A highly immersive and imaginative cyberpunk tale.
Six lives collide in a technology-crazed near future in this debut SF novel.
In Toronto, Kel Rafferty is a researcher at “arguably the largest facility in the world for studying animal models of neurodegenerative diseases”—basically a massive indoor jungle in the middle of the city. But strange things are happening in the lab. Two of her macaques are found mysteriously dead, and some of the data in her logs has been wiped clean. Then her study is threatened due to the increasing irrelevancy of her Alzheimer’s research. Fortunately, she comes up with a new idea: cognitive amplification. What if she could induce a state of “flow,” those times when everything leaps to mind easily and without effort? She builds prototype implants to test her theory, but one night at the lab, she is knocked out and most of the implants are stolen. So begins an intricate mystery that throws together a number of unlikely figures, including Ray Tilson, the survivor of a strange drone explosion; Seth Bacchi, a novelist (and hypochondriac) desperately trying to reach readers in an age of artificial intelligence-generated fiction; Maura Torres, the demanding head of an ascendant virtual reality company; Haroon Minhas, a teen from the city’s analog slums; and Meike Bergholtz, Kel’s assistant with strange dissociative tendencies. In this cyberpunk story, Clarke’s lush prose envisions a future both alien and utterly believable: “Three meal options appeared on-screen: cricket flour flakes and milk, a termite muffin, and buqadilla, a spicy dish of chickpeas and mealworm protein.” Seth “picked the last option and then had the fabber brew him a cup of yerba mate while he waited for his breakfast to print.” The individual characters are wonderfully specific and uniformly intriguing. Unfortunately, the plot takes its sweet time getting started, requiring the audience to follow the various players through many chapters during which their association is unclear. But patient readers will be rewarded once the storylines begin to come together. The author’s vision is generally beguiling enough that even when readers aren’t sure where Kel and the others are going, they will be confident that they are in good hands.
A highly immersive and imaginative cyberpunk tale.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 355
Publisher: Fractal Moose Press
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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