Category: Novel

The Five Internets

Posted on by bill kandiliotis

A look at the mind-mapping process behind the development of future of the internet, or The Five Internets as it ended up being called in the novel.

The Cobweb

This is the old internet, the dysfunctional mess we use today. In the near future, this will still be around but no one in their right mind would want to use it.

Satnet

Designed and deployed by Meganat’s Jim Dochersky, this private internet utilises low-earth-orbit satellites to connect paying customers.

Ambercast

A closed Wide-Area-Network, this optical web is the first private and secure internet used by governments and corporations.

Episoft

A peer-to-peer, NearMe-Area-Network, this open internet applies handsets that act as relay mesh-stations for communication traffic. The more devices in the vicinity, the faster and deeper the coverage.

Angry Tree

This is the hacker’s internet that funnels into existing communication networks, employing ‘dryware’ to create branches between them.

User Review – Google Books

Posted on by bill kandiliotis

A Hostile Takeover

Front Cover
LULU Press, 2014 – Fiction – 572 pages
1 Review
The Bluezone: Somewhere deep within this last bastion of democratic society, segregated from the chaotic slums and destitute refugee camps, lurks a technology that could either push civilization further into the abyss, or bring forth its salvation. Struggling to save his innovative hybrid techno-finance company from malign threats leftover from twenty-two years of severe economic depression, a young uberman ends up fighting for his life against ruthless enemies. Not that James Tucker, a war veteran and corporate Uberman by the age of nineteen, and a staunch proponent of alternative economic theorem, minds putting his life on the line. At stake is the destruction of his country, the disillusionment of his fans, and the prospect of betraying a promise he made to his daughter. THE BLUEZONE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN.

More »

What people are saying – Write a review

User Review – Flag as inappropriate

When I scored this freebie there was never a thought in my mind I would end up compelled to go through the motions and give it a review. Yet here I am. The pleasure of knowing your reading some little gold nugget that no one else has discovered is why I scavenge all the free ebooks I can download, looking for that little gem. This I’m ashamed to say is one of those. As with most free crap out there you read the first three chapters, you give up and move on to the next. This one I gave up after the third chapter, only to return to it a weeks later.
Why? I just had to find out why the AI’s in this book were so retarded. The fact that they “may or may not believe the human world actually exist” intrigued me. Next thing you know I’m sucked in. The story is set in a familiar high tech corporate world, but with added brutality. We have a protagonist facing off with ”uber gangsters, some friendly, some not so friendly, some just plain deadly. Nearly everyone here is a bad guy. It’s a world where there is no respite from violence, threatened, present or otherwise. Even in the non-action chapters there is a sense of danger about to befall any given character. There is enough future tech stuff here to appease fans of future tech stuff. There is plenty of nasty politics and dubious notions of economics. There are jetpacks, self driven automobiles, ‘turbocopters’, five or so different internets and some really retarded AI’s and no I never found out why they were so stupid but I did find them very unlike what we’d expect AI’s to be. There is also some really crazy dialogue, some of it hilarious but some outbursts were so weirdly demented at one point even the main AI was left scratching its virtual head. And after trudging through the first act, fighting through the second and free falling in the third towards a preposterous finale you come to the end and feel a tad guilty for enjoying this book. Very much like a B grade scifi flick, you’re sucked in and because you have nothing to compare it to you can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad.

Book Review: A Hostile Takeover by Bill Kandiliotis

Posted on by bill kandiliotis
Book Review: A Hostile Takeover by Bill Kandiliotis
cover

Review 3 of 5 Stars

I was provided with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I never imagined when I started this blog that it would take me a year to get around to reading something, but it has. Nevertheless, this was a really good story. It was action packed and moved at a good pace. Unfortunately, the copy I received had numerous misspelled words, incorrect word usage, missing words and the like.  Though this made me pause at many points, I did enjoy the story and found myself invested in the main character, James Tucker.

This story is written in a time when the government has all but collapsed and the world is run by corporate thugs and gangs that run the corporations. There are a lot of things about this book that I can’t even begin to give a succinct explanation about, such as zoids and hypergoblins, which are technological entities that assist or inhibit humans during their daily lives. Imagine that your cell phone earpiece was sentient with a personality of its own, but wasn’t quite sure the human world existed. I’m sure you can see how this could become a problem given the gang situation in this story and yet that explanation probably isn’t detailed enough to really give you an idea of what these little gizmos can do.

