DU antidote for Spielberg's War of the Worlds film

[rivertext]

Hi, I'm the author of "If Monks had Macs" which is arguably the first multimedia project distributed on computers and certainly the longest running and most controversial.



I just released a new edition of Sophie, the Windows and Macintosh e-book reader & library that is integrated into Monks but is also available as a free download. Here is the e-book jacket:



I think that this will be of interest to DU Sci Fi fans because next week all the buzz will be about "War of the Worlds" the Steven Spielberg / Tom Cruise blockbuster adaptation of H.G. Wells' masterpiece. From what I've been able to gather the Spielberg/Cruise blockbuster appears to innocently play up the fears of an America under attack as Bush has done so well with far more sinister intent. The Sophie e-book, "War of the Worlds," begins with an excellent antidote to Spielberg's new film. It explains that H. G. Wells wrote the original Sci Fi masterpiece as a condemnation of British Imperialism and concludes:

"As America has not been invaded since the War of 1812 this generation of Americans might best re-read 'The War of the Worlds' in light of our experience as invaders. Like the Martians we have a vast technological superiority over the nations we have invaded. Like the Martians we can lose a war after winning every battle." 

Here is the Sophie press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Rivertext.com is pleased to announce that the release of the new Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) compatible version of the free Sophie e-book reader includes an expedition into the Kafkaesque. The latest e-book, a collection of five extraordinary stories by Franz Kafka and his precursors, begins with a look at the deeper meaning of the term 'Kafkaesque.' The preface to the Sophie e-book released earlier this year, H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," offers a more provocative and timely interpretation of the original science fiction classic than Stephen Spielberg's new blockbuster film starring Tom Cruise.  All the Sophie e-books begin with an original and thought-provoking preface.  

The 12 e-books have many useful features as well as at least one delightfully useless feature. Two of the e-books, "JFK Witness" and Thoreau's "Walden" include guided tours created with the Sophie notebook tool. This tool allows readers to create and share with others their own indexed and commented "readings" of important texts. Sophie's search feature lists the chapter and the phrase for each occurrence of a search string. On the more or less useless side of the feature list, a copy of Fourth World's Text Blender Pro is built-in to each e-book reader. Paste in any meaningful passage and the text blender will, grind, whip, puree, or liquify it until it is more or less meaningless. A few poets, song-writers or latter-day beatniks will find this to be a useful feature, but for most it will be a delectable distraction. 



The other e-books included in the free download are: Joseph Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness," two books by G.K. Chesterton "The Man who was Thursday," and "The Innocence of Father Brown," Thomas a Kempis' "Imitatio Christi," "Pencil and Poison - Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde," Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde."

Version 1.02k of Sophie is fully compatible with Macintosh OS 9, or OS X and it runs Windows 95 and later. Sophie was developed by Rivertext.com and Fourth World Media Corporation Inc. for the legendary multimedia CD-ROM "If Monks Had Macs." This CD-ROM includes sophisticated intellectual tools, games and richly illustrated multimedia. It also works on Windows.

To download Sophie:

http://www.fourthworld.com/products/sophie/download.html 

For more information about "If Monks had Macs":

http://rivertext.com/monks.html 

Brian Thomas

[architect359]

1. Awesome!

Thanks Brian Thomas! Just download it and playing around with the app.