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Title: The Bug: A Novel by Ellen Ullman ISBN: 0385508603 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.09
Rating: 4
Summary: Black humor at a software startup
Comment: The main character of The Bug is a PhD dropout from the academic world, hired to do entry-level quality assurance for a small startup in the early 1980's -- who ends up as a high-tech multi-millionaire. The story is that of the first bug she finds, an elusive insect that destroys a life and several careers, before it's finally trapped.
The Bug is pure black humor. Ellen Ullman has captured the tedium of debugging code in the early 1980's, the petty-mindededness of some of the programmers, and the stress of working under impossible deadlines in programming sweatshops. It's just a pity that the author felt she had to define so many computing terms. Gags aren't funny if you have to explain them. Maybe she didn't realize how many of these terms have moved into everyday use since she was a programmer.
The cause of The Bug, as it's finally revealed, is a letdown. No [...]developer would have missed it for an entire year. But it doesn't really matter -- the book is meant to have a comic-book quality. This is life at the margins of reality. I'd recommend it for its campy spoof of life at a software shop in the early days of PC development.
Rating: 3
Summary: Wan and Bloodless
Comment: First, let me state that I have a lot of respect for Ms. Ullman as an Essayist on computer technology and techie org behavior.
Being a refugee from geekdom, THE BUG: A NOVEL accurately describes the technology and socio-dynamics of writing software in those bygone days. However, the novel is wan and bloodless. Ms. Ullman's prose is crisp and clean to read, but it fails to convey strong emotion. In particular, she misses the potential for the humor, ironic, puerile, or otherwise in the story.
THE BUG: A NOVEL is a read that evokes in me a lot of nostalgia, but it is hardly, "gripping, exciting, and compelling".
Rating: 4
Summary: An assured, salutary debut
Comment: Among other works, Ellen Ullman has previously written the non-fiction CLOSE TO THE MACHINE and "Programming the post-human: computer science redefines 'life.'" It was the gosh-wow aspects of these two works that convinced me to anticipate, seek, and read her first, vivid novel, THE BUG. (What an excellent metaphor! The 'bug' does more than double duty: there is the software bug, the bugs in Ethan's life, how Joanna bugs him, etc.)
The surprise? That someone who has spent the majority of her adult life writing code - you know, 1s and 0s, Boolean logic gates, etc - could so artfully employ the writer's art of metaphor, simile, misdirection, style, and a winking eye (always anathema when programming computers)! Within the novel, Ullman shares computer-programming arcana that could be, should be fodder for inducing sleep... yet isn't. Where do these writers come from? How do they do it - i.e., make it appear so easy?
And yet nothing adequately prepares the reader for THE BUG. Wow. Ellen Ullman breathes life into each character, especially core protagonists Ethan Levin and Roberta Walton. For example, as master-coder Ethan races to find and extinguish the bug in his software, he finally realizes that he must first de-code his life; unfortunately, he makes this 'vision quest' unaided and pays the price. And when things happen (to say more would be to divulge too much), all the birds come home to roost. Near novel's end, a dead-on comment made to Ethan from another character galvanizes him to action. His life will never be the same. Ullman has also excellently foreshadowed the novel's seemingly unexpected dénouement; her use of Conway's GAME OF LIFE as metaphor, as meaning, is both expert and masterful. The novel's theme resolves in a coruscating coda to the main story.
If you are uncertain about reading this novel, try the pages that begin Part 2 (pp 87-95); there is no inherent betrayal of the novel's secrets. Moreover, they were particularly fun to read, and redolent of the late 1990s.
What an assured, salutary debut. Highly recommended.
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Title: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents by Ellen Ullman, Ellen Ullmann ISBN: 0872863328 Publisher: City Lights Books Pub. Date: 1997 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson ISBN: 0399149864 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 03 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon ISBN: 0385509456 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 17 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood ISBN: 0385503857 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Bangkok 8 by John Burdett ISBN: 1400040442 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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