, before the joint mission is called off, and world peace crumbles.
Michaelmas may have an AI with which he tries (and mostly manages) to control the world, but he is not an evil overlord, or even a morally corrupted man. He is a good and selfless man, who has sacrificed companionship and a life of ease, in order to personally bring about a human utopia. The novel never questions or gives us reason to doubt Michaelmas’ intentions. He spends most of the novel acting as detective and puppet master. He knows what is required for peace. At one point, the Russians are implicated in sabotaging the American pilot’s vehicle to get their own cosmonaut into the command chair, and Michaelmas knows that if this fact were revealed, UNAC would fall. There is no hand-wringing, no extended Trekkian moral dilemma. He simply silences the truth, using every power at his disposal. And we go along with it, since Michaelmas is such a good and wise man. Of course the world can’t know the Russians are behind it! That would ruin everything! And then, we’re not even sure the conclusion is true. Are the Russians being framed?
This is a smart, complex thriller, heavy on dialogue and political intrigue, replete with commentary on the media (what other science fiction thriller spends 60 pages building tension toward an explosive….press conference?), and with a simple, reliable protagonist who we like and want to win. The final twist may appear to come from left field, but if you think about it, it is the only possible explanation for what has happened, and that possibility was built into the book’s plot from the very beginning. Parts of the dialogue in the first quarter of the novel may feel somewhat obscure, but the novel picks up, and clears up, and by the time the press conference comes along, I believe you’ll be hooked.
January 7, 2025
In the distant year 2000, news personality Laurent Michaelmas has an AI assistant and they mostly rule the world, keeping the Soviet Union in peace with the US. Until discontinuities occur...
The plot mostly proceeds from exposition between the main character and the computer. I visually thought of Domino with a female voice until partway through the book (and only once) Domino is referred to as he. I like my version better, and wonder if the author intentionally avoided gender. Written in the late 1970s, this would be another forward looking feature.
Michaelmas is a character he used in the short story A Scraping at the Bones (written 1975, somewhat about deep fakes) and according to isfdb, is somehow related to a 1978 story also. Since both stories are in Budrys' collection Blood & Burning, I naturally added it to my "to read" pile.
I like this book better than his Hugo award nominated Rogue Moon, which also had story through dialog. In reviewing that I mentioned I found the tech interesting, and it is so here also.
The plot mostly proceeds from exposition between the main character and the computer. I visually thought of Domino with a female voice until partway through the book (and only once) Domino is referred to as he. I like my version better, and wonder if the author intentionally avoided gender. Written in the late 1970s, this would be another forward looking feature.
Michaelmas is a character he used in the short story A Scraping at the Bones (written 1975, somewhat about deep fakes) and according to isfdb, is somehow related to a 1978 story also. Since both stories are in Budrys' collection Blood & Burning, I naturally added it to my "to read" pile.
I like this book better than his Hugo award nominated Rogue Moon, which also had story through dialog. In reviewing that I mentioned I found the tech interesting, and it is so here also.
October 5, 2011
In the year 2000 (yes, that does seem to be the year this takes place), war has faded from the Earth, and humanity growing ever-closer together is getting ready to explore the rest of the solar system. Humanity doesn't know that one man is responsible. The Anderson Cooper-like Laurent Michaelmas is not only the world's top newsman; he is the man behind the curtain. He has a superintelligent computer, Domino, and together they run everything, gently nudging humankind forward. But when a Swiss doctor announces that he has cured an astronaut thought vaporized in a shuttle explosion, Michaelmas suspects that something alien is behind it. This novel is by turns interesting and half-baked. Much like the action in Lem's The Investigation and the Strugatskys' Definitely Maybe, the conspiracy and Michaelmas-Domino operate through accumulations of slight probabilities, an overheated wire here, an anonymous tip there. But this setup raises many more interesting questions than it answers. Why is Michaelmas running the world? How did he create Domino? The conspiracy plot seems to be a mismatch of ambitious aims with slight means, like trying to destroy the Great Pyramid by sanding it down with a nail file. The minor characters notice something is strange with the world ("like being stuck in Jello"), but the interesting idea that humanity might not really appreciate sidling toward utopia is never really addressed. However... a few days ago, I saw a graph that showed a sharp drop in deaths by war since the 1950s. That seemed to me to be a Michaelmas-Domino result. But then there is the recession, where no one's hand seems to be on the tiller at all. Both are equally discomfiting.
February 17, 2018
As a younger reader I leaned towards some more action-oriented stuff. The measured, cerebral work of Lithuanian-born Algis Budrys didn't hold my attention, and I returned Budrys' 1977 media-centered tale Michaelmas to the library with only a chapter or two read.
A longer attention span moved me to give Mr. Budrys a second try and found him to have had more than a little prophet in him when he created the story of the famous independent investigative reporter Laurent Michaelmas, pursuing an amazing story of an astronaut's resurrection in 1999.
