This Is For Everyone

This Is For Everyone

TimBerners-Lee

Macmillan hardback £25 

***** (5 stars) review by Tony Lee 

Not my usual choice of SF reading but, certainly, a genre-adjacent book, Tim Berners-Lee’s excellent memoir is most effective as a modern-history of how and why, the W.W.W. (world wide web, I’ll call it Web here) developed. From the 1980s’ home-computer boom, before the Internet (as we know it, today) arrived in the 1990s, an obvious-in-retrospect inspiration for ideas about the Web’s interconnectedness and vitally, interoperability, was Berners-Lee’s job at CERN, in Geneva. There, nationalism seemed to be absent if not pointless, and the multi-cultural concerns of that establishment’s scientific melting-pot, overcame language-barriers and scaled economic walls, in pursuit of a great prospect, that was, very simply - ‘for everyone’, as Tim claims, repeatedly. I would certainly agree that he’s done far more with technology, for humanity, than his famous contemporaries, multi-billionaire Bill Gates, and gadget-maker Steve Jobs, also born in 1955. 

You don’t need to have (like me), used a desktop PC for 25 years, published stuff, owned website domains, etc. because Tim fully explains his inventions, each, and every, step of the way, and if you already know basic stuff, about the Web, this book reads like a helpful refresher-course (I completely forgot ‘Yahoo’ was a backronym). How the Web grew, from its first ‘hobby’ server, to attracting over 5.5 billion users online in only three dozen years is such a fascinating autobiographical story, of truly International success, that THIS IS FOR EVERYONE is, undeniably, an important book. If you only buy one non-fiction text, this year, pick this one. It’s genuinely essential reading.

The book often mentions web ‘evangelists’, while comments from (or about) A.I. optimists versus dystopian-cult pessimism might prompt quasi-religious thinking, on right and wrong/good versus evil, whether (or not) any form of super-intelligence is likely or impossible... as tech ‘god’ or ‘devil’. It does all look, increasingly, as if we have a stark Wellsian choice of, only comic-book style, futures ahead (depressingly apocalyptic... or positively utopian?). But Tim argues against such polarised thinking. Global negotiations are still on-going, with many compromises to be expected.    

This inventor is not done yet. Sir Tim (aka: TimBL) also promotes an ‘intention’ economy, for the Web, over the current ‘attention economy’, that rules most toxic social-media platforms. His campaigns in favour of online-privacy have now resulted in practical stuff like a 'data wallet', offering ‘personal data sovereignty’ that has every individual “empowered by their own digital footprint”, with total control of details and strict sharing-limitations, like access for shopping, banking  transactions. It sounds far better than the Labour government’s ‘free’, and yet ‘compulsory’, digital ID (to be called ‘Brit-card’?), that was immediately criticised by civil-liberty groups.

Book Lovers

The Book Lovers

Steve Aylett

Snow paperback £9.99 

***** (5 stars) review by Tony Lee  

I have been a fan of Steve Aylett since the 1990s, and always loved re-reading his books, and comics. His writing combines wisdom and humour, but with a rare intelligence that never turns pretentious, as creativity in Aylett’s stories is a thought-provoking challenge. Aylett’s impact on genre literature appears wildly undervalued by most book critics, and the reading public. To me, Aylett is the post-modern equivalent of a Ray Bradbury, with practically unique merits in science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. Relevance to Bradbury is especially notable here as THE BOOK LOVERS plays like a thematic prequel to classic dystopia Fahrenheit 451 (1953), upgraded eloquently for the 21st century. Clearly, Aylett doesn’t have melancholy attitudes like the grandfatherly Bradbury, or nostalgic attachments to childhood dreams. Instead, with astonishingly witty approaches to narrative-framing conventions, and significantly economical character-building tropes, Aylett’s inspired by the likes of literary stylist Jorge Luis Borges. Playful channelling of tropes from Borges is particularly evident when Aylett’s deep-reading characters discuss entirely invented and yet influential books as if they’re reviewing novels or laudable stories from other writers. 

Despite frequently effervescent prose, the density of this work often feels like a far larger book “with pages like geological layers”. With Aylett’s humility here, an apparently ‘cult’ author in this fictional-English realm declares: “the world is not a golem for us to write a meaning upon” and later, he admits “you don’t want an idea burning a hole in the page.” The cream of concrete solidity with DNA scale info prompts absurd thoughts like tearing any page from this book to plant in the ground, and then expecting it to sprout instantly, as Jack’s magic beanstalk. THE BOOK LOVERS delivers metaphors with irony baked in, yet fearlessly deploys puns dusted for prints by forensic sarcasm. “A world that needs so many inspirational slogans to get through it is probably defective.” 

Charmingly, the quasi-steampunk subgenre explored in these pages offers far more than merely a convenient marketing label that this book wears much like a fashion statement. Dream-girl Sophie, an improbable heiress and, reportedly, a kidnapping victim, is also a heroine with fabulous “cherry sherbet chemistry”, seeming to possess an enviable charisma with enough personable appeal to easily win over full hearts and open minds. Top police officer on this increasingly weird case, D.I. Nightjar investigates and interviews suspects and holds “strangers to account in a land where precision is a liability and continuity an embarrassment”.

Fictional options here are like opinions. Everyone’s got some, if not all of them. A thinly shrouded commentary on cancel culture and climate crisis? Check. The key text for this puzzler might be anarchist bible, Truth’s Flying Visit, a cult-book by the Rook, claiming “we strive to individuate a mistake so as not to acknowledge the universal error”. In our cultural dystopia since the millennium, the quality of Aylett’s best work has a few rivals (Jeff Noon, Rudy Rucker, OK... William Gibson, maybe?) but no equals. Aylett might be the most sublimely conceptual author in any SF blend. He’s certainly the most quotable writer of this century, so far. Almost endlessly repeatable, in fact, as it would be far too easy to fill up column-metres of reviews with favourite lines from THE BOOK LOVERS. I hope, with this latest adventure, Aylett will inspire other writers to follow his leading authorial role, upping the ante for the highest practising ambition in English literature.

Other reviews... 

The Caterer (comic)

HyperThick (comic-book)  

Archived Aylett... 

And Your Point Is?

Atom (UK)

Atom (USA)

The Crime Studio

Fain The Sorcerer

The Inflatable Volunteer

Lint

Shamanspace

Toxicology

Steve Aylett interviews himself.