Overall, I enjoyed the story. It kept me on my toes and was definitely an original piece. I have yet to read another story like this one. Not to say that they don’t exist, but so many books and so little time. If it weren’t for the fact that it could use some serious proofing, I would heartily recommend it. Given the fairly serious lack of editing on the Kindle version I received,  I’ll leave this one up to your judgment. If you can stand the mistakes, I think the story itself was really interesting. Despite my comments about the proofing, I found myself coming back to the story to see where the next chapter led as the main character spent the majority of the book in a convoluted mess of corporate thugs and running for his life.

RINTEXX DOWN

Posted on by bill kandiliotis
embryonicstemcells

“This is what THEY want. To continue shackling us with death and taxes. The destruction of Rintexx is evidence of this. They wiped out a commercial breakthrough in stem cell technology that would have made death less certain and now THEY are mobilising to clamp down on any school of economic thought that has the potential to make taxation unnecessary.”

AITHEOS

ROOT//AITHEOS/STEM//9F77.SW32.PP#5.R7G5.%765.&C#S.5@#D.Y#*6.89B8.B!WE//glies.branch/4242

Corporaterrorism

Posted on by bill kandiliotis

“The counterterrorism measures of the past were set up in a vain attempt to thwart a phantom or at best, a scattered enemy. The proverbial terrorist threat that was supposed to threaten our way of life dissipated as the global economic downturn let loose a different breed of bedlam and carnage.

Political terrorism never works; it only serves to galvanize your opponents to behave even worse.

Economical terrorism has proved different. It actually works. It has rendered anti-terrorism laws ineffectual and has frightened off even the most unscrupulous of media moguls. No one talks about it. No one dares do anything about it.”

Trixani

SATURNET:06621\\Trixani\TROG\corporaterrorism.speech

Meganat

Posted on by bill kandiliotis

confederation_of_nations_flag_by_rvbomally-d5kiyh5‘At which point will Meganat declare itself a sovereign state?’ – Goonsville

‘At a point when international competition laws make it impossible for Meganat to operate, the company will ultimately declare itself a sovereign state.’ – CYFERON

‘How would they claim legitimacy?’ – Goonsville

‘They’ll start by lobbying as many nations as they can. Small ones at first, the ones that would benefit from such a deal, get them to recognize them as an autonomous nation.’ – CYFERON

Shadowbark

Posted on by bill kandiliotis

“Who came up with this system?” – Bubblehead43

“Which system? Legal slavery? The Government!” – Diktator_J

“There is no such thing. International law is clear, No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” – Shadowbark

“Dude, human trafficking is the largest industry in the world today. Figures vary, but around 620 million people worldwide are officially classed as economic slaves.” Diktator_J

“It is still outlawed by every single government in the international community.” Shadowbark

“In Arctica, debt bondage is legal. A person becomes a slave to work off a debt, in which the length and nature of work is never defined, so it becomes a never-ending cycle with the debt being passed down to the children thereby enslaving offspring. That’s 80% of the world’s population.” – Diktator_J

“That does not define slavery. Free will is at play here.” – Shadowbark

“Contract slavery! A homeless, starving person these days can sell themselves into slavery. You work for some bastard corporation without pay, and in return, you get food and shelter. Where is the choice in that?” – Diktator_J

“Having one human being working for another in order to live is slavery. Shouldn’t basic necessities in life be free?” – Bubblehead43

“We have to work in order to get money in order to buy shelter and food to live. If we don’t work, we don’t get any money to buy food and we die.” Shadowbark

“We have the technology, if we really wanted to.” – Bubblehead43

“Bubblehead, you’re a fucking idiot.” Shadowbark

WAVE://2T33:ENG7:55Y1:O009:11QW:TOST/shadowbark.vox

The City State

Posted on by bill kandiliotis
future-city-wallpaper

“The modern trend towards city states during the past fifty years is mostly due to the demand for a simpler and broader trading system. It originated with the formation of an economic model that bypassed the hindrances of a myriad free trade agreements.”

