|
|
|
||||||||
|
Mark and Gerry's Science Fiction Reviews, continued
|
||||||||||||
|
Machine Dreams by Joshua Mertz
review by Mark
The novel Machine Dreams is a good cyberpunk novel about a future where computers are so hacked that the only secure way to transport data is to download and physically transport it. Society is run by powerful corporations - ruthless mafia-type organizations that do anything to achieve their nefarious goals. A similar scenario was presented in the previously reviewed novel Snowcrash. At the disposal of these corporations are a variety of biologically enhanced henchmen and even Borg-like biomechanoids for really important search-and-destroy missions.
Into this high tech wild west is thrown a revolutionary new technology, and the corporations are all over each other trying to get it. The technololgy is a virtual reality rig that allows one individual to experience in every respect what another person is feeling. I know, this sounds old hat for science fiction. Eight years ago there was a TV miniseries titled "Wild Palms" with the same premise, and Society of the Mind had a technology with something close to this. In Joshua Mertz's novel this is what corporations kill for. In our current world the obvious #1 application would be pornography, just like the internet itself, but Mertz never explains why this technology is worth killing for.
And killing there is, and lots of it, and by many imaginative means. Machine Dreams is in the cyberpunk mode because of the psychological plugging in that is involved, and the semi-stream of consciousness style that Mertz employs. Within the cyberpunk mode Machine Dreams is a good novel, reading well and keeping the reader's interest. Unfortunately, the whole genre is populated by such mediocre fair (with some notable exceptions) that the praise is offered against a poor background. Inevitably in cyberpunk, you end up comparing to William Gibson. Mertz writes better than Gibson, and yet there was nothing particularly memorable nor philosophical such as Gibson is capable of. I found no passage worth quoting here to give you a flavor for the writer's style, yet I found Machine Dreams enjoyable and diverting. The story has good continuity and holds together. The characters themselves are generic; who and what they are and do within the story is really not as important as the situation they find themselves in.
For those interested, the title Machine Dreams is a misnomer to the story, probably chosen by the publisher rather than the author. Readers within the genre interested in computer generated realities may also find Society of the Mind diverting and Snowcrash an even better written cyberpunk novel.
|
||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
| page created with Easy Designer |