Diary of a Network Geek

Late last week, I finished Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman.

I’ve never read anything by Grossman, but, as this is his first novel, that shouldn’t be surprising. I’m sure he’ll have more out soon, though, if this is any example of his work.
Soon I Will Be Invincible is the latest in a growing new sub-genre of literature; the superhero novel. Granted, George R. R. Martin has been doing this with his Wild Cards series for quite some time, but, for whatever reason, it just didn’t seem to grow beyond his anthologies, until recently. I would be very impressed if any of the recent additions to the genre are better than this. It really is quite good.

The story opens with a chapter from the point of view of Doctor Impossible, imprisoned super-genius and super-villain. He gives us a quick look at his world, both inside and outside of prison. I think the immediacy of starting out a book about larger-than-life heroes from the point of view of their chief villain really helped draw the reader into the story. At least, it drew me in a bit more. As a writer, though, I found it slightly hard to suspend my disbelief reading from the point of view of a genius. Theoretically, the character speaking is infinitely more intelligent than I am, and most people, for that matter, but I’m fairly certain that, as clever as he is, the author is not, in fact, an evil genius. So, how do you write a character more intelligent than you? And, Dr. Impossible is writing from jail. Hello? How much of a genius can he be if he got caught, right? Well, I think I laughed out loud when he made the same comment. Then, of course, he goes on to explain how that worked.

The chapters alternated point of view between Dr. Impossible and the more-or-less heroine, Fatale. Fatale is a female cyborg recruited to join the Champions, greatest super-team of the moment. Or, more precisely, the New Champions, who are the latest incarnation of the group that defeated Dr. Impossible the last time. But, she’s recruited to help find CoreFire, the World’s Greatest Hero, who’s gone missing. While she and the other New Champions are trying to solve that riddle, Dr. Impossible breaks out of prison and starts on his latest nefarious scheme to dominate the Earth.

Yeah, I know, it all sounds a little over the top, but, honestly? It’s not when you’re reading it. It really reads about like you’d expect the average super-hero comic book to read, if it didn’t have any pictures. It even has all the twists and turns and secret lives that the better comic books have. It even has secret government programs, forgotten past lives, and murky origins. And, not just in the form of Fatale’s past work for the NSA, who also, allegedly, made her.
Naturally, a lot of the time is spent looking closely at the normally hidden life of Dr. Impossible. Actually, based on the title, I’d have almost expected even more of a focus than there was. Besides, villains are almost always more interesting than the heroes anyway.

All in all, Soon I Will Be Invincible was a good book. It delivered everything that it promised and then some. I like Old Man’s War better, but, I would certainly recommend Soon I Will Be Invincible to anyone looking for a good, quick read that’s not the usual fare. Well worth the money I spent.

“Give a thing a name and it will somehow come to be.”
Names matter. Network device names matter a lot and, since it looks like I’ll be redoing my home network, I’ve been thinking about names and naming conventions. I’ve worked with just about any and all naming conventions that you might imagine. Everything from the very practical LocationFunctionSequencenumber scheme (ie. HouAcct01, ChiMIS13, etc. ) to servers named for NASA spacecraft (ie. Challenger, Discovery, etc. ) I’ve seen stuff named for fantasy fiction characters and Greek mythology and Milton’s angels or devils. I even knew a guy who named his routers after dead musicians just so he could send out pings and see the response “Elvis is alive”. No joke. I personally have also used titles of positions in the Yakuza gang structure, as well as various authors and artists. I’ve even heard of guys using their favorite cartoon characters.
Personally, I like to have something with an underlying meaning to it. So, for instance, when I used the Yakuza schema, the main NDS server was “Kumicho”, which is the “boss of bosses”. And, on a whim, I named the printer Hokusai, after the famous artist. The guy who used angels named them based on what each angel had providence over, such as naming his “alerter” Gabriel, who blew his horn to sound the end of the world, if memory serves.
I’ve thought about using both Norse and Voodoo god names, since they’re somewhat unusual, but their “function” is well documented. I’ve also thought about using the various sefiroth of the Kabbalistic “Tree of Life”, for similar reasons. Greek mythology is far too passé to use and, for home, the LocationFunctionSequence method just isn’t fun enough.
So, anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

(BTW, the quote is from George R. R. Martin in Dying of the Light which is one of the greatest “soft” science-fiction books I’ve ever read. It’s perfect after a breakup.)