A bleak but wholly engaging SF story about the downsides of technology.
In Bollens’ SF novel, a supercomputer linking citizens may be prompting them to split into increasingly hostile groups.
Jared Rohde, a university professor of political and urban science in the city of Elderwater, witnesses the results of chip implantations in his students. These government-sanctioned chips give them access to interconnect, a superserver computer farm whose artificial intelligence provides instant access to information. But the students aren’t so much learning as they are simply reading what the AI delivers. They also display a “manic assertiveness,” as most of the information they receive is rife with negativity and animosity (“Constant barrage of us versus them”). Violence ensues across the country, and people separate into 13 factions constantly at war with one another. Jared, who has a chip like everyone else, tries to limit the hours he’s “chipped-in,” but soon he has trouble distinguishing reality from his vivid black-and-white dreams. Anti-tech citizens who call themselves “organics” may have a way to cope with interconnect and end the widespread savagery, though it won’t be easy. Bollens’ narrative is delivered via Jared’s first-person narration. The prose is striking as years pass and the protagonist takes refuge where he can in what devolves into a dystopian world. The increasingly unreliable narrator adds an element of mystery; for example, Jared (and readers) can’t be sure if his shockingly violent dreams mean he’s actually committing the acts depicted in them or if he’s done something even worse during his periodic losses of time. On the other hand, this murkiness also hinders characterization, as it’s difficult to trust any individual Jared encounters (those close to him include his estranged wife and kids and his unfortunately one-dimensional live-in girlfriend). Although SF fans will quickly recognize the tried-and-true theme of machine vs. humanity, the author skillfully incorporates such distinctive notions as government oppression, social divisions, and mob mentality.
A bleak but wholly engaging SF story about the downsides of technology.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9798891323957
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.
Some people are born supervillains, and others have supervillainy thrust upon them.
Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along with his uncle. With the aid of his uncle’s No. 1, Mathilda Morrison, and his cat, Hera (who turns out to be an intelligent and typing-capable spy for his uncle’s organization), Charlie must sort out whom he can trust before he gets blackmailed, blown up, or both. This book serves as a follow-up of sorts to Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022) in that both are riffs on genre film tropes. The current work is fluffier and sillier than the previous novel and, indeed, many of Scalzi’s other books, although there is the occasional jab about governments being in bed with unscrupulous corporate enterprises or the ways in which people can profit from human suffering. This is one of many available stories about a good-hearted Everyman thrust into fantastical circumstances, struggling to survive as a fish out of water, and, while well executed for its type, the plot doesn’t go anywhere that will surprise you.
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780765389220
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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