The Die, Ring of Fire and Bellwhether

Hi Readers and Typers
   All three of these books were obtained at the SFPL-Main.
   "The Die" by Jude Berman is a story about a group of rather
naive IP workers who live communally. They are forced out of HSys,
the IT company where they work by a group of rivals.  They do
not understand why the Ks group has done this and investigate
to find that in the future in which they live a Russian group is
using Smart Light in an app to put images of the Dictator of the
USA which is split up into West Coast and North-Eastern republics
while the Mid-West is under the thumb of the epynomous dictator
  referred to as the "Dick".  Some of them escaped from the USA
because the Dick threatened their lives and murdered their relatives.
There is a relentless shift in viewpoints between members of the
but we have a better happy ending than many other stories.
Berman holds a recent copyright but the book is
published by Spark Press (www.gosparkpress.com)
at $17.95 in the USA.
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"Ring of Fire"is an anthology of stories set mostly in
the town of Grantville which was dumped into 1632, edited by
the inventor of the concept, the late Eric Flint.  It
is full of great stories by great authors who provided
these shorter stories to link to forthcoming books.
It includes stories by Weber, Lackey and a host of
other authors who seem to be competent in the genre.
This is a BAEN Book from 2004 and I felt an appreciation
of it was worth writing as I enjoyed re-reading it.
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"Bellwhether" by Connie Willis published by Bantam Spectra
in 1996 at $7.99 is the story of young scientist researching
fads.  "Whatever caused the bob cuts of the 1920s?" is her
current line of research. She works in a company perhaps
over-managed and provided with chaos-inflicting personnel.
A side event is meeting a man studing information diffusion
among mammals.  He wants macques to study but settles for
sheep and they finally figure out that the bellwhether is
key to answer some questions.  In the mean time they
wrestle with getting around Flip, the chaotic mail person
for the company.
     This  was fun.
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b l i s s dash s f 4 e v e r at d s l e x t r e m e dot c o m