conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled Zero History about Bigend, Dean, Henry with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author is known for his multilayered fictional explorations of contemporary trends--here, fashion and marketing. Hubertus Bigend wants to create a market for U.S. military/combat apparel, a product he views as recession proof. The novel deals with nefarious dealings in the fashion industry, as well as international espionage and intrigue. Narrator Robertson Dean brings to life the book's diverse personalities--in particular, former journalist and rock star Hollis Henry, who is hired by Bigend to track down the designer of Gabriel Hounds clothing (with whom Bigend hopes to partner). Dean also excels at portraying Milgrim, a recovering addict who works with Henry. Of course, there are the inevitable twists, and Dean's focused style captures these moments with aplomb. D.J.S. &copy; AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Hubertus Bigend wants to create a market for U.S. military/combat apparel, a product he views as recession proof. The novel deals with nefarious dealings in the fashion industry, as well as international espionage and intrigue. Narrator Robertson Dean brings to life the book's diverse personalities--in particular, former journalist and rock star Hollis Henry, who is hired by Bigend to track down the designer of Gabriel Hounds clothing (with whom Bigend hopes to partner). Dean also excels at portraying Milgrim, a recovering addict who works with Henry. Of course, there are the inevitable twists, and Dean's focused style captures these moments with aplomb. D.J.S. &copy; AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Zero History
  Then out, through liminal green hallways, lift, and down, to the coffee-smelling foyer, where a tortoise-spectacled young man presented her with a tall white coffee in a crisp white paper cup, lidded with white plastic, and offered her a Cabinet umbrella.
  He carried the roll-aboard out for her and put it in the popped trunk of a black BMW, piloted by the bearded young man who'd admitted her to Blue Ant.
  Then Gloucester Place. Had she been walking, she'd have taken Baker Street instead, which she'd dreamed of as a child, and which retained, even at this stage of supposed adulthood, a certain small sharp sense of disappointment. Though perhaps game was afoot in Paris, she thought, and now merely a rather long subway ride from here.
  In the traffic of Marylebone Road, stopping and starting, she kept noticing a dispatch rider, armored in samurai plastics, the back of his yellow helmet scarred as if something feline and huge had swatted him and almost missed, his clumsy-looking fiberglass fairing mended with peeling silver tape. He seemed to keep passing them, somehow, rolling forward between lanes. She'd never understood how that worked here.
  Sky-blue steel-girdered vastness. Towering volume of sound. Pigeons looking unconfused, about their pigeon business. Nobody did train stations like the Europeans, and the British, she thought, best of all. Faith in infrastructure, coupled with a necessity-driven gift for retrofitting. One of Bigend's lanky, elegant drivers, hand to earpiece, hove toward her steadily through the crowd, Milgrim in tow like a Sunday rowboat. Gazing around like a child, Milgrim, his face lit with a boy's delight in the blue-girdered drama, the Dinky Toy grandeur of the great station.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Zero History
  Then out, through liminal green hallways, lift, and down, to the coffee-smelling foyer, where a tortoise-spectacled young man presented her with a tall white coffee in a crisp white paper cup, lidded with white plastic, and offered her a Cabinet umbrella.
  He carried the roll-aboard out for her and put it in the popped trunk of a black BMW, piloted by the bearded young man who'd admitted her to Blue Ant.
  Then Gloucester Place. Had she been walking, she'd have taken Baker Street instead, which she'd dreamed of as a child, and which retained, even at this stage of supposed adulthood, a certain small sharp sense of disappointment. Though perhaps game was afoot in Paris, she thought, and now merely a rather long subway ride from here.
  In the traffic of Marylebone Road, stopping and starting, she kept noticing a dispatch rider, armored in samurai plastics, the back of his yellow helmet scarred as if something feline and huge had swatted him and almost missed, his clumsy-looking fiberglass fairing mended with peeling silver tape. He seemed to keep passing them, somehow, rolling forward between lanes. She'd never understood how that worked here.
  Sky-blue steel-girdered vastness. Towering volume of sound. Pigeons looking unconfused, about their pigeon business. Nobody did train stations like the Europeans, and the British, she thought, best of all. Faith in infrastructure, coupled with a necessity-driven gift for retrofitting. One of Bigend's lanky, elegant drivers, hand to earpiece, hove toward her steadily through the crowd, Milgrim in tow like a Sunday rowboat.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.. Start with the sentence 'Milgrim made a brief, strange, high-pitched sound, like something burning out'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Milgrim made a brief, strange, high-pitched sound, like something burning out. Closed his eyes. Opened them. "The cop," he said, "in Seven Dials. The one who took my picture. The one from Myrtle Beach."
  Something moved, three feet above Bigend's head. The manta, a sinuous matte-black blot, as wide, from wingtip to wingtip, as a small boy's outstretched arms.
  The thing's wingtips silently flexed, catching the air, for all the world like a real ray, as it swam slowly up, wheeling gracefully, barely missing the hanging stairway. "Utterly addictive," Bigend said to Hollis. "Your locative art will morph again, with cheap aerial video drones."
  Aldous, alerted to their exit, had the motor running. Locks clunked open for them. Milgrim and Heidi hauled their respective doors open. He scrambled up while Heidi helped Hollis. He managed to close his door before Heidi had closed hers. The locks clunked solidly into place. Aldous had proudly pointed out the narrowness, the extreme evenness, of the gaps between the doors and the bodywork. These were too narrow for the insertion of any pry bar, he'd said, too narrow even for "the jaws of life," an expression Milgrim was unfamiliar with, but which he took to be Jamaican, some potent icon of existential dread.
  They were rolling now, the run-flats juddering over City tarmac, not so much old as recently resurfaced, piecemeal, in the course of much building.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last three paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Bruce Sterling, having been emailed exactly the wrong question about CCTV, graciously extruded the concept of the ugly T-shirt in one of his characteristic, demonically focused bursts of seemingly effortless imagination.
  Michaela Sachenbacher and Errolson Hugh introduced me to the architecture of a "secret" brand, and the passion behind it.
  Meredith's line of shoes was modeled after the brand Callous, launched by Thomas Fenning and Tomoaki Kobayashi in 2003, and which I gather met a somewhat similar fate.