crowcaller's review
2.0
★★☆☆☆
(2 stars)
THRIFT STORE WHY: The back text seemed interesting- the cover or title sure aren’t. I suppose I was expecting something a little ‘black mirror’ esque. The back text promises a ‘deep in the future people upload their brains into machines to live on forever, but must die in the real world for this to happen’.
BACK COPY LIES (what the plot really is): In a retro style future of about 2050, an FBI agent stumbles into a secret, illegal project to copy human brains into a computer. He tries to shut it down, but is murdered and put into the machine instead. There isn’t a lot to the plot beyond this, and him dying is pretty much the only plot point.
WOULD I RECC TO READ: No. It’s generally engaging, but overall a let-down that leads to a befuddling ending.
Review:
This is a book about the future written in the early 90s, AKA exactly what I want in my cup of pulp sci-fi: there’s limited AI, you get your news every morning from News-Fax (YES! A FAX MACHINE!), cars are mostly electric, the ocean has risen and destroyed the beaches of the west coast, things are paid for in ‘disks’… there’s a steady mix of very true predictions and slightly off ones, and it’s delightful. I believe the year the book takes place in is about 2040.
This is probably the most enjoyable part of The Silicon Man. It’s written well enough, and engaging to follow- a ‘techno-thriller’ more than anything- but lacks a hearty substance. Early in the book there’s a few refreshing details, such as the loving relationship between FBI-Man and his wife, the viewpoint of Yumi, a frustrated woman with a complicated relationship with her horrible dad, and the viewpoint of an interesting woman scientist (I like seeing non-offensive women in sci-fi pulp, can you tell?). Yumi, however, leaves the narrative about halfway, and the story itself changes quite dramatically around the same point.
Look, I spoiled it up in the summary, and I’ll do it again. FBI man finds out about a secret semi-government project that has seemingly produced no results but has been running for ten years and cost billions of dollars. Looking into it, he comes too close for the small team of rogue scientists to tolerate, and they decide to use him as the first test subject for the computer simulation they are using. Yes, they ‘kill’ him, though they insist otherwise.
This drives the latter half of the book, which boils down to one plotline, and one ‘author wants to just have some fun’ line: FBI man’s wife investigating his ‘death’ (a car crash she knows was set up) and trying to figure out how to bring the people responsible to justice… and FBI man, who is in a computer now, and has to figure out how he feels about that.
Yeah, there’s not really much in the second half. Again, it’s a thriller before this, but in the latter half the scientists, and the rich guy funding it, all kill themselves to get uploaded into the machine- which can only hold seven brains at a time, despite it being the far future. The story then becomes about the wife… but she doesn’t really DO much either. She’s angry, but then is convinced that if she tries to blow the cover on what happened, her husband’s new digital life is at risk. So she does nothing.
Meanwhile, FBI man is in a computer. It’s a super realistic computer simulation, though not perfect- it has trouble with particle physics of water (who doesn’t), and can’t simulate convincing humans. He goes slightly mad in there, but gets over it. Because he was never meant to be part of this digital heaven, he’s frozen and unfrozen in time a few times- though computer time is faster than real time by a ton. At one point he wakes up and talks to Lady Scientist, and she’s like ‘it’s been 35 years in here, or a few minutes out there’. She’s rightfully super bored and wants human conversation. This heaven doesn’t seem so good after all.
However, while a lot of ideas are briefly explored- especially in terms of science and computer functionality- none of them go anywhere. The story isn’t about living in a computer, or dealing with a semi-dead, semi-alive computerized husband, or whether immortality is worth having- it’s about, er… It’s not about much in particular.
It becomes especially strange in the very last couple of chapters, when the whole world comes apart. To spoil (it’s a lot of nonsense that isn’t hinted at and happens and occurs very suddenly), the rich guy who made this computer network explains his grand plan to the FBI man as a sort of evil monologue session: (all along?) he’s been cloning his computer brain and sending it, plus the software for it to function, across the internet to infect as many computers as possible. Once there, he will live forever- not as a person, but a sort of intelligent virus with an end goal of disabling the government and ensuring ‘anarchy’. Or really, just the end of any government programs and systems, so honestly pure capitalism ie Libertarianism.
