Money Shot concludes Christopher Rowley’s noir action tale Netherworld about Rook Venner a cop who brought the evidence home to protect her from rape. Said evidence being Pleasure, a Pleasure Model owned by the murdered victim general Sangacha. Pleasure carries secrets in her mind that the powers behind the government will do anything to get their hands on. So Rook, Pleasure and the other witness Angie a dominatrix that goes under the name Mistress Julie has been on the run since.

Justin Norman’s beautiful illustrations boost the noir feeling of the book as we dive into an explosion of action and combat machines. The pace is breathtaking as our heroes struggle to survive and uncover the secret before they are crushed under the avalanche assault of the Tactical Robotic Regiment. Deep underground an isolated mountain ridge lays the secret base that holds the chilling answers.

As before we get a bit of social commentary about artificially created humans and not only from Rooks feelings for Pleasure but from the colonies of liberated and free mods that they comes across. Police State America comes back to haunt us again too.

The characters are still a bit sketchy but totally pulp and Gung Ho basically what you can expect from this kind of story. If you take it for what it is they are perfectly all right. They continue to grow and come to realizations about their world that deeply affects them which is something I like in any story.

The conclusion does a good job of tying together the threads from the previous books and we meet many of the characters again.

I must say that I immediately fell in love with this series when the first book, Pleasure Model came out. The second book The Bloodstained Man ended in a cliffhanger so I eagerly awaited this conclusion.

Money Shot is the explosive conclusion to the Netherworld series a fine heavy metal take on crime noir about secret government conspiracies, robotic war machines, a man and his pleasure model with pictures. It might not be for everyone but take it for what it is and you will love it.

Information

Title: Money Shot
Series: Netherworld book 3
Author: Christopher Rowley
Genre: Heavy Metal
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Tor 2010
Copy: Bought by me
Order from: Amazon US | UK

Detective Rook Venner was a successful investigating officer for the Hudson Valley Police Department—until the General Sangacha murder case came across his desk and his world exploded.

Now after being dragged through hell and back, Rook is on the run with Plesur, a Pleasure Model who is the one eyewitness to the murder. Plesur carries a secret in her brain that terrifies the powers-that-be. A secret that they will do anything to destroy—even bring in a Tactical Robotic Regiment to track Rook and Plesur down and annihilate them.

The only choice the two have is to locate the coordinates that were planted in the pleasure mod’s head to the isolated mountain ridge where it all began. Deep underground, in a warren of machine halls and ice caves, something so horrific is happening that just knowing three code words is enough to get you killed: Operation Taste Imperative.

Rook and Plesur have no way back and no way out. If they want to survive and have any kind of life together, they must uncover the terrifying secret that lies deep inside the mountain.

Yarn is and isn’t your ordinary cyberpunk story. Yarn is about Tane Cedar a master tailor and the story takes place in the world of fashion. My first thoughts were that this is outside my comfort reading zone but the stunning cover art and the blurb’s talk about fashionpunk, saleswarriors and a love story reeled me in and I am very happy it did.

Like in most good stories it involves a woman. In this case an ex-lover who is on the run from the authorities when she comes to Tane late one night. “Where have you been? What happened? What are you wearing?” are his first questions because that is the kind of man he is. She tells him she is dying and asks him of a favor. She wants him to make her a garment of the illegal psychedelic Xi yarn to ease her last hours. He accepts before she disappears again and the rest of the book tells the story of how he goes about tracking down and acquiring the yarn to fulfill her last wish. The author portions out key pieces of Tane’s past from his youth in the slums to yarn-thief to lover to fashion genius that ties in to and explains what is happening in the main story line. That worked very well for me here.

The story contains delightful black humor and Tane Cedar is an interesting character with an inner dignity to him throughout all his ordeals that makes him easy to love. The other characters are more superficial but there are some really interesting ones like Brunne the fashion dictator of Seattlehama, Vada his ex-lover revolutionary and a few more.

The world building is on par with the story and the characters. “Seattlehama: the volcano-powered sex and shopping capital of the world” is the name of a chapter and a good description of the setting. The slums or slubs where Tane grew up are hash places where lives are cheap and workers are recycled to nourish the plants. The fashion scene is as much a place of fighting and warriors as in any cyberpunk story but it also helps setting Tane apart in his focus on the yarn. Greater truths about the world are uncovered as the story progresses.

