At 7:06 AM 5/31/96, Timothy C. May wrote:
It sounds like a "make.money.fast.by.promoting.this.book" scam to me. ... In any case, I decided to waste a few minutes skimming the opening parts of this "online media event novel" and discovered at the URL you cited:
"Complete this brief survey and receive the first two and a half chapters of the book free! Upon submission, you will be given access to these chapters of The Truth Machine......"
Utter bullshit. If the book was any good it would have a real publisher, not an opinion survey.
I confess to eventually yielding to temptation and answering the "survey" questions (though I just made up some semi-random answers so as to get Chapters 1-3, then 4-12, etc.). It was truly bad stuff. Terribly written, confusing, no character development except in a cartoonish way. One correspondent chided me for saying that if the book was any good it would have a real publisher, citing the opportunities for using the Web to self-publish. Well, the book is coming out in _printed_ form, for $20 or somesuch, from a press I've never heard of. If more than 500 copies are sold to actual paying, third-party customers, I'll be surprised. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."