So, he does this. He clones his mind and uses it to prevent any government computers and networks from operating, but leaves everything else alone. FBI man is then put away in cold storage since rich man is done with his monologue.
Again, this is like, something introduced in one chapter near the end as a ‘mysterious plan’, and then the next chapter we learn about it, and the chapter after is the epilogue. In that, it’s 20 years in the future, and FBI wife cheerily reunites with FBI man, explaining how with the government gone the free market didn’t have to worry about regulations, and advance tech like the computer simulation he is downloaded to became common, and now even alive people can pop in and out to hang with dead relatives in a large, HD digital world. The end.
So basically, this book is… quite suddenly, a Libertarian dream: no more regulations! No more big government! No more hand outs! And the book is quite happy to have a quick paragraph of ‘yeah it was chaos for a bit when all the computers quit but we got over it and now the world is 200% better’. Well… thanks. That was a weird, jarring message to throw in there (it doesn’t help I strongly disagree with that philosophy).
What can I say about this book? I enjoyed reading it, honestly, but it’s dense, small print on small pages. I appreciate the research and visions of computers and technology that went into it, but the plot and characters feel unresolved, and the ending just left me ruffles. It’s not something I would tell a friend to read, or ever reread myself.
(2 stars)
THRIFT STORE WHY: The back text seemed interesting- the cover or title sure aren’t. I suppose I was expecting something a little ‘black mirror’ esque. The back text promises a ‘deep in the future people upload their brains into machines to live on forever, but must die in the real world for this to happen’.
BACK COPY LIES (what the plot really is): In a retro style future of about 2050, an FBI agent stumbles into a secret, illegal project to copy human brains into a computer. He tries to shut it down, but is murdered and put into the machine instead. There isn’t a lot to the plot beyond this, and him dying is pretty much the only plot point.
WOULD I RECC TO READ: No. It’s generally engaging, but overall a let-down that leads to a befuddling ending.
Review:
This is a book about the future written in the early 90s, AKA exactly what I want in my cup of pulp sci-fi: there’s limited AI, you get your news every morning from News-Fax (YES! A FAX MACHINE!), cars are mostly electric, the ocean has risen and destroyed the beaches of the west coast, things are paid for in ‘disks’… there’s a steady mix of very true predictions and slightly off ones, and it’s delightful. I believe the year the book takes place in is about 2040.
This is probably the most enjoyable part of The Silicon Man. It’s written well enough, and engaging to follow- a ‘techno-thriller’ more than anything- but lacks a hearty substance. Early in the book there’s a few refreshing details, such as the loving relationship between FBI-Man and his wife, the viewpoint of Yumi, a frustrated woman with a complicated relationship with her horrible dad, and the viewpoint of an interesting woman scientist (I like seeing non-offensive women in sci-fi pulp, can you tell?). Yumi, however, leaves the narrative about halfway, and the story itself changes quite dramatically around the same point.
Look, I spoiled it up in the summary, and I’ll do it again. FBI man finds out about a secret semi-government project that has seemingly produced no results but has been running for ten years and cost billions of dollars. Looking into it, he comes too close for the small team of rogue scientists to tolerate, and they decide to use him as the first test subject for the computer simulation they are using. Yes, they ‘kill’ him, though they insist otherwise.
This drives the latter half of the book, which boils down to one plotline, and one ‘author wants to just have some fun’ line: FBI man’s wife investigating his ‘death’ (a car crash she knows was set up) and trying to figure out how to bring the people responsible to justice… and FBI man, who is in a computer now, and has to figure out how he feels about that.
Yeah, there’s not really much in the second half. Again, it’s a thriller before this, but in the latter half the scientists, and the rich guy funding it, all kill themselves to get uploaded into the machine- which can only hold seven brains at a time, despite it being the far future. The story then becomes about the wife… but she doesn’t really DO much either. She’s angry, but then is convinced that if she tries to blow the cover on what happened, her husband’s new digital life is at risk. So she does nothing.
