Hugo anti-recommendation

[chhotii]

Up to this point I have been a pretty big fan of Robert J. Sawyer, but now he has jumped the shark. I bought WWW: Wake, which, I think, is Hugo-nominated, on my Kindle. It's just plain dumb. This whole thing about the WWW achieving sentience? Just plain stupid. Sentience, mental awareness of self, has been crafted over a long time by evolution because of its survival value: it's not something that just happens just because you have enough wires networked together. And the subplot of the blind girl's medical treatment... Here RJS just puts on display his complete cluelessness regarding brain development. Doesn't he understand that the visual system wires itself up, gradually, during babyhood, in response to input from the eyes? That we have to LEARN to see? Babies aren't wide-eyed watchers just to be cute; all those games of peek-a-boo are the process by which they learn to parse visual input. Doesn't he realize that the visual areas of the brain get recruited for other functions if they are not used for vision? Obviously not. So what are the chances that a neuroscientist, today, would think that he could patch up the visual system of someone who was ENTIRELY BLIND FROM BIRTH and expect that they would have useful vision RIGHT AWAY? Nil. Laughable. I cannot maintain any suspension of disbelief when reading this book.

If I had the Round Tuits, I'd figure out the Hugo voting schedule... and dig up our membership codes... just to vote against this one. (Sorry, Bob.) But there's other stuff I need to spend my Round Tuits on, I think.

Comments

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

The Hugo voting ended July 31st.

Taking a quick look at the list of Hugo nominees for Best Novel, RJS is the only name I recognize.

BTW, if you want to rant at him in person, he'll be at Pi-Con (http://www.pi-con.org) (Enfield, CT) the weekend of August 20th.

[chhotii.livejournal.com]

I'm too shy to say "hey, I hate your book" in person. It seems unnecessarily confrontational. What good would it do, anyway? The book is already out there.