Michaelmas also happens to more or less rule the world through the secret artificial intelligence he calls Domino, a computer program able to spy out things in almost every corner of the world, eavesdrop on almost any conversation and control what other computers do. Using Domino's abilities and influence, he has calmed most world conflicts and brought countries to work together through the United Nations. On the eve of the millennium, the greatest achievement of his combined space agency is preparing for its launch of a manned mission to the outer planets of the solar system. But the miraculous return of the American mission commander, presumed dead in a training accident, could restart old rivalries. The Soviet Union's astronaut was elevated to command of the mission when the American died and the Soviets are unlikely to quietly accept his demotion. But a nationalist group within the U.S. may have evidence that the accident which injured the American astronaut wasn't an accident. Michaelmas must use every advantage his media celebrity and Domino can give him to find out who is behind these developments before the world resets to its Cold War footing. He also has to see where Clementine Gervaise, a video producer who strongly resembles his late wife, may fit into the situation as well as his own personal life.
Budrys does a very good job of predicting some media developments which played out in real life, such as the kind of information glut brought about by the internet and the meaningless nature of a good deal of modern news, entertainment-based and otherwise. Michaelmas and other independent reporters file their stories via personal recording/transmitting units that also gather up and play back information from other sources -- not unlike the role laptop computers and personal data pads play today. Politically, shady Gulf state oil barons fund unrest in the Middle East similarly to the way they still do today. Budrys has some misses -- having the Soviet Union still around seven or eight years after it fell, for example, and his foreseen level of technology of 1999 both undershoots the level of the actual technology of 1999 and overshoots it. Unless there really is a secret artificial intelligence named Domino hanging around in the electronosphere, in which case, howdy!
Much of the novel is made up of conversations between Michaelmas and Domino as they try to puzzle out what happened with the astronaut's return. They frequently wax philosophical, and Michaelmas' own thoughts about the world he more or less helped to make are sometimes rueful. But Budrys' rich prose and low exposition quotient reduces the boredom level of such passages considerably. Michaelmas is a short 183 pages packed with fascinating retro-speculation, food for thought and an intriguing premise. Younger me might not have been able to keep with it when it was published, but older me found it worth the time.
Original available here.
A longer attention span moved me to give Mr. Budrys a second try and found him to have had more than a little prophet in him when he created the story of the famous independent investigative reporter Laurent Michaelmas, pursuing an amazing story of an astronaut's resurrection in 1999.
Michaelmas also happens to more or less rule the world through the secret artificial intelligence he calls Domino, a computer program able to spy out things in almost every corner of the world, eavesdrop on almost any conversation and control what other computers do. Using Domino's abilities and influence, he has calmed most world conflicts and brought countries to work together through the United Nations. On the eve of the millennium, the greatest achievement of his combined space agency is preparing for its launch of a manned mission to the outer planets of the solar system. But the miraculous return of the American mission commander, presumed dead in a training accident, could restart old rivalries. The Soviet Union's astronaut was elevated to command of the mission when the American died and the Soviets are unlikely to quietly accept his demotion. But a nationalist group within the U.S. may have evidence that the accident which injured the American astronaut wasn't an accident. Michaelmas must use every advantage his media celebrity and Domino can give him to find out who is behind these developments before the world resets to its Cold War footing. He also has to see where Clementine Gervaise, a video producer who strongly resembles his late wife, may fit into the situation as well as his own personal life.
Budrys does a very good job of predicting some media developments which played out in real life, such as the kind of information glut brought about by the internet and the meaningless nature of a good deal of modern news, entertainment-based and otherwise. Michaelmas and other independent reporters file their stories via personal recording/transmitting units that also gather up and play back information from other sources -- not unlike the role laptop computers and personal data pads play today. Politically, shady Gulf state oil barons fund unrest in the Middle East similarly to the way they still do today. Budrys has some misses -- having the Soviet Union still around seven or eight years after it fell, for example, and his foreseen level of technology of 1999 both undershoots the level of the actual technology of 1999 and overshoots it. Unless there really is a secret artificial intelligence named Domino hanging around in the electronosphere, in which case, howdy!
Much of the novel is made up of conversations between Michaelmas and Domino as they try to puzzle out what happened with the astronaut's return. They frequently wax philosophical, and Michaelmas' own thoughts about the world he more or less helped to make are sometimes rueful. But Budrys' rich prose and low exposition quotient reduces the boredom level of such passages considerably. Michaelmas is a short 183 pages packed with fascinating retro-speculation, food for thought and an intriguing premise. Younger me might not have been able to keep with it when it was published, but older me found it worth the time.
Original available here.
October 22, 2009
Intelligently speculative, this novel delights in the implications of words unsaid between characters, in the difference between presentation and actual opinion. I do enjoy the political (lower case p) conversations. So, yes very clever, what about the story.
