Recommended reading is "The Unincorporated Man"

[brecklundin]

Given the timely nature of today's US Supreme court ruling establishing corporations as individuals under the US Constitution, I am recommending folks read The Unincorporated Man. Thankfully i read it before today's ruling or I might not have been able to stomach it...now I want to read it again...weird, huh?

It was an enjoyable read and has me re-evaluating my already jaundice eye for how the AmeriCorps & SuperGlobalMegaCorps run our lives already...I have never pondered the way people could be manipulated to accept things as proposed in this novel. I could see it happening, eventually and even along the lines of how it happened in the novel. No, I am not saying this will happen, but it would not be an impossible thing given time and the right combination of circumstances. To me that was what made it enjoyable.

Now the bad part, I found that the ebook version is still around $14-$15 (B&N, Amazon...not Borders but Fictionwise had it for $25) while the HB version can be had for under $10 on Amazon. I am pondering to write Amazon that currently one can buy the hardcover for LESS than the ebook version. I doubt they care though. It's a relatively new title t a bit under 1yr old, and at that price I almost suggest just buying a use print edition from Amazon for somewhere around $5 including shipping.

I would say it is not quite as good as Snow Crash (took me three reads to really "get" that book), but better than Jennifer Government (I liked Jennifer Government for the concepts of the book more than the writing though the writing was good enough) and right up there in the sort of character driven novels RAH would write. I also would say it is less SciFi and more a look at a society altered simply out of a sense of survival of the species and nothing else. I don't want to post spoilers because I enjoy books where I read nothing more than the front and back covers before diving into them...I find reading a story with out any preconceptions to be a great way to enjoy a novel, for it's sheer entertainment aspect, the first time through.

I suspect it would also be an interesting book for a book club which enjoys looking at how societies function and where certain aspects of today's world could eventually lead...