Yarn is a delightful dark comedy about a dignified master tailor with some serious skills whose world is torn apart one day by an old lover. It lives up to its name; it is indeed a yarn of the best kind, one that captivates you from the first page to the last. This is the first I read by Jon Armstrong and I am mightily impressed. I am really interested to read Grey his debut now. This is a standalone prequel to Grey. Highly recommended.

Information

Title: Yarn
Author: Jon Armstrong
Cover art: Anthony Palumbo
Genre: Fashion Punk
Paperback: 309 pages
Publisher: Night Shade Books (2010)
Copy: Bought it from Amazon
Order from: Amazon US | UK

From the neo-feudalistic slubs, the corn-filled world of Tane’s youth, to his apprenticeship among the deadly saleswarriors of Seattlehama–the sex-and-shopping capital of the world–to the horrors of a polluted Antarctica, Yarn tells a stylish tale of love, deceit, and memory.

Tane Cedar is the master tailor, the supreme outfitter of the wealthy, the beautiful, and the powerful. When an ex-lover, on the run from the authorities, asks him to create a garment from the dangerous and illegal Xi yarn–a psychedelic opiate–to ease her final hours, Tane’s world is torn apart.

Armed with just his yarn pulls, scissors, Mini-Air-Juki handheld sewing machine, and his wits, Tane journeys through the shadowy underworld where he must untangle the deadly mysteries and machinations of decades of deceit.

Following up on his highly acclaimed and Philip K. Dick Award-nominated “fashionpunk” novel Grey, Jon Armstrong explodes back on the scene with Yarn.

Title: The Bloodstained Man
Series: Netherworld book 2
Author: Christopher Rowley
Genre: Cyber Punk | Heavy Metal | Noir
Cover art: Gregory Manchess
Interior art: Justin Norman
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Tor books, Sept 5  (UK)
Copy: Bought it myself

Order from: Tor | Amazon US | UK | B&N

My Review of earlier Books: Pleasure Model

Next Book: Money Shot (November 9 2010)

Following the explosive events of book one, Detective Rook Venner, Mistress Julia, and Plesur are on the run from the government troops trying to kill them and from a shadowy group that wants to capture Plesur alive for its own purposes. What secrets have been implanted in Plesur’s head—and why are they worth killing for?

Caught between these two powerful rivals, the trio hides out in the lawless New Jersey territory. Betrayed by gang members looking to collect the bounty on Plesur’s head, the three are separated, and Rook and Mistress Julia find themselves in mortal danger. Julia, given as a prize to a gang member, finds herself in chains, but not without her own means of fighting back. Rook, forced to fight for his life in the gang’s bloodthirsty gladiatorial games, must stay alive long enough to rescue Plesur, but time is running out.

The Bloodstained Man is a fast-paced, adrenaline-filled ride through a future where pleasure has a price, and Plesur holds the key to a secret that could rock the country to its very core.

Information

The Bloodstained Man is a mix of cyberpunk heavy metal novel and gritty noir comic art. I liked the first book  very much so it was with some excitement I opened this one.

The inside illustrations made by Justin Norman (@deviantart page)  add another dimension to the text, especially in the action sequences they seems to speed up the action. I enjoyed the illustrations a lot; though there were a few more places in this book where they were out of sync with the story than in the first book. They add a movie feel to reading the book.

World Building

America is some kind of police state with general elections. The citizens don’t have much rights though and they are heavy segregated, the uninsured are left outside society to fetch for themselves in huge ghetto like areas ruled by gangs. Some of it you get in the dialog and descriptions but there is not much of it, it is not that kind of story.

They run into groups of runaway/free pleasure mods living in their own societies among the uninsured and there is a message about how we treat humans in that story, it also comes across in Rook’s friendship with a fighter mod while he is captured by the gang.

Plot

The protagonist Rook is on the run from at least two groups and they are both after Pleasur the fabricated human pleasure model Rook found in a murdered generals home in book one. One group is  the power behind the current government and they want her dead and the secrets she has. The other group is more mysterious and secretive and they want to use Pleusure and her information in some unknown way.