Renowned newsman Michaelmas and his super loyal, super powered AI have been steering the world towards a duller future for years. (Domino is a dead ringer for her 'descendant' Jane in Orson Scott Card's Ender series.) But when a dead spaceman is brought back to life with evidence implicating the Russians in his death the prospect of excitement rears back to life.
Written in the 70s you might think that the world Politics would have dated, but apart from the odd bit of terminology they really haven't. Populist xenophobe politicians are still with us, as are tyrannies, and Russia today has gone a fair way back towards the way it was when the book was written.
At the start is seems certain that Michaelmas' enemies are on to him, he seems surrounded by modified people, hungry and ambitious, so the denouement is slightly underwhelming in the ease with which he unravels them, though the ending is written is a slightly elliptical style which could be interpreted as saying that they managed to get to him too in the moment of his triumph.
The Russian spaceman (due to take over from the formerly deceased American spaceman btw) appears to be an absolute nutcase, given 2 or 3 whole pages in which to spout his philosophy of future nomadic triumphalism.
Oh, and there is a bit about Aliens too with rather pliable imaginations, but I'll confuse myself trying to explain their involvement.
All in all, like, will re-read.
Renowned newsman Michaelmas and his super loyal, super powered AI have been steering the world towards a duller future for years. (Domino is a dead ringer for her 'descendant' Jane in Orson Scott Card's Ender series.) But when a dead spaceman is brought back to life with evidence implicating the Russians in his death the prospect of excitement rears back to life.
Written in the 70s you might think that the world Politics would have dated, but apart from the odd bit of terminology they really haven't. Populist xenophobe politicians are still with us, as are tyrannies, and Russia today has gone a fair way back towards the way it was when the book was written.
At the start is seems certain that Michaelmas' enemies are on to him, he seems surrounded by modified people, hungry and ambitious, so the denouement is slightly underwhelming in the ease with which he unravels them, though the ending is written is a slightly elliptical style which could be interpreted as saying that they managed to get to him too in the moment of his triumph.
The Russian spaceman (due to take over from the formerly deceased American spaceman btw) appears to be an absolute nutcase, given 2 or 3 whole pages in which to spout his philosophy of future nomadic triumphalism.
Oh, and there is a bit about Aliens too with rather pliable imaginations, but I'll confuse myself trying to explain their involvement.
All in all, like, will re-read.
August 26, 2025
I’ve tried reading Algis Budrys once before with Rogue Moon, regarded as a classic of the SF genre. I was so unimpressed I actually quit about halfway through. Which I mention because when I came across this 1977 novel in a second-hand bookstore a couple of years ago, I’d forgotten this was the same guy who wrote Rogue Moon – and I didn’t remember that until after I’d already bought it. So it goes. Anyway, the premise is interesting: in the year 2000, Laurent Michaelmas is a world-famous TV journalist with his own secret sentient AI assistant, Domino, that has access to every computer network on Earth. Together, they secretly run the world by spinning big news events to keep conflict to a minimum, particularly between the US and the USSR, who are now cooperating to explore the solar system under the United Nations Astronautics Commission (UNAC).
However, all of that is put in jeopardy after Reuters reports that Walter Norwood – the US astronaut in charge of a planned UNAC mission to Jupiter who was killed in an accidental shuttle explosion before the novel starts – has turned up alive in a sanatorium run by the famously brilliant Dr Limberg, who claims to have healed him. Michaelmas and Domino don’t believe it’s the real Norwood, but if it’s not, then who is he, where did he come from and how? With a Russian astronaut slotted to take Norwood’s place, Michaelmas must find out fast before Norwood’s reappearance wrecks the UNAC alliance.
It sounds like a straightforward techno-thriller, but it’s not. The book relies heavily on expositional dialogue between Michaelmas and Domino, interspersed with inner monologues and ruminations about the power of news and how it is presented to us – and yet Budrys manages to be so subtle about what’s actually happening that you really have to pay attention (or re-read earlier chapters) to keep up with what’s going on, which slows things down considerably. That said, the pace picks up about halfway through, and while Budrys doesn’t exactly stick the landing, the eventual explanation is mind-bending enough that I’ll give him credit for swinging for the fences. I don’t think I’ll be reading Budrys again (except by accident, maybe), but this was better than I expected, and at least I finished it, so there’s that.
However, all of that is put in jeopardy after Reuters reports that Walter Norwood – the US astronaut in charge of a planned UNAC mission to Jupiter who was killed in an accidental shuttle explosion before the novel starts – has turned up alive in a sanatorium run by the famously brilliant Dr Limberg, who claims to have healed him. Michaelmas and Domino don’t believe it’s the real Norwood, but if it’s not, then who is he, where did he come from and how? With a Russian astronaut slotted to take Norwood’s place, Michaelmas must find out fast before Norwood’s reappearance wrecks the UNAC alliance.
