Under the Dome is a 1,100 page tome about a small Maine town (there are no extraterrestrial vampire clowns or little bald doctors) and a situation where the powers-that-be make all the wrong moves.  

Plot Introduction

The small Maine town of Chester’s Mill has its share of problems, but these are nothing compared to the day a transparent and seemingly-impenetrable barrier appears and separates the town from the outside world.  Cars crash and pile up at the invisible wall.  A private plane explodes.  A woman’s hand is severed instantly as the “Dome” comes down.  Grisly chaos (as only King can describe) ensues all across the city limits of Chester’s Mill.  

The origin and purpose of the Dome is a complete mystery to town residents, to local politicians and even to the US Military.  But Dale Barbara, an ex-Army captain that was trapped inside the city, is forced out of retirement and commissioned by the Federal government to put the town in order and discover the source of the Dome.  Dale faces opposition from Big Jim Rennie, a local politician and used car-salesman (what a wonderful combo).  Power-hungry Big Jim has his own plans for the future of the now-isolated city, and he does not waste any time putting Chester’s Mill under his iron fist.  

In the meantime, attempts by the military to breach the Dome fail.  Cut off from the outside world, with no end to the crisis in sight, events come to a head in the Maine town.  Dale and his friends must face off against Big Jim and his puppets in the local police department.  

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Accelerando is a challenging read and techno-geek cool on overload.  Even for a self-proclaimed geek like myself, I sometimes found it hard to keep up with all the technological and computer programming jargon.  In fact, for non-geeks and people that have never written a line of computer code, Accelerando might not make any sense at all.  But for the technology-conscious crowd, this book is about as good as it gets.

Imagine putting William Gibson, Contact, the Matrix and some Star Trek into a mixer.  The end result will be something much like Accelerando.  This isn't to say that the book rips off these movies or authors, but Stross certainly does use and build upon many of the concepts established by the likes of Gibson and Stephenson and Carl Sagan. 

We get healthy doses of virtual reality, computer hacking, space travel, the fate of religious traditions, a technological singularity and first contact with alien life.  Stross takes all these concepts and adds his own unique spin - economics.  In Accelerando, the future is ruled by hyper intelligent, self-aware corporations and pyramid schemes.  These fast-thinking corporations and constructs exists inside and outside of cyberspace.  And if you mess with them, you may quickly find yourself bankrupt and without a physical body. 

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Gateway is a science fiction novel published in 1977.  The story is mainly set on the remains of an alien space station (the titular Gateway) that has been discovered orbiting at a high inclination outside the normal plane of the solar system.  The aliens, called the Heechee, built the station out of an asteroid several hundred thousand years ago when humans were still lumbering around the African savanna.  Impressive, right?  Turns out the Heechee got bored after a while, or were destroyed (we never find out), and ended up abandoning Gateway.  And they left a bunch of ships and other junk around when they disappeared. 

Most of what the aliens left behind is indeed junk, but the ships are still mostly functional.  The downside is that each Heechee ship can only go to a single destination, the destination that was programmed by the alien pilot hundreds of thousands of years ago. 

I didn't exist in 1977 when this book was published, so I just got around to reading it now in 2010.  I was looking forward to reading it, since Pohl is a well known author and the book won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards.  Unfortunately, this book is a steaming pile of crap.  And there are three reasons why it's a steaming pile of crap. 

1) The Premise - Nobody understands how the Heechee ships work.  The drive mechanisms and the navigation systems are a complete mystery to human science.  But instead of trying to figure out how the ships function and reverse engineer the technology, the combined governments of earth have decided that the best way to exploit the alien spaceships left on Gateway is to send ill-trained and emotionally unstable volunteers out into the galaxy on suicide missions.  These volunteers are called prospectors.  They are supposed to be "prospecting" and bringing back more alien technology (that no one understands), but many of the prospectors and their irreplaceable ships disappear and are never seen again.  Others fly out a little way and explode.  In the off chance that a prospector does bring back something of value, an alien gadget or weapon, he or she is paid a great sum of money. 

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