As in the last book there is more or less nonstop action, first they crash a party and get chased away by cool motorcycles and missile firing war drones. Out of the frying pan into the fire they run to the uninsured area and are captured by a gang whose main activity seems to be gladiator games and feeding the losers to the alligators. Rooke is forced to fight in the bloody games and Julia is given to one of the gang members as his personal slave and Pleasur is striped of her fighting and intelligence mods and locked up in wait for the bosses to come and get her.

I am not sure this book would go down well with most female readers, but the females in this story do take charge of their own destiny especially Julia.

The ending is a cliffhanger after a horrid moment that makes me want to have the concluding book now not in November.

Characterization

This is pulp fiction and you what you see is what you get. There is more to the characters than archetype though. There is nothing wrong with a few small randy and explicit scenes to spiff it up, it’s done all the time in chick-lit. But here there is something more fundamentally about being human going on inside and with the characters.

My View

The Bloodstained Man is a action-packed hardboiled detective story in a rundown world of pleasure models, government conspiracies and general lawlessness. It is a fast read I enjoyed very much. Both books in the Netherworld Trilogy are good summer reading. I can’t wait for the next book.

Extras

Rowley’s homepage www.christopherrowley.net contains a Netherworld Web Project with 28 slightly different chapters (the first book had 21). The texts are without the delightfully noir illustrations. There is also world building notes in the  ‘Need to Know‘ section.

You can find the cover of Money Shot in my Coming SF Book Almanac (August 2010)

Order from: Amazon US | UK | sfbok

Three hundred years in our future, in a world of alien infiltrators, religious hackers, a vast convoying nation of Nomads, city sized orbital elevators, and a cyborg pirate king who believes himself to be a mythological demon Jakob is having a bad day: “Nothing gets in the way of a hangover like being reactivated by your old C.O and told to track down an alien killing machine. The same kind of killing machine that wiped out my entire squad. And now it’s in my hometown. My name is Jakob Douglas, ex-special forces. I fought Them. Just like we’ve all been doing for 60 bloody years. But I thought my part in that was done with. My boss has other ideas. If I didn’t find the infiltrator then he’d let the Grey Lady loose on me. And believe me; even They’ve got nothing on her. So I took the job. It went to shit even faster than normal. And now I’m on the run with this teenage hacker who’s had enough of prostitution. The only people I can rely on want to turn the internet into God. And now it turns out that They aren’t quite what we’d all thought. I’ve been to the bottom of the sea and the top of the sky and beyond trying to get to the truth. And I still can’t get far enough away from the Grey Lady. All things considered I’d rather be back at home deep in a whiskey bottle.”

Veteran is a fast paced, intricately plotted violent SF Thriller set in a dark future against the backdrop of a seemingly never ending war against an unknowable and implacable alien enemy.

Information

Veteran is Gavin Smith’s debut novel and it is dedicated to Ruth & James Nicoll. I believe that they are “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary” – James Nicoll and his wife. I found the quote online and I just had to include it here. English’s actions as described are appropriate to the novel.

The Author

Gavin Smith is new both to me and the world but he writes like a pro. I had to check inside if it was a pseudonym for an established author. Gavin Smith is 35. Born in Dundee he now lives in Leicester. He has a degree in Media Production (specializing in script writing) and a MA in Medieval history. He owns his own marketing company.

World building

Earth is a gritty place with social segregation after a long war with the alien Them and Gavin paints it well even though the story is written in first person. There are flashbacks to the time Jakob Douglas fought in the war that explains a great deal. There is also a lot of discussions that sometimes slows down this otherwise fast paced story but makes it clear to the reader what really is going on.

Plot

The plot is in short that Jakob Douglas is reactivated to hunt down one of Them. Then he discovers that there is more going on than meets the eye and become the hunted himself. He must fight back to stay alive. Which he eventually does after a number of adventures in some spectacular and intriguing places with names like Rigs, Crawling Town and Atlantis.

Characterization

The characters are what I really love with this story. They are gritty and twisted but in a good way. Jakob is no superman he has lots of luggage from the war to carry around but he grows as the story grows. But no one grows more than Morag, first the story play her as an almost insignificant figure which reflects the way Jakob and the others  treat her. This is something she resents but it is also her driving force to grow later in the story where she becomes principal.

There are a great many other notable characters both friends and enemies that easily takes up life in the mind of the reader.