It sounds like a straightforward techno-thriller, but it’s not. The book relies heavily on expositional dialogue between Michaelmas and Domino, interspersed with inner monologues and ruminations about the power of news and how it is presented to us – and yet Budrys manages to be so subtle about what’s actually happening that you really have to pay attention (or re-read earlier chapters) to keep up with what’s going on, which slows things down considerably. That said, the pace picks up about halfway through, and while Budrys doesn’t exactly stick the landing, the eventual explanation is mind-bending enough that I’ll give him credit for swinging for the fences. I don’t think I’ll be reading Budrys again (except by accident, maybe), but this was better than I expected, and at least I finished it, so there’s that.
August 15, 2025
Very boring. It was a short story that was written to novel length without enough material to support that treatment. Even as a short story, I imagine it must have been bland at best.
April 15, 2014
This misstep from the author of "Some Will Not Die" is hard for me to explain. Either that book's excellence was a fluke, or this book's inadequacy was. I have no evidence either way at this writing about the balance of Budrys's body of work, but I can speak for the problems with this book.
Laurent Michaelmas is a secret master of the universe. Posing as alowlyhighfalutin reporter, he uses Domino, an AI he developed from a voice mail system (beware Google Voice!), to influence world events. Domino and Michaelmas converse in mutters inaudible to the rest of the world, and since Domino has hooks into most of the world's important computer systems, Michaelmas's every utterance can nudge the world in whatever direction he likes.
When an astronaut who suffers an accident that should have been fatal (according to Michaelmas and Domino) is inconveniently alive instead, our intrepid hero smells a zombie rat and decides to find out what is behind this sad state of affairs. Disregarding the interests of the astronaut's wife, who Michaelmas decides ought rightly to have been his widow, he discovers a secret alien conspiracy which is trying to decide if humans are intelligent.
Here's how the aliens go about determining this in a radio communication with Michaelmas:
"What is A?" they ask. "Pi r squared," replies Michaelmas.
Where do I start? "A" doesn't have to mean the area of a circle, or any area. Also, if you are communicating via radio, you understand the sinusoid, and therefore the circle. Also, bullshit!
Later in the questioning, they ask Michaelmas if he would eat one of his own limbs if he were starving. I'd like to see that question on OKCupid, because it belongs on a dating site about as much as it makes sense in even the most ghetto of Turing tests. Seriously, what the hell?
Alas, this exchange is of a piece with the idiocy of the whole book. Nothing makes sense. Nothing connects to anything.
The only way I could make a coherent whole of this narrative was to decide that Michaelmas was a delusional lunatic. Domino doesn't exist; Michaelmas doesn't control anything. The protagonist who is muttering to himself like a nut is in fact a nut, and the only real consequence in the whole book is that the people he kills remain dead.
This story, while self-consistent and fully explanatory of the otherwise bizarre events in the novel, is inherently unsatisfying, and I strongly doubt it's what the author intended.
I would give this one a pass.
Laurent Michaelmas is a secret master of the universe. Posing as a
When an astronaut who suffers an accident that should have been fatal (according to Michaelmas and Domino) is inconveniently alive instead, our intrepid hero smells a zombie rat and decides to find out what is behind this sad state of affairs. Disregarding the interests of the astronaut's wife, who Michaelmas decides ought rightly to have been his widow, he discovers a secret alien conspiracy which is trying to decide if humans are intelligent.
Here's how the aliens go about determining this in a radio communication with Michaelmas:
"What is A?" they ask. "Pi r squared," replies Michaelmas.
Where do I start? "A" doesn't have to mean the area of a circle, or any area. Also, if you are communicating via radio, you understand the sinusoid, and therefore the circle. Also, bullshit!
Later in the questioning, they ask Michaelmas if he would eat one of his own limbs if he were starving. I'd like to see that question on OKCupid, because it belongs on a dating site about as much as it makes sense in even the most ghetto of Turing tests. Seriously, what the hell?
Alas, this exchange is of a piece with the idiocy of the whole book. Nothing makes sense. Nothing connects to anything.
The only way I could make a coherent whole of this narrative was to decide that Michaelmas was a delusional lunatic. Domino doesn't exist; Michaelmas doesn't control anything. The protagonist who is muttering to himself like a nut is in fact a nut, and the only real consequence in the whole book is that the people he kills remain dead.
This story, while self-consistent and fully explanatory of the otherwise bizarre events in the novel, is inherently unsatisfying, and I strongly doubt it's what the author intended.
I would give this one a pass.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 4, 2020
During the mid-eighties I met Jeff, Algis' son, through Tom Kosinski and began hanging out at On the Tao, a restaurant/bar in the Rogers Park neighborhood above which Jeff lived. It was in honor of this new acquaintanceship that I made a point of reading one of his father's books intentionally, sometime during the fall in Michigan, even though Jeff personally wasn't much interested in the genre.
