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Circuits of the Wind #1
Circuits of the Wind: A Legend of the Net Age
THE LYRIC STORY OF THE NET GENERATION—GROWING UP AND COMING OF AGE ON THE INTERNET
The Internet is everywhere now, but Ray Valentine saw it first explode.
CIRCUITS OF THE WIND is the story of Ray's quest to find himself as he grows up wandering the computer underground—the wild, global outback that existed before the net went mainstream. How else does an end-of-century slacker reach out to the world from Sohola, that northern state that's a little more Midwest than it is New England? The net holds the key to what he's after—but even as he pioneers this virtual world, the veneer of his real life begins to crack.
VOLUME ONE of the CIRCUITS OF THE WIND trilogy follows a young Raymond from his '70s childhood—and first gropings with the telephone—to the home computers and bulletin boards of the '80s, where he leads a double life as a wanderer of the wires. But when even his virtual best friend unplugs, Raymond might have to leave it, too—because isn't real life supposed to be offline?
The Internet is everywhere now, but Ray Valentine saw it first explode.
CIRCUITS OF THE WIND is the story of Ray's quest to find himself as he grows up wandering the computer underground—the wild, global outback that existed before the net went mainstream. How else does an end-of-century slacker reach out to the world from Sohola, that northern state that's a little more Midwest than it is New England? The net holds the key to what he's after—but even as he pioneers this virtual world, the veneer of his real life begins to crack.
VOLUME ONE of the CIRCUITS OF THE WIND trilogy follows a young Raymond from his '70s childhood—and first gropings with the telephone—to the home computers and bulletin boards of the '80s, where he leads a double life as a wanderer of the wires. But when even his virtual best friend unplugs, Raymond might have to leave it, too—because isn't real life supposed to be offline?
270 pages, Paperback
First published November 11, 2011
4 people are currently reading
186 people want to read
About the author
Michael Stutz
13 books4 followersMichael Stutz is an American writer. His reality fiction (including Circuits of the Wind, a three-volume novel) explores Generation X nostalgia and life in the Net Age with trademark poetic rhythms and rhapsodic lyricism.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 2, 2013
Anyone who shares my nostalgia for the phone and computer world of the late seventies and eighties, this book would be a compelling enough read for it's backdrop alone. I got into BBS systems, made pay phones ring themselves, read text files an all that...usually far enough behind everyone else that it wasn't relevant anymore, but still. Gratifyingly, though, this isn't all the book is. I got into the main character's early need for the wonder of the world, sought in the early hacker world, and felt for him as his sense of wonder changed more into a striving for human connection. It fails again and again for him, in a way that connected him to me as a reader. I'm not sure what to think entirely yet, knowing that this is only the first volume, but I definitely need to know where he goes from here. The book is complete on it's own, but I definitely feel that the story isn't finished yet. I'm eagerly turning to the second book.
October 14, 2012
Original review posted at: http://goodbookalert.blogspot.com/201...
Circuits of the Wind: A Legend of the Net Age
Author: Michael Stutz
Genre: Literary Bildungsroman
Rating: 4 Stars
Circuits of the Wind is an intriguing coming-of-age story of both its main character and the Internet.
Summary:
Young Ray Valentine finds himself disconnected from his life. The purchase of a computer with a modem allows him to explore the growing virtual world connected by telephones and computers. As he delves deeper into this new world, he will have to balance his life both online and offline.
Review:
We've come to take the commercial and personal Internet for granted. Even children carry around tiny mobile computing devices that can easily access vast amount of the world's information with ease, and yet we complain about the ability to quickly stream YouTube videos.
Back in the 70s and 80s, the 'net began its shift from being mostly a government and academic entity. With the spread of things like Usenet, bulletin board services(BBSes), and, for that matter, personal computers, cyberspace became the domain of everyone.
Circuits of the Wind explores the early years of both a young man interested in all things computer and computer networking related and the "early teen" years of cyberspace itself. The book forms the first volume of a trilogy that follows both Ray and the net from early Usenet and BBSes to the dot.com mania.
