Home > Categories > Books > Sci-Fi > Turing's Delirium review
The town of Río Fugitivo is on the verge of a social revolution - not a revolution of strikes and street protests but a war waged electronically, where computer viruses are the weapons and hackers the revolutionaries.
In this war of information, the lives of a variety of characters become entangled: Kandinsky, the mythic leader of a group of hackers fighting the government and transnational companies; Albert, the founder of Black Chamber, a state security firm charged with deciphering the secret codes used in the information war; and Miguel Sáenz, Black Chamber's most famous code breaker, who begins to suspect that his work is not as innocent as he once supposed. All converge to create an edgy, fast-paced story about personal responsibility and complicity in a world defined by the ever-increasing gulfs between the global and the local, government and society, the virtual and the real.
Set against the backdrop of the globalisation crisis, Turing's Delirium is a modern chapter in the age-old fight between oppressed and oppressor.
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I do so love a good cyberthriller, with topical and technically-accurate references... and this story certainly does carry all these elements... and please forgive me if this sounds strange... but I just think something must have gotten slightly lost in translation, or perhaps I am unable to sink into the cultural aspects of South American culture...
I found the story quite good, if a little dry in places, but the cyber side of it was still quite cool. However, by far the saving grace for me were the detailed references relating to historical cryptologists and cryptanalysts... I found it gave me a stunning insight into the importance of crypto systems and how they helped shape human history, and are affecting human cultural evolution.
Overall, though the book was good, it wasn't great, in that it was steeped in cultural significance I was unable to attach or empathise with, and it lacked some of the 'punch' I was hoping for. And the ending left me feeling very, VERY sorry for poor Turing.
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