In Daniels’ (Fire Chief, 2011) futuristic novel, a firefighter in Colorado’s Front Range copes with various technological advances that render his profession obsolete.
In the not-so-distant future, Johnny Stasso becomes a firefighter after an early traumatic experience and a failed attempt at finishing college. The profession suits Johnny well, as he has a passion for saving lives and keeping people safe. But as he raises a family with his wife, Nina, in Boulder, Colorado, he finds that staying a firefighter isn’t so easy. Well-intentioned technology companies develop firefighting equipment that, as the years roll by, becomes more advanced and renders Johnny’s job more administrative than active. It’s a wonderful premise, and Daniels’ greatest strength is portraying the technologies, which don’t seem terribly far-fetched: gear that monitors the firefighters’ vitals, robots that haul gear for battling wildfires, and so on. He’s at his best when the technologies reflect those of the present day; for example, when firefighters arrive at a university, it’s hard not to envision cell phones when Daniels describes the scene: “Distracted students wearing their virtual reality goggles were everywhere, and several took missteps in front of our trucks before their friends or alarms from the goggles caused them to stop and look up, surprised at our presence.” But although there’s a lot of fun in seeing what new technologies will come next, the story’s protagonist lacks complexity. Johnny is a likable but unreflective character, aside from a jarring scene in which he plans to murder someone in a jealous rage. Too often the story plods forward with repeated, undistinguished episodes of firefighting. If Daniels had allowed Johnny to be more involved in the decisions surrounding the various technologies, it might have made his character more interesting; usually, however, Johnny’s a passive victim. The fact that Nina works for one of the tech companies is glossed over for much of the book, only to be brought up at the novel’s conclusion in an unsurprising way.
An often entertaining, thought-provoking exploration of how technology may replace humanity, but relatively light on plot and characterization.
Pub Date: May 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494907273
Page Count: 258
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2014
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
Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.
Strange and fascinating alien-contact yarn, the first of a trilogy from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.
In 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, young physicist Ye Wenjie helplessly watches as fanatical Red Guards beat her father to death. She ends up in a remote re-education (i.e. forced labor) camp not far from an imposing, top secret military installation called Red Coast Base. Eventually, Ye comes to work at Red Coast as a lowly technician, but what really goes on there? Weapons research, certainly, but is it also listening for signals from space—maybe even signaling in return? Another thread picks up the story 40 years later, when nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao and thuggish but perceptive policeman Shi Qiang, summoned by a top-secret international (!) military commission, learn of a war so secret and mysterious that the military officers will give no details. Of more immediate concern is a series of inexplicable deaths, all prominent scientists, including the suicide of Yang Dong, the physicist daughter of Ye Wenjie; the scientists were involved with the shadowy group Frontiers of Science. Wang agrees to join the group and investigate and soon must confront events that seem to defy the laws of physics. He also logs on to a highly sophisticated virtual reality game called “Three Body,” set on a planet whose unpredictable and often deadly environment alternates between Stable times and Chaotic times. And he meets Ye Wenjie, rehabilitated and now a retired professor. Ye begins to tell Wang what happened more than 40 years ago. Jaw-dropping revelations build to a stunning conclusion. In concept and development, it resembles top-notch Arthur C. Clarke or Larry Niven but with a perspective—plots, mysteries, conspiracies, murders, revelations and all—embedded in a culture and politic dramatically unfamiliar to most readers in the West, conveniently illuminated with footnotes courtesy of translator Liu.
Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7706-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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