The banter and bickering is excellent and that is a huge plus for me.

My view

Veteran is an excellent read, I had trouble putting it down. This is one of the best books I read so far this year. It got mysterious aliens, conspiracies, realistic battle scenes, fast pace, lots of wow moments and wonderful characters. I would say this is a mixture of Heavy Metal, Cyber Punk and Classic SF. It is Military Science Fiction at its best and I would recommend it to a wider audience. I can’t wait for his next book.

Related Posts

• New Science Fiction Books in July 2010 – Revisited
• Cybermage’s Summer Reading 2010

Title: The Bloodstained Man
Series: Netherworld 2
Author: Christopher Rowley
Cover art: Gregory Manchess
Interior art: Justin Norman
Genre: Cyber Punk | Heavy Metal | Noir
Paperback:
Publisher: Tor books
Copy: Bought it myself
Order from: Tor | Amazon US | UK | B&N

My Review of Earlier Books: Pleasure Model
Next Book: Money Shot (November 9 2010)

The world Paolo Bacigalupi paints is a gritty post-gasoline world where cheap energy is a thing of the past. World trade have more or less ceased, most things are done local due to the prohibiting costs of travel. The most important thing in the world is Calories. Calories have replaced money. Most of the food outside Thailand is produced and sold by ruthless international Calorie Companies with their own patented genetically altered brands. These companies helped world recession by releasing plagues that killed off competing brands and natural food stocks. Access to original genetic material is becoming more and more important as mutated viruses attacks plants, animals and humans. Thailand is rumored to have  a cache of genetic material that helped the country survive.

Protecting ones borders against plagues and diseases have become of critical importance, outbreaks are ruthlessly fought down, villages and ship are burnt on a mere suspicion. The Environment Ministery is in charge of protecting Thailand. Their troops are called ‘White Coats’. The White Coats are involved in a power struggle with the Trade Ministery who wants to open trade with the rest of the world.

Bangkok is a city about to explode.

The story let us follow a handful of characters at the backdrop of a dystrophy cityscape who’s inhabitants does anything to survive.

Jaidee is a charistmatic,  driven but not very bright ‘White Coat’. He is the hero of the people, the Tiger of Bangkok. He is a hothead and one day he will go to far. I rather liked his character, it has Elan.

Anderson (I know, agent Anderson from Matrix comes to mind) the Calorie man is in Bangkok on a secret mission involving the genetic material and an escaped geneticist named Gibbon (from the ape?) the Thai’s are supposed to hide. He is not a very nice guy.

Hock Seng is a Yellow card working as a manager for Anderson. He has his own agenda that involves him getting his fortune back by stealing blueprints from Mr Anderson’s Safe. His situation is that of refugees barely tolerated by the Thai’s. His people where run out of China by a revolution of some kind and now they exist here on a pittance.

The protagonist is Emiko and she is an artificial person, a windup as the Thais call New People. Originally created as a secretary, translator and sex toy for a japanese business man who dumped her in Bangkok after a visit. Taken in by a brothel owner she is in constant fear for her life from ‘white coats’, who would end her if they could. She lives a life of constant abasement and abuse. Until one day she meets a foreigner (Anderson) that tells her about villages up north where New People  live free.

Everything is colored in shades of grey. Bangkok is a city of corruption and bribery where everyone looks out for themselves. None of the characters are especially likable. I do like Emiko even though she is inhumane at times, but she grows through the story, learns more about herself and the world and change. She goes through more than survival. She is the hope of the book.

Every chapter has a character telling their point of view. It worked well for me as they have very distinct voices that makes it easy to identify them.

There is a lot of complicated politics involved in the plot and I had to put the book down a few times to sort it all out. The one problem I had with the book is that it takes a while until you get to when the action starts. I put the book away for a day or two in the beginning because of that.

The Windup girl reminds me a lot of Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash in the beginning with the slow winding up of the story until it releases into frenetic action. It is a beautifully written gritty dystrophic bio-punk I would recommend to all readers of science fiction.

It starts out as one of those super action packed first scenes in a Hollywood Block Buster but here it feels like it never stops. Put a handful major characters, one mega conspiracy or two and the intrigue and mysteries of a Le Carré cold war spy thriller into the mix and splatter it out on a canvas of world-wide insurrection, high technology and dystopian cityscapes and you have a feeling what this book is.

