Now that it is fall and some books are out, I am back on a fiction kick.

Last weekend I finished WWW: Wake by one of my favorite Sci-Fi writers, Robert J. Sawyer. I somehow missed it in April when it was released. I guess I had my mind on other things 5 months ago. :)

The plot of the story felt unique. A 15-year old girl who is blind from birth gets an implant behind her eye with the potential to let her see. Instead it opens her mind up to the Web via the network interface. She can now see servers and websites as points and connections as lines. Within the mosaic, she ends up discovering something unexpected.

There are also two other threads going on in the book. One thread in China where the government is trying to control the flow of information out when there is a potential pandemic. The other thread has to do with gorillas and monkeys who use sign language to communicate. Considering that WWW: Wake is the first in a trilogy of books, I am guessing we'll see the other two threads get more ingrained with the main thread.

What I like about Sawyer is that his novels get techie, but not over the top techie where you have to know things about quantum mechanics. In this book he really delves into how humans learn and the modern theory on how sentience is attained.

The first book I ever read of Sawyer's was about 5 years ago when I first moved to Florida. It was FlashForward, which coincidentally is being made into a new TV show for the fall. ABC is trying to create buzz on the show by calling it the next Lost. From what I see of the trailer though, the show took liberties with the original source material. Instead of jumping 20 years into the future it looks like 6 months. I'll give the TV show a chance, but I have a feeling I may be disappointed.

I give the book 3 out of 4 stars. I am looking forward to the sequel next year.