A cautionary tale of a cruel, authoritarian America of the future that’s leavened by barbed wit and irreverence.
In Isaak’s posthumous SF novel, an accident victim, awakened from decades of suspended animation, confronts a United States that has become a corporate-run police state.
Isaak contributes to a well-known SF subgenre known as the “sleeper wakes” plot. The hero is 33-year-old California IT professional Toby Simmons. The author of numerous computer-program and technology patents, Toby has a promising career ahead of him. But he accidentally falls from a balcony while distracted by an enticingly naked neighbor, and his severe cranial and spinal injuries lead Simmons’ parents to cryonically preserve him. Miraculously, 80 years later, Toby is one of very few “cryonauts” with the lucky metabolic circumstances to be successfully revived and healed. But 2088 U.S. is unrecognizable in some ways and all too familiar in others. Wonders include hologram movies whose narratives change in response to audience stimuli and cosmetic surgery that makes almost everyone attractive (and the sex outstanding). But media is still celebrity-obsessed trash, and a minority of the superrich controls America’s stagnant economy, which, under feckless politicians, has made no progress in space exploration or much else worthwhile. Even Toby’s software skills and hacking tricks have not fallen far behind. Toby quickly surmises the cause of the country’s decline: Early-2000s pathologies, like overzealous law enforcement and privatization of government, have metastasized and made the once-free country into a China-like capitalist/fascist dictatorship, brimming with public controls and constant surveillance. Many American citizens face arrests, punitive fines, and confiscation of all property for sham offenses like “sedition,” “hate speech,” or “child pornography” (or simply being fat) and wind up in forced labor camps. As in Brave New World (1932), drugs are virtually mandated to keep society pacified and obedient. Toby, owing millions in medical bills to the state, is no criminal—yet. But he must figure out how to navigate this tomorrow while he still has novelty value and marketability as an unfrozen human commodity. Otherwise, he’ll become enslaved or need to escape the fortified borders to the outside world (a world which, understandably, regards the United States with loathing).
As in many sleeper-wakes yarns, there are op-ed lessons to be imparted via the glimpse into the future. For those who like to keep score of such things, the author lays blame on George W. Bush–era Republicans for setting in motion this dismal treadmill to dystopia, though much of the finger-pointing is toward government overreach and human failings (corporate fascism, police power, privacy invasion, ignorance, and greed) rather than individuals. And, when we meet the rebel-underground resistance, they come off more like dogma-yelling twits than sensible heroes. A trim page count, semisatirical wit (the Marx Brothers get an acknowledgment), and, yes, some really hot sex helps hold interest throughout. Readers should be well invested by the ending, which is more ambiguous than conclusive. Alas, sequels are not to be. A loving introduction is by Pamela Blake, the author’s widow (and high school sweetheart), who shepherded this narrative into print, along with several other novels in different genres, after Isaak’s death from cancer.
A cautionary tale of a cruel, authoritarian America of the future that’s leavened by barbed wit and irreverence.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781958840009
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Utamatzi Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.
When a freak dust storm brings a manned mission to Mars to an unexpected close, an astronaut who is left behind fights to stay alive. This is the first novel from software engineer Weir.
One minute, astronaut Mark Watney was with his crew, struggling to make it out of a deadly Martian dust storm and back to the ship, currently in orbit over Mars. The next minute, he was gone, blown away, with an antenna sticking out of his side. The crew knew he'd lost pressure in his suit, and they'd seen his biosigns go flat. In grave danger themselves, they made an agonizing but logical decision: Figuring Mark was dead, they took off and headed back to Earth. As it happens, though, due to a bizarre chain of events, Mark is very much alive. He wakes up some time later to find himself stranded on Mars with a limited supply of food and no way to communicate with Earth or his fellow astronauts. Luckily, Mark is a botanist as well as an astronaut. So, armed with a few potatoes, he becomes Mars' first ever farmer. From there, Mark must overcome a series of increasingly tricky mental, physical and technical challenges just to stay alive, until finally, he realizes there is just a glimmer of hope that he may actually be rescued. Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling. The author imbues Mark with a sharp sense of humor, which cuts the tension, sometimes a little too much—some readers may be laughing when they should be on the edges of their seats. As for Mark’s verbal style, the modern dialogue at times undermines the futuristic setting. In fact, people in the book seem not only to talk the way we do now, they also use the same technology (cellphones, computers with keyboards). This makes the story feel like it's set in an alternate present, where the only difference is that humans are sending manned flights to Mars. Still, the author’s ingenuity in finding new scrapes to put Mark in, not to mention the ingenuity in finding ways out of said scrapes, is impressive.
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3902-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
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