Rating: 
Summary: Realtime Interrupt
Review: All in all, this is sort of a low-key approach to the "man trapped in a false reality" motif. But it certainly has a frightening, paranoiac quality to it. which is sustained the whole way through, despite the author's insistence on avoiding splashy action or behind-the-scenes megalomaniacs. This is a "thinking person's" virtual-reality nightmare scenario, that achieves a kind of creepy near-future edginess, without deathduels, superhero action sequences, or virtual wars breaking out.Our protagonist, Joe Corrigan, just doesn't fit in with the rest of the world. He has: memory problems, marriage problems, psychological problems, and compatibility problems...in fact, he doesn't feel compatible with the rest of the human race. He's coming off a nervous breakdown, and doesn't feel fully recovered; he's pretty much accepted the fact that HE must be the problem, not everyone else. Yet, it's troubling, the way other people ask him probing questions about his apparently odd behaviour, the way people always seem to wonder why he goes against the norm all the time. It seems Joe Corrigan just can't fit in anywhere, or else why does the world find him so odd? The only thing he knows for sure is that he was once a more important fellow, with a more important job--and now he is content to be a bartender (actually, that's an important job!, but I digress from the review) with no desire to climb a corporate ladder or change the world. But then, Joe Corrigan starts to see things a bit differently. Things that seemed to indicate that something wasn't right with him start to look more like hints that he's just fine--and that something is not right with the world. Holes in reality, a certain blandness or sameness to those around him, everyone's inability to develop a sense of humour, and that, uh Leprechaun, that won't go away...and why can Joe take a trip to Japan, but nowhere else. After Joe meets Lilly, who's figured out more than he has, he really learns some startling facts. The world he knows is a big illusion. In fact, he may be responsible for creating it, which makes him wonder who took it over and put him inside? And how can he escape, before the rules get changed? If it all sounds big-concept...well, it is. But, as mentioned, the author insists on playing it cool, not using the plot as an excuse to insert flashy fight scenes, or change 3D characters into 2D warriors who must save the world or die. Instead, we get a scenario that feels like it could happen one day. My only quibble is over an ending that perhaps could have revved it up a notch. The sinister mood is so unsettling throughout, even as the pieces fall into place, that perhaps, yes, the only thing that might have made it better is a stronger ending. Not flashier, mind you, just stronger, scarier. Nevertheless, it's still a winner in my world.
Rating: 
Summary: For techheads only, and patient ones at that.
Review: I kind of like Hogan. Unfortunately, I just finished rereading his "Voyage from Yesteryear," which is vastly superior to this artificial intelligence tale. "Realtime Interrupt" is for techheads only, and those who love office and major-corporation politics. Both are covered in mind-numbing detail, while personal interactions and characterization get generally short shrift. Will the protagonist's cutting-edge AI project be shunted aside by corporate bigwigs in favor of a rival formulation that is very similar, but focuses on a higher level of the brain? Will the protagonist wind up trapped in a dead-end career path instead of making millions? If these kinds of questions fascinate you, you've come to the right place. This book might have satisfied me in 1960, but SF has moved on to a higher and better place since then.
Rating:
Summary: Positive
Review: I think, this is my favorite book by James Patrick Hogan. A good story. If you start with drums, you should ends with canon. Thats the way I liked.
Rating: 
Summary: World going wrong? Hit control-C
Review: James P. Hogan is one of my two favorite living SF writers and the only one of the two who writes "hard" SF (the other one is Spider Robinson). I've been reading his stuff since the late 1970s and I think this novel is one of his best. The premise, of course, is that virtual reality has reached such an advanced stage of development that it's not easy to distinguish the "virtual" from the "real"; the essential plot element is that Joe Corrigan is trapped inside a simulation he helped to create. The reader knows all of this from the beginning, but for obvious reasons (and some that are not so obvious) it takes the protagonist a while to work it out. That's where much of the tension in the novel comes from. It's so clear to the reader what's going on that you'll want to reach into the page and say, "Joe, man, wake up and _think_. Don't you _know_ where you are?" This effect is heightened by a couple of really really obvious details that you'll almost physically itch for Joe to notice. But much of what makes the story _interesting_ is the extremely plausible tale Hogan tells about the development of the technology itself. Hogan does this sort of thing better than nearly any other SF writer past or present, and this novel is no exception; indeed, when virtual reality really does reach this level of development, it may well have gotten there by roughly the path Hogan describes. Anyway, I can't tell you much else without spoiling the story. All I can do is mention in a general way that, as usual with Hogan, the story is full of mind-blowingly cool touches. But speaking of spoilers, here's a warning: just inside the front cover, the current edition includes an excerpt that you probably shouldn't read before you read the book. Somebody made a bad editorial decision here: the excerpt comes from near the _end_ of the book and it gives some things away too early. Hogan is all-but-unargubaly the finest writer of "hard" SF today. Start here or start somewhere else -- but if you like good SF, start somewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: An O.K. Hard Science Fiction Story
Review: Mr. Hogan always does a good job with the science in his novels, but this one just wasn't a very interesting story. It's an enjoyable enough read, but it's not one I'll ever read again. Mr. Hoagn has written several novels that I've read 3 or 4 times, this just won't be one of them. In this story Joe Corrigan finds himslef a misfit/outcast in a humorless world filled with identity-less humans. Eventually he realizes that he is inside a computer-simulated world that he helped create. He spends the rest of the novel trying to figure out what went wrong, can he leave, and should he leave. He finally solves the puzzle at the end of the novel, but the problem and the key/solution were obvious even before the author revealed that it was a simulation. If you have a lot of time on your hands, then go ahead and get the book. But if you only have time to read a certain number of books this month, skip this one. (Sorry Mr. Hogan)
Rating:
Summary: An O.K. Hard Science Fiction Story
Review: Mr. Hogan always does a good job with the science in his novels, but this one just wasn't a very interesting story. It's an enjoyable enough read, but it's not one I'll ever read again. Mr. Hoagn has written several novels that I've read 3 or 4 times, this just won't be one of them. In this story Joe Corrigan finds himslef a misfit/outcast in a humorless world filled with identity-less humans. Eventually he realizes that he is inside a computer-simulated world that he helped create. He spends the rest of the novel trying to figure out what went wrong, can he leave, and should he leave. He finally solves the puzzle at the end of the novel, but the problem and the key/solution were obvious even before the author revealed that it was a simulation. If you have a lot of time on your hands, then go ahead and get the book. But if you only have time to read a certain number of books this month, skip this one. (Sorry Mr. Hogan)
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites.