'Michaelmas', while prescient as regards the world-wide web, did not, unfortunately, impress me very much as a novel.
'Michaelmas', while prescient as regards the world-wide web, did not, unfortunately, impress me very much as a novel.
July 20, 2015
The copy I read was hand corrected by Algis at a party in the 90s. There are over twenty typos he deemed reprehensible. And beer.
May 9, 2023
Take a short story. Split it up into paragraphs. After each paragraph, insert two pages of horse_ebooks tweets. That is the experience of reading Michaelmas.
Honestly due to the migraine I got after reading even a quarter of a page, it was quite difficult to finish this book. Michaelmas contains word choice and sentence structure that can only be best described as … puzzling. Dialogue that appears to have been written by someone who lacks theory of mind? And a plot more suited for a short story (which apparently Michaelmas started as) than a novel.
I had to reread every page like five times. At first I assumed it was my fault that the book was incomprehensible and not the book's, until I came across some more egregious examples of complete disregard for the reader. For instance, Algis will regularly use pronouns like "that" or "it" to refer to subjects or objects that are either ambiguous, or mentioned several pages ago. Here's just one example:
"With the passage of time, Domino was beginning to learn more and more about how Michaelmas's mind worked. He didn't like it, but he could follow it when instructed." (46) Is 'he' referring to Domino? Michaelmas? Is the first 'it' referring to Michaelmas's mind? Domino (a machine)? How Michaelmas's mind works? The action of following Michaelmas’s mind? The fact that Domino is learning about how Michaelmas's mind works? What does the second ‘it’ refer to? Commence migraine.
Another problem with this book is that literally every sentence in it feels out of context. It's a bit hard to give concrete examples in this review you might read them thinking they're out of context because they're just quotes, but NO. They read as out of context even IN context. Here is one example:
"Michaelmas obligingly turned in his seat and peered back through the rear window at sun-browned legs in football striped calf socks scampering two by two up the old white steps to class. But to be young again would have been an unbearable price." (42) Ok, so Michaelmas is ogling up some calves, following so far. But… why would being young have been an unbearable price? In what way? After the quoted text, the book abruptly switches to describing a hotel room next and this thought about being young being an unbearable price is never returned to as far as I can tell.
Very young children and the severely autistic lack the ability to recognize other people as sentient, with rich inner lives and their own experiences of consciousness. Algis writes dialogue like he never learned at age 3 that 1) other people have a own conscious experience of the world and 2) the conscious experience of other people is not equivalent to his own in that they cannot access the information and frame of mind Algis himself had at the time of writing. Here’s an example. The context is a reporter named Watson is talking to Michaelmas about a third man who might have been mysteriously brought back to life. Just to let you know: as far as I can tell, there is no context for legs or runners.
"Watson looked nakedly into Michaelmas's face with the horrid invulnerability of the broken. 'I don't have any legs left,' he explained. 'Not leg legs-- inside legs. Sawed 'em off myself. So I took in a fast young runner. Hungry, but very hot and a lot of voodoo in his head. Watch out for him, Larry. He's the meanest person I've ever met in my life. Surely no men will be born after him. My gift to the big time. Any day now he's going to tell me I can go home to the sixties. Galatea's revenge. And I'll believe him." (35) So of course after reading this, my thoughts: ah, the character has aphasia, and our author is demonstrating how people with brain damage in the language centers of the brain talk. But no, the character does not have aphasia.
Ok one more example:
"Frontiere moved his eyes as if wishing to see the people behind him. 'If necessary, an announcement will be made that it is not planned to change the flight crew.' Michaelmas cocked his head. 'In other words, this is an excellent fish dinner especially if someone complains of stomach.'" (68) It's SO CLOSE to making sense. But it just … doesn’t. What is an excellent fish dinner? The announcement? Not changing the flight crew? Does the complaining of stomach part mean it’s actually a bad thing that they’re changing the flight crew? Complains of stomach what? Upset stomach? Complains of having a stomach? I’m just lost here.
Honestly due to the migraine I got after reading even a quarter of a page, it was quite difficult to finish this book. Michaelmas contains word choice and sentence structure that can only be best described as … puzzling. Dialogue that appears to have been written by someone who lacks theory of mind? And a plot more suited for a short story (which apparently Michaelmas started as) than a novel.
I had to reread every page like five times. At first I assumed it was my fault that the book was incomprehensible and not the book's, until I came across some more egregious examples of complete disregard for the reader. For instance, Algis will regularly use pronouns like "that" or "it" to refer to subjects or objects that are either ambiguous, or mentioned several pages ago. Here's just one example:
"With the passage of time, Domino was beginning to learn more and more about how Michaelmas's mind worked. He didn't like it, but he could follow it when instructed." (46) Is 'he' referring to Domino? Michaelmas? Is the first 'it' referring to Michaelmas's mind? Domino (a machine)? How Michaelmas's mind works? The action of following Michaelmas’s mind? The fact that Domino is learning about how Michaelmas's mind works? What does the second ‘it’ refer to? Commence migraine.
