John Sundman sent me a copy of his self-published novel, "Acts of the Apostles," some time ago, and I finally got through enough of my pile to give it a read today (FWIW, the pile is still very, very deep — I'm more than a year backlogged on my reading and have started to reluctantly say no to requests for blurbs or reviews at this point, given how unrealistic it is that I'll finish them in anything like reasonable time).
Apostles is a really fine hacker-fiction book — albeit longer than I like them, and with laggy pacing in places — that really captures the spirit of geek culture and intrigue. It's spookily similar to what I'm working on with my current book, /usr/bin/god, at least in tone (obviously, we're handling the subject in pretty radically different ways). But trying to read this while thinking about my own book was too much like trying to sing a song in one key while listening to someone play it in another. After 100 pages, I just had to put it down. I expect I'll pick it up again in a year when I wrap up /u/b/g — in the meantime, the first 13 chapters of the book are online for your reading pleasure.
