A review by anesh
The Complete Atopia Chronicles by Matthew Mather
4.0
I was a bit reticent at first, when I started it, but the world that Mather created was enough to pull me all the way into the story. It's quite freshly finished so my mind is still swerving in Atopia, trying to wrap itself around it, but hopefully by the end of this review or whatever this is I'm going to make it clear. SOME SPOILERS AHEAD!
The novel is actually parted down into 6 sections because it was originally written as independent stories, but I think that it makes so much more sense put together like it is because the action in the first 5 stories takes places concurrently and then all the characters in these stories come together in the sixth to wrap up everything that had been going on. The Epilogue only ties in the knots that needed it, giving way to a sequel that I for one am excited and curious to read.
The characters live on an artificial island called Atopia, a sort of technological experiment to find a solution to the already in effect problems caused by overpopulation, decreases of natural resources and the wars that consumerism created. On top of that, Atopia seems to be confronted by something called the Weather Wars (in the back of the stories loom these super storms that threaten Atopia's destruction and the people monitoring them and trying to prevent destruction think they are somehow man controlled by the people of another island called the Terra Nova who are opposed to the programs that Atopians wish to release into the world) and this is something that bugs me because I waited till the end to find and explanation for them and only received half of it, which totally took me by surprise. Maybe I should have seen it coming, given that one of the characters is on the run to save his life and it was pretty clear that the whole thing was orchestrated from behind the curtains, but I sure as hell didn't. This probably doesn't make sense here.
The solution that the Atopian lead research team have come up with is based on these two programs called pssi and Infinixx. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to give an accurate explanation for them but here I go. Pssi is supposed to help you enhance the power of your brain and help you access infinite possibilities like seeing all the probable futures and their chance of happening, or sharing consciousness. But with the help of Infinixx one can do so much more because it helps you create not only a digital world so real that you need little else in the real one, but also it can give you access to more of yourself. So say that you need to be in two or more places at the same time; pssi helps you distribute your consciousness, while Infinixx helps create your physical avatars. And these programs are inserted into your body through smarticles, these super smart nanoparticles that attach themselves to your brain and basically recreate your twin from memories and your particular neural connections; and this other self basically helps you navigate these programs as well as your real life. It's more like having a best friend that later turns into your personal assistant for life. Did I mention that these alter egos can survive you? Yeah, it's like having your consciousness downloaded into a program because they are so much like you, but they have their own personality; well it's a lot more complicated than my simple mind paints it here but oh the possibilities.
So the reason for these programs is to put and end to consumerism and help protect the few resources we have in order to help mankind survive. The possibilities are endless with these new apps, but while the intentions for them were good ones, it is clear from the start that these programs and their applications are not fully understood and a lot of people can profit off of them with bad and unpredictable repercussions. One of the lead scientists of these apps talks a lot about giving humanity all that it wants in a seemingly innocent way but what will happen to society when people are supposedly saturated with happiness?
These are just some of the main themes dealt with in these stories. They're not new but I loved to see them reconstructed here. While the problems confronted are quite menacingly real, the solutions, I think, are purely hypothetical. And still, there is something terrifyingly curious about exploring these futures.
The novel is actually parted down into 6 sections because it was originally written as independent stories, but I think that it makes so much more sense put together like it is because the action in the first 5 stories takes places concurrently and then all the characters in these stories come together in the sixth to wrap up everything that had been going on. The Epilogue only ties in the knots that needed it, giving way to a sequel that I for one am excited and curious to read.
The characters live on an artificial island called Atopia, a sort of technological experiment to find a solution to the already in effect problems caused by overpopulation, decreases of natural resources and the wars that consumerism created. On top of that, Atopia seems to be confronted by something called the Weather Wars (in the back of the stories loom these super storms that threaten Atopia's destruction and the people monitoring them and trying to prevent destruction think they are somehow man controlled by the people of another island called the Terra Nova who are opposed to the programs that Atopians wish to release into the world) and this is something that bugs me because I waited till the end to find and explanation for them and only received half of it, which totally took me by surprise. Maybe I should have seen it coming, given that one of the characters is on the run to save his life and it was pretty clear that the whole thing was orchestrated from behind the curtains, but I sure as hell didn't. This probably doesn't make sense here.
The solution that the Atopian lead research team have come up with is based on these two programs called pssi and Infinixx. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to give an accurate explanation for them but here I go. Pssi is supposed to help you enhance the power of your brain and help you access infinite possibilities like seeing all the probable futures and their chance of happening, or sharing consciousness. But with the help of Infinixx one can do so much more because it helps you create not only a digital world so real that you need little else in the real one, but also it can give you access to more of yourself. So say that you need to be in two or more places at the same time; pssi helps you distribute your consciousness, while Infinixx helps create your physical avatars. And these programs are inserted into your body through smarticles, these super smart nanoparticles that attach themselves to your brain and basically recreate your twin from memories and your particular neural connections; and this other self basically helps you navigate these programs as well as your real life. It's more like having a best friend that later turns into your personal assistant for life. Did I mention that these alter egos can survive you? Yeah, it's like having your consciousness downloaded into a program because they are so much like you, but they have their own personality; well it's a lot more complicated than my simple mind paints it here but oh the possibilities.
So the reason for these programs is to put and end to consumerism and help protect the few resources we have in order to help mankind survive. The possibilities are endless with these new apps, but while the intentions for them were good ones, it is clear from the start that these programs and their applications are not fully understood and a lot of people can profit off of them with bad and unpredictable repercussions. One of the lead scientists of these apps talks a lot about giving humanity all that it wants in a seemingly innocent way but what will happen to society when people are supposedly saturated with happiness?
These are just some of the main themes dealt with in these stories. They're not new but I loved to see them reconstructed here. While the problems confronted are quite menacingly real, the solutions, I think, are purely hypothetical. And still, there is something terrifyingly curious about exploring these futures.