- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Scribner; New edition edition (6 Mar 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0684819449
- ISBN-13: 978-0684819440
- Product Dimensions: 19 x 12.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,653,125 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Once the Net and the Web were new, and when the adventurous and unwary spent too much time there, flirting with each other in verbal disguise... The story of bad behaviour-- fanaticism about small rows, gender-disguised "Netsex", the spending of other people's money on vast phone-bills--has been told by others--Indra Sinha tells it in a British context where the poverty and uncertainty of the Thatcher era made everything that bit more intense and obsessive. This is also the story of the near-collapse of a marriage--he withdrew from his wife and dragged her off to meet Net chums who never showed up--or showed up and never introduced themselves...These were also the years of his growing political commitment--a highly paid copywriter, he started using his skills for good causes like exposing the use of chemical weapons by Saddam against the Kurds. He writes well about his discomfort his Net friends' games of expensive verbal sado-masochism in the face of real evil. This is a moving and wise book about a man who loved games, and came to feel that he could no longer, in conscience play them; there is real pain here, in his rejection of a sort of beauty. --Roz Kaveney
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
THE CYBERGYPSIES describes one man's exploration of cyberspace over many years and the folk he meets on the Net, the cybergypsies: virus writers, hackers, witches, sex-peddlars, conmen, net vamps, randy paratroopers posing as girls; the A-bomb blueprints he was offered for sale. He recounts with startling honesty how he nearly lost everything because of his obsession with the Net and how the Net can be as dangerous and destructive as any drug addiction. However, the author also shows how the Internet can be used for positive aims, as he describes how he fought for human rights with desperate appeals for the Kurdish refugees in the wake of the Gulf War and justice for Bhopal's gas victims in campaigns involving Jeffrey Archer and Don McCullin.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Cybergypsies by Indra Sinha is simply wonderfilled. Allegorical, real, non-ordinary, ordinary. Life in a nutshell. Or should that be microchip? Beautifully written, eminently readable. Do yourself a favour and buy a copy. It could be the nicest thing you do for yourself this century.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I found this book weird, absorbing and very funny. I was almost put off by the title as I don't share most people's fascination with the internet but, alarmingly quickly, I was disturbed to discover that I was beginning to share the author's helpless fascination with the characters he met on the Net, like Calypso - a femme fatale who went on holiday with her husband and three lovers - or Luna, who is so committed to her game persona that she has lost touch with the human who owns her body.
The book is a cleverly constructed multi-layered narrative, accessible because beautifully written but complex enough to repay endless re-reading. It creates a fragile and beautiful world in which the boundaries between fantasy and reality dissolve until real-life characters like Jeffrey Archer and Anita Roddick seem almost weirder than Jarly the computer-virus writer or The Detonator, whose ambition is to hack into a nuclear power-station's computer. The book deals with serious issues like the nature of reality, responsibility, compassion and human rights, and a questioning of most of our assumptions, but it is all done so entertainingly that you could read it just for fun. On the other hand, you might just decide to allow it to change your life.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Anyone whose ever logged onto an online game, be it Quake, a MMORPG or a text MUD should read this book. It's an exploration of the early days of the internet when it cost an arm and and leg to connect and rattling up a phone bill in the thousands, never mind the hundreds, wasn't difficult.
The reason I love this book so much is because I can recognise not only myself (not literally but figuratively) but a lot of the people I met online back in the 90s.
They're there in the secretive world of the early morning hours when you can't quite find the energy to switch off and so you stay awake talking to people on the other side of the ocean.
Wonderful insight into how you can easily become carried away with something to the point of obsession and how, eventually, you have to make a choice between reality and the beauty of the virtual world.
The reason I love this book so much is because I can recognise not only myself (not literally but figuratively) but a lot of the people I met online back in the 90s.
They're there in the secretive world of the early morning hours when you can't quite find the energy to switch off and so you stay awake talking to people on the other side of the ocean.
Wonderful insight into how you can easily become carried away with something to the point of obsession and how, eventually, you have to make a choice between reality and the beauty of the virtual world.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
One of the worst books I've ever read
I only bought this book because I was desperate for something to read while I was recently in New Zealand. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Boof
Good read
An earlier book by someone who was subsequently shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for Animal's People, which I'm reading at the moment). He has a style of writing all his own. Read more
Published 15 months ago by robie
Great book (shame about the covers/ blurb).
I agree with all the other reviews here: riveting book, cleverly woven together, rang lots of bells and made lots of connections for me. Read more
Published on 9 Aug 2001 by f7385@zu.ac.ae
Great book! 'A kind of UFO literary...'
'With the turning of a page, one strangles oneself suddenly with the reading of testimonys in extreme cases of the bearable one ... Read more
Published on 18 May 2001
Weird, strange, but really familiar...
I didn't knew what to expect when I ordered this book. I found something I really know (the life and the adventures of a cyber-addict in a virtual world), but also very touching... Read more
Published on 11 Dec 1999 by Contestabile Giordano
First US review from Kirkus, July 99
A strangely fascinating exploration of the dark side of cyberspace, where virus writers, porno peddlers, and fantasy game fanatics have created an anarchic subculture that blurs... Read more
Published on 4 Aug 1999
Power of the Imagination
The characters and events that Indra Sinha weaves so skilfully and with such humour into this extraordinary work become empirical proof of the power of Imagination and of the... Read more
Published on 22 Jun 1999
The Crypt Newsletter pronounces judgement
This year's best read on electrons in the wires.
Published on 4 Jun 1999
F... brilliant.
Didn't expect to enjoy this book as have little or no interest in internet and absolutely no knowledge in this field however found it to be so cleverly written, gripping and... Read more
Published on 26 May 1999
More than a non-fiction book.
Because of its very nature, The Cybergypsies refuses to be pegged into a slot. The publishers describe it as a non-fiction book. But, I, for one, do not agree. Read more
Published on 17 May 1999
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