A chilling, thought-provoking fantasy that questions the value of a miracle machine.
Inspired by an SF television series, a well-intentioned graduate student invents a wondrous device in this debut novel.
Peter Harris, Vincent’s protagonist, has dreamed of creating a replicator ever since he first saw the device on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The life of Peter, a science nerd, changes when he meets Tracy Simmonds, who needs a physics tutor. They fall in love, and she becomes his rock. A graduate student at Boston College, Peter has finally figured out how to create a replicator. His adviser, Dr. Paul Horton, is so impressed that he contacts old college friend and attorney Ira Zonmann. Ira in turn reaches out to venture capitalist Phil Martinson. After meeting with Peter, Ira and Phil propose setting up a company to manufacture replicators. They decide to build their factory in Costa Rica so they don’t have to deal with the United States government’s resistance. Leading that resistance is President Samuel J. Menéndez, an independent, who bans sales of replicators in the U.S. Peter eventually returns to America and uses a replicator to create a new heart for his father-in-law, Jim. That transplant breaks down the government’s opposition, paving the way for replicators to be sold in the U.S. But Peter’s device doesn’t end up being the societal boon that he envisioned. In his book, Vincent skillfully pokes a big, philosophical hole in one of SF’s most intriguing devices. This engaging volume doesn’t pit good guys against bad guys but instead ideas versus reality. Peter may have been a well-meaning genius, but, in the end, his invention isn’t the gift to society that he hoped it would be. Handing people everything they want removes any incentive for them to strive to improve their lives. This is ironic because Peter had been pushing all his young life to fulfill his dream of creating such a machine. Neither Peter and his collaborators nor naysayers like Menéndez are the villains of this story. They just have different viewpoints about humanity. The replicator isn’t inherently evil; it just gets misused. Vincent’s striking message for readers is to be careful what they wish for.
A chilling, thought-provoking fantasy that questions the value of a miracle machine.Pub Date: July 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5320-8786-8
Page Count: 330
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Expert, but unsurprising.
The death of an old friend who was more than a friend sends Dr. Kay Scarpetta down her latest rabbit hole.
If every body tells a story, the corpse of 7-year-old Luna Briley sings the blues. On top of the many signs of ongoing physical abuse, there’s the fatal gunshot wound to her head. Ryder and Piper Briley, the wealthy and powerful parents who didn’t call the police until after their daughter died, insist that Luna’s death was an accident, or maybe a suicide. Scarpetta doesn’t think so, and her refusal to release the body to the Brileys’ hand-picked mortician moves them to legal action against her as Virginia’s chief medical examiner. You’d think it would be a relief to put this case aside for another when Scarpetta’s niece, Secret Service agent Lucy Farinelli, calls her and ferries her by helicopter to an abandoned Oz theme park owned by Ryder Briley, but this one’s even more heartbreaking. Scarpetta is there to examine the body of astrophysicist Sal Giordano, her close friend and former lover, who was evidently kidnapped, held in captivity for several hours, and tossed out of an unidentified aircraft. The leading suspects are the Brileys; Carrie Grethen, Lucy’s sociopathic ex-lover, with whom Scarpetta has repeatedly tangled in the past; and the UFO that dumped Giordano’s body without leaving the usual traces for air-traffic technologies to pick up. The multiple rounds of physical examinations Scarpetta conducts on both victims are every bit as meticulous and gripping as fans would expect; the killer’s identity is neither surprising nor interesting, but Cornwell juggles her trademark forensics, and the paranormal hints she’s become increasingly invested in, more dexterously than usual.
Expert, but unsurprising.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781538770382
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
BOOK TO SCREEN
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