In the 22nd century, the first wonder of a brave new world is the Phoenix Space Elevator, designed to give mankind greater access to the frontier beyond Earth. Cooperatively built by the United States and the Eurasian Coalition, the Elevator is also a grand symbol of superpower alliance following a second cold war. And it’s just been destroyed.

With suspicions rampant, armies and espionage teams are mobilized across the globe and beyond. Enter Claire Haskell and Jason Marlowe, U.S. counterintelligence agents and former lovers—though their memories may only be constructs implanted by their spymaster. Now their agenda is to trust no one. For as the crisis mounts, the lives of all involved will converge in one explosive finale—and a startling aftermath that will rewrite everything they’ve ever known—about their mission, their world, and themselves.

Plot

The terrorist organisation Autumn Rain it trying to destroy the world as we know it, by blowing things up and launching attacks on the super powers that are running the show. Our protagonists are out to stop them. As is to be expected in a spy thriller the plot is not as it appears and the ending is surprising.

The story keep switching between the different characters point of view. At times it can be confusing and a bit frustrating when something is about to happen in one timeline and it switches over to another, fortunatley the chapters are short.

Characterization

Claire Haskel and Jason Marlowe are two of the protagonists. They are teamed up with Jason as the Mech, a heavily armed stealthed battle armor equipped action part of the team, and with Claire as the Razor, an electronic countermeasure offensive, stealth enhancing and information gathering part, that seems to be the standard operative setup. A hacker named Haskel is a nice touch (Haskel is a programming language).

The false memory tread where Marlowe and Haskel discuss that they keep geting false memories downloaded was interesting but confusing. Can they be sure of anything? They used to be lovers, or did they? This is never followed through, or did I miss something?

The heavily modified (cyborg) agent called the Operative is running a deep undercover mission in parallel.

Carson is another agent that is flushed from cover and blackmailed into helping Linehan, an operative on the run from Autumn Rain.

This is a story with many protagonists, or maybe only two? The never ending action makes you not noticing the lack of character depth, much. The voice of the characters are also a bit similar, this can be intended as they all come from the same spy world.

World building

The story begins in 2110. The world is dominated by the second cold war between the US and the Euroasian Coalition, they have divided the world in spheres of influence.  Europa, India and Ociania are trying to stay neutral.

The world building is great. David paints a gritty cyberpunky dystopian world that leaps out of the pages and punch the air out of you. It is a complex world that some times takes significant infodumps to explain, but thats okay with me.

The timeline of the world at the end of the book is quite enlightening and I wish I read that before I started  with the book. You can also learn more about the world on David’s website www.autumnrain2110.com

My view

Mirrored Heavens is a strong first novel by David J. Williams. He presents a chilly future high-tech world of espionage and double crossing that is more than entertaining, the characters are not very deep and at times the plot might feel a bit over complex at times but so far I like it. I already have volume 2 Burning Skies here waiting. I can recommend it if you like fast paced cyber thrillers.

Presenting Heavy Metal Pulp, a new line of novels combining noir fiction with fantastic art featuring the themes, story lines, and graphic styles of Heavy Metal magazine.

In Pleasure Model, the first book in the Netherworld trilogy, down-and out police detective Rook gets a big break when he’s assigned to a bizarre and vicious murder case. The clues are colder than the corpse and the case looks like it’ll remain unsolved—until an eyewitness is discovered. But the witness is a Pleasure Model, an illegal gene-grown human. Plesur’s only purpose is to provide satisfaction to her owner—in any way. When the murderer targets Plesur in order to eliminate the one witness, Rook takes her into hiding to protect her. Thus begins a descent into the dark world of exotic pleasure mods and their illicit buyers and manufacturers. Rook frantically looks for clues, struggling to stay one stop ahead of those looking to kill them both. But is Rook falling under Plesur’s spell….?

Christopher Rowley is a prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy including the Compton Crook Award-winning “The War for Eternity”, “Starhammer”, “Bazil Broketail”, the Books of Arna trilogy, etc. He also co-wrote two television animated series by Robert Mandell, and is the author of the illustrated novel “Arkham Woods”. Rowley lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Plot

The story is fast paced with quite a few improbable but convinient twists in true style with pulp fiction. It starts out simple as a murder investigation but turns out as something much much bigger and more complex.