Another problem with this book is that literally every sentence in it feels out of context. It's a bit hard to give concrete examples in this review you might read them thinking they're out of context because they're just quotes, but NO. They read as out of context even IN context. Here is one example:
"Michaelmas obligingly turned in his seat and peered back through the rear window at sun-browned legs in football striped calf socks scampering two by two up the old white steps to class. But to be young again would have been an unbearable price." (42) Ok, so Michaelmas is ogling up some calves, following so far. But… why would being young have been an unbearable price? In what way? After the quoted text, the book abruptly switches to describing a hotel room next and this thought about being young being an unbearable price is never returned to as far as I can tell.
Very young children and the severely autistic lack the ability to recognize other people as sentient, with rich inner lives and their own experiences of consciousness. Algis writes dialogue like he never learned at age 3 that 1) other people have a own conscious experience of the world and 2) the conscious experience of other people is not equivalent to his own in that they cannot access the information and frame of mind Algis himself had at the time of writing. Here’s an example. The context is a reporter named Watson is talking to Michaelmas about a third man who might have been mysteriously brought back to life. Just to let you know: as far as I can tell, there is no context for legs or runners.
"Watson looked nakedly into Michaelmas's face with the horrid invulnerability of the broken. 'I don't have any legs left,' he explained. 'Not leg legs-- inside legs. Sawed 'em off myself. So I took in a fast young runner. Hungry, but very hot and a lot of voodoo in his head. Watch out for him, Larry. He's the meanest person I've ever met in my life. Surely no men will be born after him. My gift to the big time. Any day now he's going to tell me I can go home to the sixties. Galatea's revenge. And I'll believe him." (35) So of course after reading this, my thoughts: ah, the character has aphasia, and our author is demonstrating how people with brain damage in the language centers of the brain talk. But no, the character does not have aphasia.
Ok one more example:
"Frontiere moved his eyes as if wishing to see the people behind him. 'If necessary, an announcement will be made that it is not planned to change the flight crew.' Michaelmas cocked his head. 'In other words, this is an excellent fish dinner especially if someone complains of stomach.'" (68) It's SO CLOSE to making sense. But it just … doesn’t. What is an excellent fish dinner? The announcement? Not changing the flight crew? Does the complaining of stomach part mean it’s actually a bad thing that they’re changing the flight crew? Complains of stomach what? Upset stomach? Complains of having a stomach? I’m just lost here.
June 13, 2017
Too bad I don't have the edition with the aging, balding reporter on the cover. Looks a bit like a chubbier Frasier. That might have added half a star to my rating. The one I have is just weird, nonsensical and forgettable.
Budrys borders on the prophetic in this book. Although it dates from 1977, it is pretty accurate in predicting the feel of the present, if not the technical details. He doesn't really predict the internet, but in this novel, almost every computer can be reached by every other computer. The story even depends on it.
I liked the idea of some guy using an AI to keep an eye on everything that's going on in the world and gently nudging it into a peaceful (if somewhat boring) direction. I also liked the protagonist and the AI's characters, as well as their verbal sparring. The ending seemed like a winner at first, but it ended up in a direction that was too vague and unbelievable for my tastes.
This book's biggest problem was the writing. There was a good story in there, somewhere, but every character sounded the same. Most of them also spoke overly sophisticated. What comes to my mind is a few pages of pointless pontification by some Russian about his native region and the difference between city dwellers and the people with six legs. Those are people riding horses. Why doesn't he just say so? Probably for the same reason these useless pages are in the book. They make the book more literary. And that's my problem with this book, I'm not even sure whether it's literature or it just has a thin veneer of sophistication and tries to pose as literature, but since I hate literature it was a chore to read it.
I constantly felt like I was missing some underlying meaning in the conversations. It didn't help that I had trouble remembering who was who. That leaves me unsure whether this was a good story idea with a bad execution or a good story, meant for people more intelligent than me. Oh well.
Budrys borders on the prophetic in this book. Although it dates from 1977, it is pretty accurate in predicting the feel of the present, if not the technical details. He doesn't really predict the internet, but in this novel, almost every computer can be reached by every other computer. The story even depends on it.
I liked the idea of some guy using an AI to keep an eye on everything that's going on in the world and gently nudging it into a peaceful (if somewhat boring) direction. I also liked the protagonist and the AI's characters, as well as their verbal sparring. The ending seemed like a winner at first, but it ended up in a direction that was too vague and unbelievable for my tastes.
This book's biggest problem was the writing. There was a good story in there, somewhere, but every character sounded the same. Most of them also spoke overly sophisticated. What comes to my mind is a few pages of pointless pontification by some Russian about his native region and the difference between city dwellers and the people with six legs. Those are people riding horses. Why doesn't he just say so? Probably for the same reason these useless pages are in the book. They make the book more literary. And that's my problem with this book, I'm not even sure whether it's literature or it just has a thin veneer of sophistication and tries to pose as literature, but since I hate literature it was a chore to read it.
