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I found the Gorilla Game to be refreshingly above the pack in this area. The authors do an excellent job of describing some of the ways that technologies get adopted, when the stocks do well (and when they don't), and when to buy and sell stocks in technology companies. They also devise a fairly detailed, somewhat risk-controlled investment process, and detail how it would have done in a number of case histories. From the backward-looking perspective, the book is solid.
The weakness of such backward looking methods shows up in their new material in the revised edition (1999) on the Internet. Although some aspects of their model apply to the Internet, many do not. They are left needing to vaguely explain how so much money was made so quickly in Internet stocks. Their explanation is actually pretty solid, but they never quite come out and say that their methodology will not get you all of the fast-growing stocks in technology.
They needed not be defensive. No methodology is perfect. The main weakness of this one is that is designed around semiconductors, software, and computers. The technology patterns can look a lot different in future technologies. For example, what will happen with companies like Gemstar that lead in new television technologies that could disrupt the Internet for direct marketing? The reason this point is important is that the barriers to switching are higher in the technologies studied here than in many other areas. If you get into a low cost of switching area (like business to consumer marketing on the Internet), you could invest in an industry leader and still lose your shirt. Although the book acknowledges these issues, it probably doesn't create a substantial enough warning.
The book is aimed at the medium knowledge investor (about the markets and technology). I hope they bring out a more advanced version. They decided not to go into specialized semiconductors like analog devices where enormous profits may lie in the future, because of concerns about not going over the heads of readers. A lot of the best run technology companies with enormous growth potential in markets with high bariers to competitors were not discussed in this book. I am sure most readers would be willing to spend some time learning about these other markets in order to make enormous gains.
Despite my quibbles, this is a fine book that will help all but those who are already quite knowledgeable about technology companies and technology investing. Good luck in capturing those irresistible gains in the future! Perhaps you will be the first person you know to identify the next irresistible growth enterprise!
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Teaming up with his wife, daughter, butler robot, and super smart ape.
The first three issues are okay, but it really works in the last four, showing one of the coolest characters of all time, the Pangean.
This is an okay book and if you like Alan Moore and have a few bucks, pick this up.
'Tom Strong' is an attempt to render the male super hero in an archetypical form. This book has a strong science and family theme, with the male lead cast in a paternal role: Tom is a husband and a father, and has other family members around him, and he is also the leader of a society called the Strongmen of America, ordinary people who takes Tom's life as an inspiration. This book looks over the 100 years that Tom has lived to date, and throughout it he derives benefits from his family/ies and passes them on to the next generation.
What's good: Tom represents all those things we have enjoyed about many characters in the past. You'll spot echoes of Tarzan, Doc Savage, Superman, Tom Swift and many more as you read. Alan Moore has built an impressive back-story, which reveals itself slowly as the book unfolds, and everything fits together very well. Tom is also a thinker, rather than just a brawler - he overcome problems with his brain more than his fists. Tom's wife, Dhalua, and daughter, Tesla, are also fabulous characters.
What's not so good: I gave it 5 stars, so not much. My main complaint is that that many of the villains are overly stereotypical for me. With a little more effort, they could have been more rounded people. I could also have lived without the comical sidekicks, talking ape King Solomon and robot Pneuman.
Lots of thumbs up, and also check out Alan Moore's female archetype in 'Promethea'.
Ditto the robot butler.
Tom Strong is a smart book.
Written by hirsute prodigy Alan Moore, this is a book about growing up. More to the point, it's a book about how Western pop culture grew up. Tracking the 20th Century as witnessed by Strong and his family (wife Dhalua, daughter Tesla, robot butler Pneumann and simian aide-de-camp King Solomon), the first collection chronicles their pulp-inspired adventures protecting the world from enemies like the Modular Man and invading forces from the Aztech Empire at the dawn of the 21st.
But don't be fooled. There's a heck of a lot more going on here.
Tom Strong is self-aware right off the bat: The first chapter tells the story of Timmy Turbo, a preteen who buys the first issue of a comic called - you guessed it - Tom Strong. As it turns out, Strong's adventures are chronicled in a series of comic books, which Moore uses as s storytelling device to clue the reader in on the family's adventures earlier in the century.
Many of the stories involve Tom Strong battling some enemy from his past, the introductions of which are chronicled in the "Untold Tales" of Tom Strong - comics-within-a-comic written and drawn in the styles of comics from decades past. The format gives the book a chance to showcase different artists, though all, I think, have well-established résumés; Dave Gibbons, Moore's partner in crime in the well-known Watchmen, makes an appearance.
But, as I said, it's not all about the pulp. There's a more profound message in Tom Strong one about how we imagine our heroes, and how that could have gone wrong, and where it didn't.
Strong is a Western pop hero in the classic sense of the word: tall, rippling biceps, Caucasian, nigh-invulnerable. But other aspects of his story aren't so typical. His wife, Dhalua, is black, and the two have a biracial daughter. His arch-enemy is Ingrid Weiss, a genetically engineered Nazi superwoman, who represents all of the evil things that Strong could have been created to be.
In this way, Strong is almost an antidote to critics who understandably charge that Western popular culture is white-centric and paternalistic. Strong may be the titular superhero as well as husband and father, but he is in no way patriarchal. On at least one occasion, it is Dhalua and Tesla who come to Tom's rescue at the hands of something far more sinister than he ever could have become. Both women are strong characters, operating as part of a family unit, but at the same time fiercely independent.
I can't say much more without giving away the ending. But in the end, all of the Strongs must do battle with the worst that humankind has to offer, and the evil that Tom could have become had he - and the people who canonized him a hero - made a few different choices.