The plot starts with the vicious and mysterious murder of former military operative  Sangacha while the dominatrix Mistress Julia/Angie hides under the sink in the bath room. She hears the killers, and think they finally caught up with her after 25 years on the run. Her boyfriend was killed 25 years ago before warning her to run, and she has been hiding ever since.

Sangacha was a man riddled with guilt, he had Julia there to whip him on a regular basis to atone for it. What kind of secrets does he hide? Why was he killed? And what was he doing with the pleasure model hiding in the closet? Were the men there for him, Julia or the pleasure model?

Rook Venner is the cop assigned to the case. He and his partner discover the pleasure model, she and a fuzzy photo of Julia/Angie as she flees the scene are the only clues they have. The Feds are also on the case, and Feds here are like nothing you have seen before, they even have a armored robot soldier accompanying them to the crime scene, and they are not the good guys. Rook sets out to solve the case any way he can, but its not easy being a knight in not so shiny armor with an oversexed not so bright pleasure model to protect while the other sides do their best to capture it and kill him and they have resources he couldn’t even dream of.

Style

The book is a delightfull heavy metal mix of pulp fiction, noir crime, cyberpunk and erotica. The format is 240 pages divided in 21 chapters with fantastic illustrations by Justin Norman on about two thirds of the pages, see example below.

The story is told in 3rd person with either Rook or Angie as the voice.

I would guess there is quite a few people, a lot of them women who have a problem with this book which clearly caters to men with men being men, women being objects, at least on the surface. The story is a bit randy and explicit but not more than the usual romance novel. All of it is gritty enjoyable noir.

Illustrations

The cover is made by Gregory Manchess. The cover perfectly recovers the look and feeling of pulp fiction while being relevant to the story. Please visit his website and have a look at his illustrations.

Justin Norman [his deviantart page]made the inside illustrations, they add another dimension to the text, especially in the action sequences they seems to speed up the action. I enjoyed the illustrations a lot, though there was a few places they where out of sync with the story. They add a movie feel to reading the book.

Characterization

There are a lot of recognition from noir crime novels in the character types the strong silent hero, the unreliable boss, villains, femme fatales etc

I like to have well thought out characters with interesting backgrounds, and characters that grows and are changed by events in the story. Here the characters have the look and feel of pulp fiction but they all have interesting backgrounds that makes you want to learn more.  They also grows as the story progresses some more than others, a lot more. More character development is found outside the book, on Rowley’s homepage, the story there is sligtly different but more fleshed out.

What is not explained so well is Rooks motivation for being a good guy. Not that it hurt the story much but it would be nice to have more on his background to explain this. And again, there is more on the web, whole chunks of the story that never made it to the book.

World building

The not explained major Emergency (luckily it is explained somewhat on his homepage) that seems to have formed the world is a frustrating lapse in an otherwise well built world. It feels belivable if twisted as New York 2060, with bio-engineered humans (pleasure models), robots, enhancement chips and an assortment of spiffy and useful gadgets. I especially like Ingrid, Rook’s Nookia Supa  an AI with charming personality . It is immensely competent for a personal assistant slash telephone. Left to its own devices, at night, it read 19th century literature and fought bitter doctrinal battles on the Strindberg forum on Newsnet.

I never quite get their current social structure, they used to have  some kind of military dictatorship, now they seems to live in something different, or not? After reading the web project Netherworld on Rowley’s homepage I realize most of the world building I lack used to be there but where designed out of the book. Pity, It would have made this book excellent if they left more of the world-building parts there in my opinion.

My view

The book doesn’t end with a Cliff hanger but leaves enough unresolved that I long for the next volume. I enjoyed the fast paced illustrated action packed spicy  Pleasure Model immensely. It is a good read. It lacks somewhat in depth that can be remedied by checking out Rowley’s homepage. I would recommend it to any adult science fiction fan. I myself can’t wait until I have read the next two Netherworld books. I wonder when they will be out?

Extras

Rowley’s homepage www.christopherrowley.net contains a Netherworld Web Project with 28 slightly different chapters (the book has 21). The texts are without the delightfully noir illustrations. There is also world building notes in the  ‘Need to Know‘ section

It’s been said that John Brunner invented the term “worm” for a program that replicates itself on a network in this proto-cyberpunk novel from 1975.

