[Enworld Book Club] Idlewild Discussion

Hi all,

well, better late than never - the boards went down at the wrong time!

Anyway, I just wanted to open discussion on the most recent selection - Nick Sagan's Idlewild.

I chose this book because it seemed to fulfil the requirements of the book club, and I noticed a cover line by Neil Gaiman.

I think Nick Sagan, being the son of Carl Sagan, had to worry about people claiming he was stealing his father's style (eg Julian Lennon), etc. Well, I haven't actually read anything by Carl Sagan, so I can't compare it.

I enjoyed the book. I found I read it through pretty quickly, which is always a good sign for me (as long as it's not aimed at kids).

I enjoyed the lack of understanding of the situation. I enjoyed the punctuations of the scientists with the main character. I even liked the pseudo-programming bits between chapters.

I thought that it was an interesting setting.
I was a little disappointed that the introduction of the beta-test character was quickly nullified with his removal from the list of suspects - I think it could have been a different (probably a lot longer) story if he had been the main protagonist.

Favourite Character - Halloween.

Anyway, I think that's enough to start.

Discuss!

Duncan

I got my copy of Idlewild way back in July sometime, and it looked like it was a bit short to start on until almost discussuion time. I held out pretty well, but Jury Duty forced my hand at last so I finished it about 2 weeks ago.

Pretty good overall, though I was a bit disappointed at the ending (more on that later).

What I liked:

*The IVR environment descriptions, and each student's 'personal space'. I'd probably come up with something equally far-out (though maybe not as strange as Fantasia's set-up), but I was a little surprised that there was no mention of major changes to their environments. I would probably change my virtual decor once a month or so if given the opportunity, like my desktop background. Maybe it was a lot of work, tweaking all those settings...

*The file system, with your fingers literally 'doing the walking' through it. Probably quicker than a voice system, even with good voice recognition.

*The interludes of their scientist creators, and glipses into the dying of humanity (all except for the very long one, seemed to break things up too much for me).

*The initial unfolding of the amnesia combined with the IVR. I liked discovering the book-world along with the main character, then jumping off once I was planted firmly in the world and knew what was going on.

*Nightgaunts fighting zoot suited smileys - what's not to like?

*The school atmosphere. I thought the cliques, chiding, over-achievers, and disenfranchised students were well done. A believable small, elite school atmosphere.

*The kids having immune system problems out of the pods. Even if you can engineer immunity to all sorts of things, a lot is going to change in 18 years, especially with the dominant species going extinct. Nice touch.

*Maestro's punishment for Hal - buried alive. Pretty nice, if you ignore the psychological ramifications. Quite cruel and apposite, from a glitchy program's point of view.


Things I didn't like:

*The PACE program's visual depiction. Why would the secret, behind the scenes debugger even have a visual representation? Or at least one that screamed 'I'm not normal, I don't belong here!" ? It could have been an ordinary looking fly, or invisible or whatever. No mention that it was trying to get anyone's attention, so why the obviously out of place 'spidery thing'?

*Mercutio as the villain. I didn't mind him being the villain so much as the fact that he wasn't fleshed out as much as some of the others. No real attachment for the reader, so Hal's surprise and shock didn't really seem to bleed over into the reader like it could have if we'd been more emotionally attached. Might as well have been Vashti or Isaac from my point of view.

*Pacing of the ending. Lots of time spent in the IVR descriptions, etc. When it came to the end though, it sort of just sped by, dropped us at the final conflict and then it was done. I think I would have liked to see a little more there, perhaps switching between Hal's group and Mercutio. It would have been nice to see what he was doing, and I don't think the whole hand-waved 'he got some military hardware' would at all have been ruined if we got more info on it. Would have made it more exciting to know Hal and Fantasia were walking into a trap (solves some of my problems with Merc as the villain too, if we could see some more of his motivation here, etc.)



Overall, I liked the characterization (for the characters that were really fleshed out) and relationships between the students. I liked the fact that Nick wasn't afraid to do the onion peel 'world in a world in a world' setting. He didn't go too far with it, nor make it too obvious (though the scientist flash-backs were a big hint there). The kids were messed up, at least a good portion of them were fatally flawed by the time they 'graduated' from thier computer upbringing. Fantasia may not count, but Merc and Simone certainly couldn't hack it on the outside.

