I just finished reading null: $cat /dev/null_ by Dienw Neb. I found an ad for it in the back of 2600 Magazine that piqued my curiosity. I’ve mentioned it here a couple times recently.
If you’re the kind of person who’d be reading these words I’m writing, you’d probably enjoy this book, and you should get your hands on a copy.
I don’t even know where to begin. There’s almost nothing I can tell you about the stories in it that wouldn’t spoil it in some way, and it’s far too good to take that away from you. Instead, I’ll talk about how it made me feel.
This book was made for me, personally. It could’ve been, anyway. It’s about me and my friends, hanging out in dodgy clubs, or rough parts of town, or late into the night on IRC, or in roomfuls of LAN party networks. Characters are arguing about the same stupid things we argue about. They troll each other in the same ways. People stick their head in to listen, catch a couple of sentences out of context, and nope out before they accidentally hear more. “Breathtaking” is usually hyperbole, but “Null” left me staring at a page, reading and re-reading it, breath held in wide-eyed wonder, at the magically realistic version of my youth on the page. Several times. It hooked me like few things ever have. If “Neuromancer” was the world I didn’t want, and “Snow Crash” the world I almost kind of wanted in spite of myself, “Null” was the world I’ve lived and breathed — but just foreign enough to remind me I was an outsider looking in.
And wow, is it different. If parts of our reality were embedded in “Null”, they were little bubbles of familiarity in a universe that’s fundamentally different in unspoken though almost tangible ways.
However, it’s not weird for the sake of being weird. I laughed out loud. Not a silent LOL that everyone knows is really a silent, tight-lipped fleeting grin. Actually out loud. I choked back tears during my morning commute. I closed my eyes and let my mind savor the poignant beauty, awed by the shared humanity of people in a timeline I wasn’t intended to fully understand. It’s a Moonlight Sonata, stunning and strange and haunting and sensuous.
This is not a book for everyone. Yet here you are, somehow in the placetime to be reading the random things I send to a screen. We likely have some life experiences in common, you and I. That means “Null” was made for you, personally, too. It’s inexpensive. Get a copy. When you’re done, please let me know. I’m dying to discuss this with someone.
PS: I think it’s base64. Let me know if you get further than that.