Future Shock!

In the obsessively technological, paranoidally secretive and brutally competitive society depicted by John Brunner, even personal identities are under threat. But one man has made it his mission to liberate the mental prisoners. to restore their freedom in a world run mad.

Nickie Halflinger, the only person to escape from Tarnover- where they raise hyper-intelligent children to maintain the political dominance of the USA in the 21st century – is on the run, dodging from loophole to crevice to crack in the computerised data-net that binds the continent like chains. After years of flight and constant changes of identity, at the strange small town called Precipice he discovers he is not alone in his quest. But can his new allies save him when he falls again into the sinister grasp of Tarnover…?

The first half of the novel had me wondering if this was way to intelligent  for me, then the fog lifted, the wow feelings started to hit me. This is a great novel! It involves the Brain Race, a development from the previous Arms Race. Every superpower collect their own brain resources and develop them at great cost in institutions like Tarnover to handle the out of control speed of change in society. The novel addresses many of the problems with the ever faster changing world that are still valid today. Especially in the area of mental health.

Paranoia is a sign of the times when this book was written and it shows. People are afraid everything they are could be taken from them by someone on the net, government or multinational companies that knows more about them than they do and have access to information on the net they don’t (We don’t think that today,do we?). Basically the society here is sick and this book is about the cure.

One might also say that this is an early case of “Information wants to be Free” argument.

The love story with Kate was an added spice.

The Shockwave Rider impressed me with its content and how the pieces fell into place in the story and it became great. It is a few years old but  much of what it tells are still valid. Read it if you can get hold of it. I found mine in a Store on Charring Cross Road, London this summer. I think there was more than one there.

While I researched this I also found The Evolution of Cyberpunk by Nick Ravo & Eric Nash published in The New York Times 1993 that might be of interest

After a short recap Chapter 2 begins. Reise travels to Vidar in the hunt for the Sekt’s  objectives and we get to know the Empress a bit more and boy does she have family issues.

This is starting to get interesting.

Next episode February 15.

I am afraid I didn’t like Multireal as much as Infoquake. Maybe it is suffering from sequel sickness. Everything was new and fresh in the first book. David Louis Edelman invented a whole new cyberpunk-business kind of science fiction with Infoquake.

Maybe it is the character’s helplessness. In Infoquake Natch and his team kicked the oppositions ass. Here the team crumbles, the Defense and Wellness Council foils them at every point, taking the fiefcorp from Natch, leaving Jara in charge. Natch himself only react. I am unhappy for Jara in this book, she was the only likable character in Infoquake, here she is more the object of others manipulation than being the actor herself, perfectly in line with the story mind you. But I liked the taking-charge Jara from the climax of Infoquake. I have hopes for her in the final book of the Jump 225 trilogy: Geosynchron.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a great story, but I am not happy about our protagonists.

At the center of the story is a new technology Multireal, that allows users to iterate through possible outcomes of an action and choosing the one with the preferred outcome. Used as a weapon in war or as a tool for oppression it would be unstoppable. Using it in everyday life would be a game changer of world shattering proportions. Infoquake introduced the technology and Multireal is about who should be in charge of it. The Defense and Wellness Council wants to suppress it and maybe use it to take control of society. Against them is Natch and his tiny fiefcorp, Natch is not totally defenseless, he ruthlessly uses both friend and foes, not stopping at worldwide insurrection to archive his goals. He also have Margaret Surinas, the inventor of Multireal, legacy on his side.

There are other players behind the scene and by it’s side. The world is about to change and Luddite groups are on the march, increasing their attacks. Then there is old enemies. Natch have gone through life making enemy after enemy and never looking back. Now when he is playing for higher stakes than ever, those enemies will come back to haunt him.

There are no space battles in this book but there is a firefight of epic proportions. And the twists and turns the story takes are as interesting and thrilling as any space opera.

One of David’s strong point is the world building, he creates a believable and complex future world. With well thought out institutions, government and technology as are further explained in the appendixes to the book.

Multireal is the middle book in a truly epic trilogy and if you are seriously into science fiction you should read it and it’s prequel Infoquake because it is a game changer.