Spielberg was so jazzed about the premise (artificial intelligence threatens mankind), he bought the screenplay before the book was finished (supposedly). Movie is slated for a 4th of J blockbuster in 2013. I was underwhelmed. The book is more like a number of potentially visually rich sci-fi scenes stitched together in an overly rigid and repetitive format. Every chapter is formatted with: a pull-quote, intro commentary paragraph, body text, post commentary paragraph. There were many chapters and this format got redundant. Author’s ability to tap into the emotion of a scene was very limited. And usually when they tell you the conclusion of a story at the beginning of a movie, it doesn’t ruin it because you get caught up in the story itself. In this book , you know the conclusion at the beginning and it somehow kills the drama that the author tries to instill in the story. I’d wait for the movie if I were you. I plan on seeing it.