The book is a psychological study of the kind of person who would want to spend hours a day chatting away and exploring on computer networks years before such things became ubiquitous and fairly easy. Ray, like many early users, was as fascinated by the technology and techniques of the networking as the actual practical uses.
This intense focus will likely, however, ultimately divide readers. There is no grand plot here, just the growth and exploration of a young man and the technology that fascinates him. In particular, the interesting juxtaposition of people using a new communications technology to open up their options, yet still feeling isolated is something that resonates in this age of social networking. I found these subjects interesting enough, but readers looking for something a bit more plot-oriented or less interested in the early history of cyberspace may be disappointed.
The writing style tends to be lyrical but verbose. In many books, this would had been distracting, but in this novel its effective, in that it does a good of reflecting the analytic mindset and detail-oriented focus of Ray.
4/5 Stars
Circuits of the Wind: A Legend of the Net Age
Author: Michael Stutz
Genre: Literary Bildungsroman
Rating: 4 Stars
Circuits of the Wind is an intriguing coming-of-age story of both its main character and the Internet.
Summary:
Young Ray Valentine finds himself disconnected from his life. The purchase of a computer with a modem allows him to explore the growing virtual world connected by telephones and computers. As he delves deeper into this new world, he will have to balance his life both online and offline.
Review:
We've come to take the commercial and personal Internet for granted. Even children carry around tiny mobile computing devices that can easily access vast amount of the world's information with ease, and yet we complain about the ability to quickly stream YouTube videos.
Back in the 70s and 80s, the 'net began its shift from being mostly a government and academic entity. With the spread of things like Usenet, bulletin board services(BBSes), and, for that matter, personal computers, cyberspace became the domain of everyone.
Circuits of the Wind explores the early years of both a young man interested in all things computer and computer networking related and the "early teen" years of cyberspace itself. The book forms the first volume of a trilogy that follows both Ray and the net from early Usenet and BBSes to the dot.com mania.
The book is a psychological study of the kind of person who would want to spend hours a day chatting away and exploring on computer networks years before such things became ubiquitous and fairly easy. Ray, like many early users, was as fascinated by the technology and techniques of the networking as the actual practical uses.
This intense focus will likely, however, ultimately divide readers. There is no grand plot here, just the growth and exploration of a young man and the technology that fascinates him. In particular, the interesting juxtaposition of people using a new communications technology to open up their options, yet still feeling isolated is something that resonates in this age of social networking. I found these subjects interesting enough, but readers looking for something a bit more plot-oriented or less interested in the early history of cyberspace may be disappointed.
The writing style tends to be lyrical but verbose. In many books, this would had been distracting, but in this novel its effective, in that it does a good of reflecting the analytic mindset and detail-oriented focus of Ray.
4/5 Stars
July 5, 2013
I recently watched the movie adaption of Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It, which carries the assuring narrative of director Robert Redford as he tracks the relationship between Norman and his rebellious brother and their varying fortunes. This is the stuff words like "elegiac" were created to describe.
That's a little of what you need to know about Stutz's approach in this opening volume of his Raymond Valentine cycle. Ray grows up at the dawn of the computer age, born in the '70s, weaned on the '80s, he becomes one of the earliest hackers and sages of the budding Internet. Stutz provides a straight chronicle of Ray's life though keeps him in relative isolation, nearly always associated with other individuals, a parade of friends who all end up leaving him behind especially.
Ray is meant to find computers to be an outlet for the oppressive life he knows in a fairly confined community, and if there's a flaw in the writing it's the writer's assumption that he evokes enough of this feeling, but the search for mastery over machinery is so relentless that the reader as much as the main character follow the more obvious intention of exploring what Stutz has called "a legend of the Net Age."
There's nothing particularly wrong with that. Ray is wisely presented as someone who approaches all of this throw his own wits rather than easy access to any of it, and that's the real charm, that hint of the elegiac Redford narration. Ray has the ability but it's never a given that he will succeed. It ends up being a story of growing up after all, certainly a very particular version of this common theme, but honestly presented and competently written. Stutz does tend to add excessive flourish at times, but you can forgive him for that. I haven't come across an abundance of stories about this subject, so the author is certainly justified in believing that he's settling a record for it. You get the sense that Stutz is Ray through and through, but you don't really have to worry too much about that.
