Durval Menezes’s Reviews > Manna > Status Update

<<“Why can’t they just upload a program into your brain, and that program takes over your brain and turns you into a zombie a minute later? Why does that never happen?” She asked.

“Because there is no way to ‘upload’ a program into my brain. And my brain does not execute programs anyway. It is not a computer.” I replied.>>

Oh, but yes there is: it's called 'extremism', religious or political, it works exactly so.

Chapter 7, second typo in the book: "but a week later they were pass�.* I'm pretty sure the author meant "passé", but got tripped by bad character encoding.

Chapter 8: and here's how the 'magic' in that utopia works. Kinda creepy, but makes sense in the end.

End of Chapter 5: a 180-degrees turnaround in the tale, from total dystopia to total utopia in a single chapter. Talk about a twist!

It almost sounds too good to be true, the "almost" coming from my direct personal experience with open source software -- which showed me that, at least in a limited way and for a limited time, true utopias are not only possible but can out-compete the established distopia.

middle of Chapter 8, found the first typo: "The core principal is ‘do no harm.’" -> the author certainly meant "principle".

And things turn *really* rotten. But a twist at the very end of the chapter sounds like a way out. Cliffhanger! Fortunately the next chapter is just a clock away. Rating: 4.4/5, this is starting to look like 5 stars material

chapter 3 finished. So things are not that ugly after all, are they? rating still 4/5

Reading this on the web, available free-as-in-beer from the author's website: https://marshallbrain.com/manna (via: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=...).

Just finished Chapter 1, and found it will-written and innovative, rating so far 4/5.