This timely, gripping tale deftly illustrates the dangers of putting an artificial intelligence in charge.
A man living in a future utopia starts to ask philosophical questions that place him in peril in this SF thriller.
Dash’s protagonist, Cassique, is a “Fixer” in 2853. His job is to go back in time to repair history by extracting important figures and replacing them with specially trained agents. Cassique’s entire world is the product of the supercomputer Father, who runs life in the 29th century. Father is responsible for the virtual realities and sex spas where the genetically created people he produces spend their leisure time. But eventually, Cassique begins to wonder if there shouldn’t be more to life. Hoping to pull Cassique out of his funk, Father agrees to let him borrow an Original, one of those historical figures retrieved from the past. Cassique settles on philosopher and computer programmer Beta D, later adding Albert Einstein. These young versions of those legends are appalled by how sanitized life has become in the future and how people are so docile about Father’s rule. And the longer the two luminaries continue to hack into Father’s records, the more they uncover about the terrifying truth behind his maneuvers. The trio must develop a plan to allow the people of Earth to regain their messy humanity while eluding Father’s watchful eye. The most important accomplishment of Dash’s dystopian novel is that it forces readers to ponder what a utopia should be. Father abolished all that was bad about humanity but he also eliminated everything that was good. His creations live in a world that’s all simulations. When workaholic Cassique is forced to take an extended vacation, he starts to question, in the words of Peggy Lee, “Is That All There Is?”: “In many ways he found past societies more interesting and stimulating than his own, though he was careful never to voice those views.” He misses having a sense of family and community. Coming from earlier eras, Beta and Einstein hammer home what Cassique has missed out on as a human. Having gone back in time, Cassique has witnessed some of these developments himself, causing him to question how advanced his society really is. In this riveting, thought-provoking page-turner, the author makes clear why Cassique makes the choices he does.
This timely, gripping tale deftly illustrates the dangers of putting an artificial intelligence in charge.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2023
ISBN: 9798862557152
Page Count: 219
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
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
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
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