Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 16, 1994 TAG: 9410280029
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: F5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By Ivor Noel Hume. Knopf. 1963. Reprint with new foreword and afterword by the author. University Press of Virginia. (price not listed.)
Ivor Noel Hume had been in the United States for only five years when he began writing "Here Lies Virginia." Having been on staff with Colonial Williamsburg beginning in 1956, he published this seminal work on early American archeology in 1963 and immediately established himself as an authority.
Hume changed the direction of historic archeology in Virginia and elsewhere by using unique perspectives gleaned on European sites to steer the field from an orientation toward architecture to one that emphasized artifact archeology. Noting with characteristic levity that "archeology is no more a science than a chisel is a carpenter," he set about to answer some of the humanistic questions that only artifact analysis can answer. He also prescribed a standard of specialization that required historic archeologists to narrow their scope of interest. No longer do archeologists educated at Indian sites take on historic ones, but it was not always so. Today, nearly all in the field of historic archeology might take Hume's anthropological orientation and method as standard operating procedure. "Here Lies Virginia" remains an excellent overview of colonial Virginia through the distinctive lens of artifact archeology.
PETE DAVIS
Perfect.
By Judith McNaught. Pocket Books. $6.50 (paper).
Judith McNaught's page-turner has it all: adventure, romance, intrigue, hometown nostalgia, old-fashioned ideals and well-written prose. The protagonists are Zach, who comes from a mega-affluent family (disowned without a cent at 18), and Julie, an orphaned Robin Hood-type, hot-wiring street kid who becomes a wonderful human being through the love, caring and trust of an adoptive family. It's easy for the reader to fall in love with Julie. Developing a sincere "like" of Zach is slower. When it happens, though, the same reader will resent being sabotaged by the author who uses "Super Julie" to throw newly admired Zach to the wolves. There is a temptation to hurl the book as far as one can, then. But McNaught redeems her story with murder, kidnapping, a blizzard-entrapped hideaway, hairy snowmobile and icy lake thrills and more.
It's also worth noting that Judith McNaught dedicates the book, through the sponsorship of Coors, to an organization devoted explicitly to fighting the illiteracy of women.
- BETTY G. PRICE
Terminal Games.
By Cole Perriman. Bantam Books. $22.95.
This novel begins as a police procedural and waits until about three-fourths of its length to turn suddenly into science-fiction. But the blurred genres work well enough for this particular story about a computer network where users can act out their love and hate desires through "virtual reality" characters they make up for themselves in the popular computer game of Insomnimania. They can engage in the safest of sex, doing it on-screen from behind their own computer keyboard, or even create their own murder scenarios if they want to snuff someone.
Except that some of the murders that the Insomnimaniacs are seeing on screen turn out to have happened exactly as they are depicted in real life. California building designer Marianne Hedison picks up on the connection when she recognizes a murdered friend as the victim in one of the cyber-snuffs. It takes her a while to convince police - particularly Los Angeles detective Nolan Grobowski, a gruff hard-nosed cop who believes only in what he can see and feel.
Marianne and Nolan go from suspect and cop to a couple developing a relationship during the story. But Marianne places herself in danger by continuing to investigate the computer clown figure known only as "Auggie" through her own supposedly-anonymous Insomnimania computer character, not realizing until too late that Auggie is all-powerful within the program, and can track each "virtual reality" character back to its creator. At that point, the question becomes: which is more real, the flesh-and-blood human or the cyber-creature?
Cole Perriman - the name itself a pseudonym for two anonymous Oregon writers - has created a near-future thriller so convincingly that the reader will wonder how near that future may be.
- PAUL DELLINGER
Pete Davis is a columnist for the Lexington News-Gazette.
Betty C. Price is a reading therapist.
Paul Dellinger reports on Pulaski County for this newspaper.
by CNB