Norwescon discussion

Have you read this nominee? What did you think?

Started promisingly, with a nanotech biological terrorist attack, and interesting ideas on nanotechnology and transhumanism. But the more I read, the less I enjoyed it, and ended up rather surprised by how much I didn't enjoy this one.

The best reason I came up with is that, to me at least, it reads like a brogrammer's fantasy after watching too many Bourne/Bond movies.

(Spoilers below!)

The lead character starts off as a smarter-than-average bioengineer who's a relatively normal person, but who becomes increasingly unlikeable and violent as the book goes on. He gets involved with what's essentially the Illuminati under a different name, a men's club (some few notable women, such as Margaret Thatcher, had been given honorary memberships, but no women are part of the club during the story) who control US finance, industry, technology, and politics, and who are masterminding a dastardly plot. The women in the story are a problematic lot: a supportive wife who (view spoiler)[gets fridged (hide spoiler)] and (later, after (view spoiler)[suddenly reappearing (hide spoiler)]) (view spoiler)[assaulted and threatened with death by her husband but still loves him (hide spoiler)], a brilliant co-worker who pines for the lead character but is so saddled with mental disabilities that a relationship is impossible, a mysterious femme fatale who helps and trains the lead character until he surpasses her in abilities and she becomes a sidekick who (view spoiler)[finally gives in to her love for the main character after he sexually assaults her (hide spoiler)], and a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold who (view spoiler)[gets rather brutally fridged (hide spoiler)]. Then there's the best friend, who's gay (view spoiler)[until becoming an evil bisexual (and who meets the same fate as all evil bisexuals must) (hide spoiler)].

The basic ideas of the tech are interesting, but much of it, even given the nanotech-enabled near-future setting, stretched credibility. For instance, nanoscale GPS/RFID tags that allow an enhanced individual to tag and track hundreds (thousands?) of people across a large retreat/camp complex. My understanding of RFID is that it's a passive, limited-range transmission technology, which I don't see as being overly expanded by being at nanoscale. As such, there would have to be some sort of RFID receivers/scanners to pick up the data from the RFID tags as they move around, yet in this case, the individual is able to track location data in real time from everyone who's tagged. Perhaps it wasn't explained well or I simply didn't understand something, but far too much of the technology came across as magic, or working because the plot needed it to, rather than because the technology would allow it.

Another example: the main character's ability to near-instantly absorb information on any subject, including martial arts and fighting techniques, and then have full use of them. It reminded me of a concept handled (in my opinion) far better in Ramez Namm's Nexus series, where characters had installed a "Bruce Lee" program in their brains to allow them to use martial arts techniques when fighting…only they ever managed an occasional lucky hit and most often got smacked around, because there's a difference between knowing martial arts moves and actually having the training, strength, and muscle memory to actually use them effectively. Here, it's just another magic trick.

So in the end…definitely my least favorite of this year's PK Dick nominees.

I didn't like how they kept referring to his wife as "whining" and "irrational" and basically a harpy bringing him down because she wanted a baby, and the whole scene with the initiation, it was so unbelievable. First off, (view spoiler)[they would never ever have massive bonfires in a cave with prehistoric cave paintings they cherished, have you ever seen what smoke does? They're not up there with mops cleaning off the walls every time, even with a chimney. And it just seemed far beyond belief, that he was burning and blistering and had to move hundreds of pounds of rock off him, but it wasn't as serious as he thought and tons of people had done it in tons of different ways. (hide spoiler)]. Anyway, I felt it needed a lot better editing, in a number of different ways.

There were also specific moments when word choices made me uncomfortable, and I had to hope that they were due to character faults, and not faults of the author. One in particular that stuck out to me was during the description of all the pleasures to be found at the camp's nighttime activities including "trannies".

Oh, and something else from that same scene that I was just reminded of: as Peter is exploring the camps, we see one of the few people of color mentioned in the entire book (off the top of my head, I remember two: Chang, and this character…there may have been others, but I didn't pick up on them): a black man who is dealing drugs. Definitely felt like uncomfortable stereotyping.