THE MAGU PROGRAM

In Hartle’s SF novel, set in a nightmarish Tokyo of tomorrow, an amnesiac warrior-hacker finds himself protecting a mysterious woman and child from powerful corporate interests.

Toxic “Base City” is the never-specified (but nonetheless identifiable) city of Tokyo a century hence. Skyscrapers blot out the sunlight, amoral corporations vie for control and profits, and technological body modifications, sensory boosts, and human-machine interfaces are standard means of social advancement for those who can afford them. Formidable data-hacker Ashiro Taki is an extreme case even by secret-agent standards, with military-grade cyborg augmentations, combat reflexes, and storage drives (“It was remarkable—the man was as much synthetic as he was organic. Organs and tissues had been replaced, muscles and bones enhanced; armor plating was everywhere”). Why he exists in this state, he doesn’t know; his long-term memory has been wiped, and he goes from one (generally violent) assignment to another in the murky Base City underworld, sustained by drugs, deadlines, and vestigial visions of his past. By chance or design, Ashiro crosses paths with fugitives from the mighty cybernetics-based Hakko Ichiu Corporation. They are Chiya, a female “healer,” and a mystery boy called Wren, who’s somehow of immense value to the company. Wren was placed in Chiya’s care, and she fled with him to hide in the poorest districts. Ashiro becomes their defender against a determined dragnet of lethal pursuers. It’s long been fashionable to declare cyberpunk a defunct genre, but when an author of Hartle’s talents pumps this much juice into the tropes, they come alive as they did in the heady 1980s, when William Gibson’s Neuromancer debuted. The action is slick, the techno-veneer is seductive, even in its horrific aspects, and a retro, noirish flavor leavens the future-shock. Wren’s secret is easy to guess and key plot points remain hazy, but genre readers should salute this diverting yarn’s all-Asian cast—while Japanese anime influences have always helped to define cyberpunk, too often the lead parts default to Anglos.

Immersive, dystopian cyberpunk recalling the genre’s 1980s heyday.