ECHOES OF ANOTHER

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.