The Cassandra Complex: The unforgettable Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick

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a b Davies, P., "The Cassandra Complex: how to avoid generating a corporate vision that no one buys into" pp. 103–123 in Success in Sight: Visioning (1998)

This is a science fiction novel of enormous scope, filled with wonders. Set earlier in the same "future history" as Inherit the Earth, Architects of Emortality, and The Fountains of Youth, The Cassandra Complex is the independent story of events crucial to the creation of the universe in which the others take place. It is the twenty-first century, a world of rapid change and biotech threats and promises. World War Three, the biotech war, is on the horizon and the world as we know it is going to end. The fateful question is, who is going to choose the kind of future that will follow, and who gets to live in this new world to come? When I woke up this morning, it suddenly occurred to me that I’m not using my newfound abilities to their full capacity. I can travel through time, which means I can draw the day in pencil and then simply erase it when it’s done. I can have a holiday whenever I feel like it. Self discovery and awareness become the byproduct for Cassandra as she tries to fix her responses to Will in their dating events. It’s half way through that she looks outside herself to discover the other side and it’s not just about her and Will anymore. Other relationships must come into play.Before reading this I really hoped this book would center Cassandra. I’ve read so many (romance) books featuring autistic characters at this point, where there’s always a midway point where the character either gets diagnosed or explains to others around her that she’s autistic. That this book set out with a very obviously autistic person (special interest, struggles with sensory input, gets meltdowns, communicates differently, takes things literally, struggles with certain foods) made me really happy initially, because I thought the focus would be about her living her live as an autistic woman. It would’ve been such a nice change from the other stories I’ve read so far! I thought we’d read about how she finds a job which suits her, about how she finds a friend who loves Greek myths just as much as she does, and generally speaking gets to live her best life. It's a very readable book. There's quite a lot of Greek myth references but they're interesting rather than distracting. Its not a re-telling by any stretch of the imagination. Its simply the story of a woman who has struggled to be heard, to fit in, to be accepted her whole life. a b c Schapira, Laurie Layton (1988). The Cassandra complex: living with disbelief: a modern perspective on hysteria. Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books. ISBN 091912335X. Easily the least exciting mystery/thriller I've ever read, redeemed only because Brian Stableford stuffed this book full of interesting ideas about overpopulation, how populations react until crisis, biowarfare, and - surprisingly enough - an interesting take on how radical feminists will react until these circumstances.

The 'mystery woman' - this character (i wont explain more as I don't want spoilers) but this woman that keeps appearing and getting brushed off by Cassandra. Following his well received trilogy about the search for a way to bring immortality to the human race, Stableford has now written a prequel. The early advances in this endeavour in his future history came from research to counter the bio-engineered diseases released in the Plague Wars which end some decades before Inherit the Earth, the first of the trilogy. The Cassandra Complex is set at around the beginning of these wars, as the nations of the West watch the progress of "hyperflu" across the world towards them. So. It's the 2040s~ and people wear smart clothes that keep them safe from germs and they can resist stains and so on. Emortality hasn't been invented yet, biowarfare is happening and people in Britain are trying to live like everything's normal, that the end of the world isn't nigh. This is the cool stuff in this book: the glimpses at this society and how it works, whenever the plot isn't occupied with the bland mechanisms of interviewing suspects and inter-police squabbling and the protagonist trying to piece together the clues. I'm sorry, Stableford, but you can't maintain tension. His writing skills just aren't up for it - he's a thousand times better with other plots and other settings, but this was a whiff.

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Cassandra Dankworth is a character as unique as she is endearing ... An absolute gem of a novel' Margarita Monitmore Clever, unusual and often amusing, this is a powerful exploration of one woman's attempt to find happiness against the odds' Daily Express I don't any autistic adults, I know a few children with autism so I don't have anyone in the adult category to go by. I wish I could have loved this one more, but I ended up having very mixed feelings. I will say that despite my issues, this was an original concept that held my interest pretty much the whole way through. I might be willing to give this author another try in the future if the right synopsis catches my eye again.

But that book has the same problem this one does: it's a collection of incredible ideas and questions and setting development bound by a not-very-good thriller plot. Cassandra] is smart and often funny, and her chaotic attempts to set the world to rights are poignantly rendered' THE TIMESIn 1963, psychoanalyst Melanie Klein provided an interpretation of Cassandra as representing the human moral conscience whose main task is to issue warnings. Cassandra as moral conscience, "predicts ill to come and warns that punishment will follow and grief arise." [3] Cassandra's need to point out moral infringements and subsequent social consequences is driven by what Klein calls "the destructive influences of the cruel super-ego," which is represented in the Greek myth by the god Apollo, Cassandra's overlord and persecutor. [4] Klein's use of the metaphor centers on the moral nature of certain predictions, which tends to evoke in others "a refusal to believe what at the same time they know to be true, and expresses the universal tendency toward denial, [with] denial being a potent defence against persecutory anxiety and guilt." [3] Laurie Layton Schapira [ edit ] The mystery woman, Diana, set the story on a whole new course that I was not expecting. After Cassandra's reconciliation with her, the storyline with Will is completely altered. At first, I was extremely annoyed. After all, wasn't this book partially a romance? Now it wasn't feeling like one so much. Then the more I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that maybe there was a reason she and Will keep having issues in every alternate reality she creates. As sweet as he is, perhaps they really are too different, and she was wrong about fate. She can keep altering it, but in the end, things will eventually realign in the way they were meant to go. Different journey, same results. So I adjusted my thinking about her new projected ending. This is all about her deciding not to time travel anymore because she finally accepts herself for who she is, differences and all. Except...she starts making mistakes again with Diana, time traveling again to fix it (after declaring that she won't anymore), and then deciding to contradict everything she claimed to have learned and start COMPLETELY over again.