Frank Tucker – CEO of MercurEx

The_City_State ^3xtract0r^TopFeeder^^CORE

The Corporatist Manifesto

Posted on by bill kandiliotis

“Having the government against you is a bad thing. It all boils down to a matter of trust. How can you trust these short-term, career bureaucrats whose only goal is advancing into a position of influence, use this influence to benefit, and then retire handsomely? They promise the world but forget you the minute your usefulness as a political pawn ceases. They don’t really care about the individual. It isn’t their job to care.”

FRANK TUCKER – CEO of MercurEx
ca8caa43-8b65-461d-a8b6-f787c3326efe

>>02.64545.the_corporatist_manifesto^frank_tucker^mercurex^CORE

Travion

Posted on by bill kandiliotis

“Suicide by leaping from a tall office block during times of recession is a myth spawning from the old century. After Octavo A. committed murder suicide when he jumped to his death and skull crashed his former boss, an event he shared with a billion people to date, the practice has become the past time for fatalists, pessimists and miscreants alike.

At one point during deepest part of the depression, around recession nadir seven, a suicide a day was purported  to have occurred. Now when you look outside a window and see some poor devil flying down to zeroland, one can’t help but think, are the gangs now disguising their murders as suicides.”

TRAVION

CAST23533XCT10_TRAVION^MOJOBLUE^^CORE

Why we have Five Internets

Posted on by bill kandiliotis
cache_39_de_39de771649bc472101b1c6432c166bc7

“This is why we have five Internet platforms right now. When hacker/pirates created the Angry Tree Protocol it hamstrung the original Cobweb. Two secure, private networks emerged from the anarchy. One using optical technology, the other satellite based, they tried to monetise information to the point of squeezing the average citizen out of the educational loop. Next thing you know, Episoft’s peer to peer system gives free access back to the people. Not as good as Definition+ as provided by Satnet and Ambercast, but I invested my clients money in them anyway. Look at them now.”

James Tucker, CEO of MercurEx

>>james_tucker^mercurex^CORE

Economy of War

Posted on by bill kandiliotis

The depression has endured for 22 years; fuelled by ecological wars brought on by extreme climate change, i.e. drought and flooding.

silver-bullets

Now, as the nadir of the ninth recession grips the world, the warring parties have finally run out of hard currency.

Officially, all the warring factions are still at war, but technically, their military campaigns have stalled. The arms industry finds it unprofitable to keep supplying weapons to penniless factions as promised resource assets are almost never delivered or hardly secure.

Now, towards the end of the depression, the corporate sector has built up mercenary armies in an effort to secure these resources. This added security has helped ease the depression, by allowing the bankster class to make money again.

Economy_Of_War^FeederHouse^^CORE

Superzoids die Superquick

Posted on by bill kandiliotis
Superzoid

“As a new generation adapts to the new oral technology, literacy rates are set to plunge within the next two decades. Already the cheaper manifestations of zoids have made it unnecessary for a vast number of humans to read or write. With the cost of education skyrocketing, the use of language will inevitably devolved into what it was millennia ago.”

JUNK_D

Superzoids_die_Superquick^Junk.D^^CORE

Reform or Die

Posted on by bill kandiliotis
Social Capitalism

“I think we in the Old West had a few decades to improve the economic model and failed to do so, so now we have lost the game.” – zassygirl19

“All of the end of the world scenarios such as economic collapse will be in response to the government’s actions. The government is the biggest threat to the city-state especially when you have people like Edwards and Dochersky in positions of power with virtually no oversight. The Senate would not dare challenge Dochersky.” – 060Prepper090

“If we don’t do something soon, the shit will be over for the type of social-capitalism that many of us have lived through and thought was the best type of capitalism.” – zanzara2141 

– SATURNET:00980\\lnardozi\TROG\reform_or_die.comments

TRAVION

Posted on by bill kandiliotis

“In most areas of the world, food security is no longer a given, thus over 800 million people are poised to perish by the time we celebrate the New Year. Water and land mismanagement, climate destabilization, neo-colonialism and kleptocracies have robbed the majority of humanity of its land and capital. Wealth has been squandered protecting wealth so the capacity for any viable reinvestment in humanity has now become non-existent. What lies ahead is unprecedented, unpredictable and very, very dark.”

Travion

CAST434456XCT66_TRAVION^MOJOBLUE^^CORE