Review: One of my favorite books in my growing collection of what I call "rogue AI" stories, Realtime Interrupt takes the Turing Test and stands it on its head by asking, "Could you tell the difference between an AI and a human, if no one told you that you were adminstering the test in the first place?" The ending gets a little silly. But as a follower of AI technology, I greatly enjoyed watching the dynamics of the characters. The scene where one of the AIs attempts to tell a joke is perhaps my favorite moment in my entire collection.
Rating:
Summary: Standard Hogan
Review: Realtime Interrupt is very much a typical James Hogan novel. His standard formula has been to take a technology that may be reachable in the near future, find a beliveable way to achieve it, and wrap a novel with interesting people and plot around the concept. Realtime Interrupt tackles two problems at once, artificial intelligence, long a favorite subject of Hogan's, and virtual reality. Certain things, such as the fact that the world Joe wakes up in at the beginning is an artificial world, are made plain from the start, even if he takes a while to discover it. As such, it does echo some of the themes of The Matrix, but without the gunfights and (bleah) goth elements. In many ways this book is "anti-cyberpunk," with a lot of the themes and ideas in a "normal" world instead of a corporate-trash ridden dystopia. As usual, the technology is fascinating, the characters are engaging, even they are not the most well rounded, the plot moves at a brisk, even pace, and the world (in this case Pittsburgh and Ireland) feels natural. Despite not having any real plot *twists*, it never quite went in the direction I was expecting, either. Joe is not the typical Hogan hero, having immersed himself in the world of political infighting before settling down in a more sedate role. Realtime Interrupt is a good book for anyone with an interest in technology and a nice understated yarn.
Rating:
Summary: Standard Hogan
Review: Realtime Interrupt is very much a typical James Hogan novel. His standard formula has been to take a technology that may be reachable in the near future, find a beliveable way to achieve it, and wrap a novel with interesting people and plot around the concept. Realtime Interrupt tackles two problems at once, artificial intelligence, long a favorite subject of Hogan's, and virtual reality. Certain things, such as the fact that the world Joe wakes up in at the beginning is an artificial world, are made plain from the start, even if he takes a while to discover it. As such, it does echo some of the themes of The Matrix, but without the gunfights and (bleah) goth elements. In many ways this book is "anti-cyberpunk," with a lot of the themes and ideas in a "normal" world instead of a corporate-trash ridden dystopia. As usual, the technology is fascinating, the characters are engaging, even they are not the most well rounded, the plot moves at a brisk, even pace, and the world (in this case Pittsburgh and Ireland) feels natural. Despite not having any real plot *twists*, it never quite went in the direction I was expecting, either. Joe is not the typical Hogan hero, having immersed himself in the world of political infighting before settling down in a more sedate role. Realtime Interrupt is a good book for anyone with an interest in technology and a nice understated yarn.
Rating:
Summary: Hogan pulls it through again
Review: This is another one of those novels that make me wish that Amazon used a slightly more flexible rating system. To me a three star rating means that the book is either free of significant faults but fails to excel or excels in some way but contains significant faults. On the other hand I believe a rating of four stars indicates that the book is both free of significant faults AND excels in some way. This novel transcends this rating scale and does not fit. I do think that this book contains significant faults, which I will explore further, but I also believe it excels in certain areas far higher then any average book does. For this reason I rate the book four stars. Realtime Interrupt by James Patrick Hogan is an exploratory novel. What I mean by exploratory is that the novel explores human reaction to stress events that don't exist today. The topic of exploration in this novel is virtual reality and to a limited extent artificial intelligence. I know what some of you may be thinking. Virtual Reality exists today. Well, virtual reality most certainly does not exist in the way in which it is shown in this tale. The story follows one persons story in several stages of the virtual reality experience, creation, testing and moral questioning. There are several other well-defined characters included but they are in the story in as much as they impact or are impacted by the primary character. I really can't go too much further into the story without ruining some rather clever plot twists. The novel excels in its painting of the primary characters personal growth. The book also does an excellent job of painting a realistic picture of the science involved. This is always a strong aspect of Hogan stories. The weakest part of the book, in my opinion, is the ancillary stories that surround the primary character and his tale. The book seemed at times bogged down by detail, which was necessary but perhaps served up a tad awkwardly. All faults aside this book was a great read. This is one of those novels, which you read and you keep reading even if it meanders a bit on the way because you absolutely must read the conclusion. In many way it reminds me of Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card in that respect. A great read and a book I can recommend to virtually anyone.
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