The Traveller by John Twelve Hawkes  Yet another book either influenced by or riding on the coattails of such "simulacra/simulation" media as The Matrix. A book-of-the-month club selection, much is made of the author's obscurity - there's no bio, only a note that he "lives off the grid," suggesting that his books are a loosely veiled fiction of his own life. All this aside, Traveller is a pretty decent vaguely sfnal adventure novel that takes itself a wee bit too seriously. I was also irked by the fact that this is the first book in a projected series (though not advertised as such), so it contains no real resolution. Whatever the pros and cons of the Matrix series as series, the first film was a self-contained unit; there's no reason why this couldn't be as well.

Originally read October 2005