I'm not sure I quite like the Gedaechtnis Company plan though: Build 10 humans, genetically engineered to be immune to the major plague, then have them grow up, cure it, and clone humanity? Seems a little out there to me. What if they can't find a cure in their lifetime? What about this Black EP? Can it live without humans? How? Maybe it would already be wiped out by the time the kids grow up - even viruses have to reproduce and get power somehow, usually from their host.

Even with these questions, I didn't mind the premise too much though. The book was pretty short, and it didn't go into specific detail on these things, so I can give the author a little leeway. I didn't see anything that seemed completely inexplicable anyway.

Overall rating: A quick, fun read. Nicely done characters and enough virtual reality amusement to keep me reading. Cool visuals of an earth barren of human life, even if they were brief.

Oh, and to address Duncan's views:

I agree about the setting and pacing (except for the end). Nice observation about beta-boy. I thought he was a little too convenient right when he came in, that's pretty much the point where the ending starts losing a little lustre for me.

Good book.

Kudos for the pick.

It was one of the books which I wanted more of the story at the end [Agree with spacemonkey that ending was pretty quick]. Immediately looked on amazon and found the date for the sequel [Edenborn], which I've now forgotten.

Liked the premise and the characterisation. Really liked the IVR within the IVR. Thought it was kinda ironic.
Wondered if some of the characters should have had a reaction after finding out that their whole life was a lie and the rest of humanity was dead.
Thought Beta-boy could have had a larger role, or appeared earlier in some form.

Thought the actual ending was good, with Hal claiming his own continent and doing nothing to bring humanity back.

Favourite Character: Has to be Halloween.

Good book, thoroughly enjoyed,

Duncan

Did no one else read this book apart from the three of us?

First up, I could only find it in hardcover -- unknown author, unsure about the subject matter, I wasn't willing to take potluck on it. Local library does not have a copy, either.

Then I found this blurb at two other review sites:

"Billed as a near-future thriller, Sagan's first novel plods through terrain all too familiar to SF readers. The narrator awakens with amnesia in a mysterious realm easily identified as a computer-generated virtual reality, fraught with metaphors and symbols. He slowly grasps that his name is Halloween, and that he may have murdered someone called Lazarus. Eventually, he realizes he's one of a handful of high school students attending "Immersive Virtual Reality" classes at the Idlewild IVR Academy, sponsored by the Gedaechtnis Corporation, a multinational biotech company. Intimidated by the villainous teacher, Maestro, and wary of his fellow students, Halloween is determined to recover his memory, apparently damaged in a power surge that threatened to destroy the IVR, and learn what really happened to the missing Lazarus. Despite a compelling twist near the middle, the low tension and meandering plot will likely frustrate the primary target audience, mainstream fans of such futuristic action films as The Matrix and Minority Report. Sagan may not be the next Philip K. Dick or William Gibson, but he shows enough talent here to suggest he can improve on pacing in the promised sequel.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc."

Needless to say, such a writeup did not inspire confidence. So I decided against spending my money on it.

Was surprised to find the following in my inbox this morning:

--------
Duncan,

Just a quick thank you note to you and the other members of the EN World
Book Club. To the best of my knowledge, yours is the first club to select
one of my books, and as a long-time player of RPGs, I'm very flattered to
have Idlewild as one of your selections. Much appreciated!

Best regards,

Nick Sagan
www.nicksagan.com
--------

Cool!

Duncan

detomo said:

Was surprised to find the following in my inbox this morning:
...
Duncan

Click to expand...

Cool.

I wonder if he mixed up the two Duncans posting on this (since I selected it).

Duncan Haldane

That is very cool that the author noticed the discussion. You think he visits EN World, or just regularly googles the book title and/or his own name.

Note: Just did a google search for "Idlewild Nick Sagan" and turned up no ENW links in the first 10+ pages.

Duncan Haldane may be right about the mix up. I was wondering if other posters to this thread had received emails.

Could have been a mix-up.

It may have been that my email address is the one he could find [via my linked website]. As I just found out when I tried to send a message to the other Duncan, it's actually quite hard to send an email to others on ENWorld unless you've got better access rights than a regular user.

Or I could just be missing something