Nerve.com (1)

(Amy) We snagged this book while we were in the middle of being herded out of the Barnes & Noble on Union Square by irate employees who just wanted to close the store so they could go home. It was the last score from the bargain table, and I'm so very glad we found it. It's not 100% great, but its premise - satirical vignettes from assorted authors about life in 25 years - is pretty entertaining, and all of the stories are short. Microfiction, really. Little bite-sized pieces of dystopia.

Personally, I would prefer to believe we'll manage to be doing rather better in 25 years' time than these satirical visions suggest, but I did enjoy reading them anyway.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/zenos-library/2008/04/2003-the-future-of-misb... )

(Alistair) Probably I am the wrong target audience for this book, despite appearances; perhaps I should have found out earlier that nerve.com was "an award-winning erotic web site for the literary set", but while I'm normally interested in futurism and near-to-mid-future set stories, this book - which struck me as something of a tour of the unlovelier parts of some really fairly unchallenging, technologically and socially, futures - failed to do it for me.

It may just be that my Future Shock Level is pegged somewhere in the 3.x range, but it didn't really do anything for me in the provocative and stimulating area, either.

This isn't necessarily a criticism of the book per se, though; it would appeal rather more to people who need less from their hypothetical futuretech and futuresoc, I think.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/cerebrate/2008/05/2003-the-future-of-misbehav... )… (mere)