Meanwhile, FBI man is in a computer. It’s a super realistic computer simulation, though not perfect- it has trouble with particle physics of water (who doesn’t), and can’t simulate convincing humans. He goes slightly mad in there, but gets over it. Because he was never meant to be part of this digital heaven, he’s frozen and unfrozen in time a few times- though computer time is faster than real time by a ton. At one point he wakes up and talks to Lady Scientist, and she’s like ‘it’s been 35 years in here, or a few minutes out there’. She’s rightfully super bored and wants human conversation. This heaven doesn’t seem so good after all.
However, while a lot of ideas are briefly explored- especially in terms of science and computer functionality- none of them go anywhere. The story isn’t about living in a computer, or dealing with a semi-dead, semi-alive computerized husband, or whether immortality is worth having- it’s about, er… It’s not about much in particular.
It becomes especially strange in the very last couple of chapters, when the whole world comes apart. To spoil (it’s a lot of nonsense that isn’t hinted at and happens and occurs very suddenly), the rich guy who made this computer network explains his grand plan to the FBI man as a sort of evil monologue session: (all along?) he’s been cloning his computer brain and sending it, plus the software for it to function, across the internet to infect as many computers as possible. Once there, he will live forever- not as a person, but a sort of intelligent virus with an end goal of disabling the government and ensuring ‘anarchy’. Or really, just the end of any government programs and systems, so honestly pure capitalism ie Libertarianism.
So, he does this. He clones his mind and uses it to prevent any government computers and networks from operating, but leaves everything else alone. FBI man is then put away in cold storage since rich man is done with his monologue.
Again, this is like, something introduced in one chapter near the end as a ‘mysterious plan’, and then the next chapter we learn about it, and the chapter after is the epilogue. In that, it’s 20 years in the future, and FBI wife cheerily reunites with FBI man, explaining how with the government gone the free market didn’t have to worry about regulations, and advance tech like the computer simulation he is downloaded to became common, and now even alive people can pop in and out to hang with dead relatives in a large, HD digital world. The end.
So basically, this book is… quite suddenly, a Libertarian dream: no more regulations! No more big government! No more hand outs! And the book is quite happy to have a quick paragraph of ‘yeah it was chaos for a bit when all the computers quit but we got over it and now the world is 200% better’. Well… thanks. That was a weird, jarring message to throw in there (it doesn’t help I strongly disagree with that philosophy).
What can I say about this book? I enjoyed reading it, honestly, but it’s dense, small print on small pages. I appreciate the research and visions of computers and technology that went into it, but the plot and characters feel unresolved, and the ending just left me ruffles. It’s not something I would tell a friend to read, or ever reread myself.
booknerd44's review
4.0
I don't normally read sci fi, and I was hesitant because I thought it was going to be super technical. There are some technical aspects to it, but just deal with it okay?
The story is excellent, and very thought provoking. The near future setting was fun/scary to imagine. Pacing was good as well.
The story is excellent, and very thought provoking. The near future setting was fun/scary to imagine. Pacing was good as well.
mama_thesaurus's review
4.0
"A plausible, well-crafted narritive exploring cyberspace in a wholly new and very refreshing way." - William Gibson
I am engaged and thinking about the downloading of our consciousnesses in a new light.
Also, this one is somewhat staged in the San Jose/Santa Cruz area, so neat to try to figure out where on the coast the characters are at in this post-depression and post-epidemic future.
I am engaged and thinking about the downloading of our consciousnesses in a new light.
Also, this one is somewhat staged in the San Jose/Santa Cruz area, so neat to try to figure out where on the coast the characters are at in this post-depression and post-epidemic future.
hammard's review
3.0
This is a well written cyberpunk novel with a good concept, however it also delves a lot into cliches of the genre with even lines and scenes taken from more famous. But a pretty good sample in the genre.
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