I imagine this was fascinating, at least to some people, when the book was first published in 1982, but thirty-seven years later, it tends to take the reader out of the story, at least a bit. Francis spends a great deal of time explaining all of this, but it's all very dated. The first part of the book is obviously set in the very early days of personal computing when PCs had very little internal memory and when even the operating system had to be loaded into the computer before you could use it. The programs constitute a horse betting system that, when used properly, could make a person a fortune. But instead of the music he expects to find, he discovers that the cassettes contain computer programs. He's at loose ends when a friend gives him three cassette tapes. Jonathan is trapped in a loveless marriage that is failing because his wife desperately wants to have children but is unable to do so. ![]() The lead character here is Jonathan Derry, a young physics teacher who is also a crack shot who once had hopes of competing in the Olympics. The two stories are set fourteen years apart, and the first is set in the early 1980s. As a practical matter, it really consists of two short novels that share a pair of villains but which have different main protagonists.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2023
Categories |