Bottom line is, one volume down and two to go, I'm very much engaged in this story.
That's a little of what you need to know about Stutz's approach in this opening volume of his Raymond Valentine cycle. Ray grows up at the dawn of the computer age, born in the '70s, weaned on the '80s, he becomes one of the earliest hackers and sages of the budding Internet. Stutz provides a straight chronicle of Ray's life though keeps him in relative isolation, nearly always associated with other individuals, a parade of friends who all end up leaving him behind especially.
Ray is meant to find computers to be an outlet for the oppressive life he knows in a fairly confined community, and if there's a flaw in the writing it's the writer's assumption that he evokes enough of this feeling, but the search for mastery over machinery is so relentless that the reader as much as the main character follow the more obvious intention of exploring what Stutz has called "a legend of the Net Age."
There's nothing particularly wrong with that. Ray is wisely presented as someone who approaches all of this throw his own wits rather than easy access to any of it, and that's the real charm, that hint of the elegiac Redford narration. Ray has the ability but it's never a given that he will succeed. It ends up being a story of growing up after all, certainly a very particular version of this common theme, but honestly presented and competently written. Stutz does tend to add excessive flourish at times, but you can forgive him for that. I haven't come across an abundance of stories about this subject, so the author is certainly justified in believing that he's settling a record for it. You get the sense that Stutz is Ray through and through, but you don't really have to worry too much about that.
Bottom line is, one volume down and two to go, I'm very much engaged in this story.
June 16, 2012
I got this novel as part of a FirstReads Giveaway.
I'm two pages into this train wreck and I can already tell you what the biggest problem is. There are far, far too many useless words. They clutter up the text to the point you can hardly tell what's going on. It's just a sea of unconnected turns-of-phrase that never come together to make a cohesive whole. I'm as big a fan of lyrical prose as the next reader, but it still has to make some fucking sense.
More to the point, nearly every paragraph is a single sentence. And that's not to say that the paragraphs are that short. No, the sentences are that long.
It's a mess and I'm not sure I'll finish it.
I'm two pages into this train wreck and I can already tell you what the biggest problem is. There are far, far too many useless words. They clutter up the text to the point you can hardly tell what's going on. It's just a sea of unconnected turns-of-phrase that never come together to make a cohesive whole. I'm as big a fan of lyrical prose as the next reader, but it still has to make some fucking sense.
More to the point, nearly every paragraph is a single sentence. And that's not to say that the paragraphs are that short. No, the sentences are that long.
It's a mess and I'm not sure I'll finish it.
June 1, 2013
Book 1 of this three volume series is about Raymond Valentine, growing up in a very Midwestern town in the sixties and seventies. I loved how fresh the book feels; the descriptions, though long and not something I've been used to reading, are beautiful. The book has made me nostalgic for my own Midwestern childhood. Raymond feels at the top of the world, and he has everything open before him. I like reading about his childhood problems and relationships. It's fun to grow up with him.
Starting Volume 2 soon!
Starting Volume 2 soon!
May 1, 2012
I received this book from the Goodreads Giveaway program. This book was kind of boring. I could really relate to alot of it as I grew up in the same era-mainframes, the first 'at home' computers, checking out the Bulletin Boards etc. But I kept waiting for the main character to do something. He was a virtual scaredy cat. I hope that the next book in the series gives him a life, sense of humor and he really gets into the computer world and the real world also.
May 30, 2012
In Stutz’s novel, Ray Valentine takes us on a journey to the origins of technology and illustrates how involvement in various gadgets like computers, can alienate us from the living. It is written in part as a memoir or biography as it details the beginnings of the computer age. It is an education into the net-dominated world we live in and likely to become a classic.
May 28, 2012
This book reads as though the author is a talented writer. Unfortunately, the story was not interesting and continued on in the same vein throughout. I really wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't bring myself to that level.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews