Traveling Man

So I'm working my way through the library books I mentioned earlier.

I finished The Traveler yesterday.

It's kind of like 1984 and the Illuminati books redone for Web 2.0, complete with Ayn Rand-ian exposition on the Vast Machine, a term for the omnipresent surveillance society.

It's somewhat entertaining -- kind of fluffy between the anti-authoritarian screeds. Elements of swords and sorcery, too -- I was reminded of the Stephen King book 'The Talisman.'

When I got to the last chapter, I said, uh-oh, because there were far too few pages left to wrap up the hanging plot points.

That instantly says "first of a series," which a reading of the dust jacket confirmed.

Further reading of the dust jacket says that the author, John Twelve Hawks, claims to live "off the grid," so he (or she) would presumably live the whole cypherpunk/anonymous remailer/cash-only/Blank lifestyle.

Might it be a clever marketing hook? Hrm, let's see -- the publisher has a series of Websites that reference locations in the book that looks to be the basis of an alternate reality game for marketing and buzzing up the series. Nah.