I constantly felt like I was missing some underlying meaning in the conversations. It didn't help that I had trouble remembering who was who. That leaves me unsure whether this was a good story idea with a bad execution or a good story, meant for people more intelligent than me. Oh well.
February 8, 2019
Very prescient in so many ways, this is an engineer's book. It delights in technology, gadgets, politics, and power games. It is also a sustained experiment in channelling the story through the protagonist. Everything we experience is experienced by Michaelmas himself. The secret nature of Domino also allows for a kind of meditation on the nature of fictional dialogue. Conversations involving three characters sometimes occur where one is unaware of another, Domino being the everpresent, but invisible, sidekick. However, the characters, including Michaelmas himself, are functional at best. Without psychological depth everything rises or falls on the story. For all the game playing this is very weak. Many times I got the feeling I was reading a sequel as so much of the setup is so improbable and unexplained. We get few answers about Michaelmas himself. Then the plot itself with its miraculously resurrected astronaut and mysterious global conspiracy is even more outlandish. There's a big brain working within this novel, but by concentrating on the intriguing details, the big picture is left lazily slapdash. Disappointing.
Note
I just read this in the book description on Goodreads:
"The eponymous protagonist, Laurent Michaelmas, is an ex-hacker who had, early in the computer era, left back doors in many key pieces of software which run vital government & commercial computers."
I remember something about him studying engineering, but NONE of this was in the edition I read and doesn't make sense anyhow. While this seems to provide some much needed background, it seems made up to me and not part of Algis's work.
Note
I just read this in the book description on Goodreads:
"The eponymous protagonist, Laurent Michaelmas, is an ex-hacker who had, early in the computer era, left back doors in many key pieces of software which run vital government & commercial computers."
I remember something about him studying engineering, but NONE of this was in the edition I read and doesn't make sense anyhow. While this seems to provide some much needed background, it seems made up to me and not part of Algis's work.
October 13, 2021
First thing, ignore the start and end dates for reading. I first read this shortly after publication and have read it many times since.
I've read this several times over many years and it never fails to entertain me. There are a few negative reviews but I respectfully disagree with them. This is a masterclass in the craft of writing; Budrys never wastes a word, never hesitates, and gives the stage and characters enough room to be real enough to carry the story forward. Bar a few remarks to set the scene, the action takes stage front, with the characters moving things along at a good pace.
Other writers of Budrys' era - Asimov, in particular - leave an empty stage for the characters to play in. Budrys gives enough room to breathe but gives context and depth, with enough dialogue to give the sense there are real people there, not simply archetypes and cyphers. All achieved, with the bare minimum of words.
The story - and the basic plot - are in many ways very contemporary; it was written at the dawn of the internet, and Budrys incorporated many of the implications of a connected world into the background - and the MO - of the protagonist.
Those who are used to scenes and characters described in excruciating detail will likely find it too raw and bare bones but really, what you have here is everything you need. It's well plotted, well paced and extremely well written. If more writers took this path, we'd save a lot of trees and have more time to read other things, rather than wade through thousands of pages of tedious, unnecessary description.
I've read this several times over many years and it never fails to entertain me. There are a few negative reviews but I respectfully disagree with them. This is a masterclass in the craft of writing; Budrys never wastes a word, never hesitates, and gives the stage and characters enough room to be real enough to carry the story forward. Bar a few remarks to set the scene, the action takes stage front, with the characters moving things along at a good pace.
Other writers of Budrys' era - Asimov, in particular - leave an empty stage for the characters to play in. Budrys gives enough room to breathe but gives context and depth, with enough dialogue to give the sense there are real people there, not simply archetypes and cyphers. All achieved, with the bare minimum of words.
The story - and the basic plot - are in many ways very contemporary; it was written at the dawn of the internet, and Budrys incorporated many of the implications of a connected world into the background - and the MO - of the protagonist.
Those who are used to scenes and characters described in excruciating detail will likely find it too raw and bare bones but really, what you have here is everything you need. It's well plotted, well paced and extremely well written. If more writers took this path, we'd save a lot of trees and have more time to read other things, rather than wade through thousands of pages of tedious, unnecessary description.
July 12, 2024
A very peculiar novel from 1977, just on the eve of the explosion of the personal computer.
Laurent Michaelmas is a successful international journalist whose reputation lies in his being well informed. He has the edge over his rivals because his recording device, an innocent-looking little square box that goes with him everywhere, is in fact a supercomputer called Domino. Michaelmas is connected to Domino via an implant in his brain which allows Domino to communicate with him silently whenever it – Domino - is switched on.
Once we accept this even-today scarcely credible piece of tech, then the novel unfolds promisingly enough. Domino picks up a newsfeed about the reported survival of Walter Norwood, an astronaut thought dead after crashing back into Earth 3 months before. Dr Professor Nils Limberg, the Nobel prize-winning boss of the Limberg Sanatorium in Switzerland has apparently supervised Norwood’s recovery.
Can this be true? and as the world’s premier journalist Michaelmas is on it like a flash because, although it is apparently true, he scents skulduggery.
There then ensues what amounts to a pretty decent political thriller which chunters on nicely until the ending which turns into improbable, fantastical sci-fi melodrama. I felt more than a little let down. But on the whole, I enjoyed the ride.
Laurent Michaelmas is a successful international journalist whose reputation lies in his being well informed. He has the edge over his rivals because his recording device, an innocent-looking little square box that goes with him everywhere, is in fact a supercomputer called Domino. Michaelmas is connected to Domino via an implant in his brain which allows Domino to communicate with him silently whenever it – Domino - is switched on.
Once we accept this even-today scarcely credible piece of tech, then the novel unfolds promisingly enough. Domino picks up a newsfeed about the reported survival of Walter Norwood, an astronaut thought dead after crashing back into Earth 3 months before. Dr Professor Nils Limberg, the Nobel prize-winning boss of the Limberg Sanatorium in Switzerland has apparently supervised Norwood’s recovery.
Can this be true? and as the world’s premier journalist Michaelmas is on it like a flash because, although it is apparently true, he scents skulduggery.
There then ensues what amounts to a pretty decent political thriller which chunters on nicely until the ending which turns into improbable, fantastical sci-fi melodrama. I felt more than a little let down. But on the whole, I enjoyed the ride.
May 22, 2022
A great throwback SF novel; short, fast, fun and it's over in less than 200 pages. The style is a little choppy and hard to follow at times which makes it feel like a precursor to cyberpunk. Our protagonist, the guy who basically runs the entire world, is an investigate reporter--really funny when compared to how that would be conceived today. The idea of having to wear a physical terminal that's essentially the most powerful computer (entity?) in the world (even by today's standards) over your shoulder (not to mention using it as a blunt weapon at times) is quaint and delightful. I also love how the story wraps. Will likely read this one again.
March 3, 2020
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
"Michaelmas (1975) has a promising premise: Laurent Michaelmas is a famous newsman and via advanced technology he has developed, he can communicate with an artificial intelligence named Domino. Domino’s abilities are profoundly useful for Michaelmas’ profession—it can control other computers and hack electronic [..]"
"Michaelmas (1975) has a promising premise: Laurent Michaelmas is a famous newsman and via advanced technology he has developed, he can communicate with an artificial intelligence named Domino. Domino’s abilities are profoundly useful for Michaelmas’ profession—it can control other computers and hack electronic [..]"
October 7, 2025
I wanted to like this book more, but it never took off beyond the average science-fiction tale. That does not mean that I did not enjoy the book - at many places the tale has mystery. Unfortunately, the ending sort of jumps out at you prematurely or without sufficient connection. I did like the A.I. that the author thought up for the tale which in my opinion is the best aspect of the book.
August 12, 2018
Nach 30 Jahren nochmal gelesen. Die Idee mit der allgegenwärtigen künstlichen Intelligenz ist erschreckend vorausschauend, aber nicht sehr ausgearbeitet. Und die Auflösung über extraterrestrische Intelligenz und Philosophie einfach nur Geschwurbel und ermüdend. Ab in die Tonne damit.
November 17, 2019
From 1977 A Man + an A.I. Control the World
Speculative SyFy about Mr. Michaelmas + his A.I. Domino who rule the world. The world is not aware of this or the existence of Domino. Through his media conglomerate he controls what he wants the people to know and not know.
A good read ...
Speculative SyFy about Mr. Michaelmas + his A.I. Domino who rule the world. The world is not aware of this or the existence of Domino. Through his media conglomerate he controls what he wants the people to know and not know.
A good read ...
August 3, 2017
Fascinating
A world where populism paired with xenophobia doesn't work in national elections.... Obvioudly a fantasy but one devoutly to be wished.
A world where populism paired with xenophobia doesn't work in national elections.... Obvioudly a fantasy but one devoutly to be wished.
November 30, 2018
Kind of a puzzler. Deliberately oblique?
May 15, 2019
I rather like Michaelmas. It was written back in the 70s but didn't seem that dated. It is difficult to describe the plot without giving too much away, but I did like it.
February 6, 2020
Overall solid piece, Budrys gives a unique take on the themes of social engineering and the information economy take to their most extreme.
September 26, 2021
Well written, but a not entirely successful techno thriller.
Read
September 17, 2022Odd.
March 28, 2024
Independent reporter who possesses and is friend with an artificial intelligence, uses his friendship with it to defend the human race from dangerous people.
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