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The Escapist
The Escapist is set in an indeterminate future. Space travel seems to exist, but most of the action takes place on Earth. And there's plenty of action, too. From page one, the book races along with scarcely a pause for breath, and by the time you've finished you've been around the world, met numerous bizarre competing factions, and uncovered the plot behind the mysterious Mind Invasions. The storyline takes in locations as far afield as Egypt, Malaysia, Israel, Las Vegas, New York, and London. It almost seems like a travelogue of all the places the author has been in his life, except seen through a warped lens of cyberpunk fiction.
In fact, the story seems almost arbitrary, like it was written as a stream of consciousness. Think Beat Generation, but penned by a Jack Kerouac who's fascinated by computers rather than drugs, jazz and driving. Bentley Dean is carried along by the increasingly frantic stream of events, each one hitting him sideways. All is revealed at the end, but you still get the feeling that many situations occur with no rhyme or reason -- a bit like real life, only with more explosions.
The ideas about future technology in The Escapist can vary from insightful to mundane. The central theme of cryogenic sabbaticals is rather amusing, though. These could be described as "holidays on ice." And though this is clearly a cyberpunk novel, not much of it actually takes place in cyberspace --that's more of a recurring theme in the background. Most of the action occurs in the flesh. This is maybe a good thing, as the novel's description of using virtual reality to explore the human mind is a bit 20th century, perhaps as a deliberate lampoon of how dated films like The Lawnmower Man seem today.
But that doesn't really matter. Most of the time, this is a very funny book. It's full of one-liners which take the present day and twist it to its logical extremes, so you can see just how ridiculous it is. The moon, with its low gravity, becomes a refuge for the overweight. Pandas are saved from extinction by being genetically re-engineered to like eating hamburgers. A strip club is named after Pee-Wee Herman. Bentley buys a fashionable suit made of paper, only to find it too noisy for creeping around at night.
Some of these ideas will have you laughing out loud, although a few of the gags are very much for the geeks in the audience, like the Windows Bar and Grill which takes three attempts to get your order right. There are also plenty of embedded cultural references for film buffs to spot, including HAL, Yoda and even James Bond quotations. You cant help feeling at times that the plot is just there to serve the jokes.
But the book also has a serious side. There's a deeper theme about artificial intelligence, and each chapter is headed by a quasi-philosophical statement. Some of these will really get you thinking, and some are deliberately silly, just to catch you out. If you're interested in the whole question of whether or not computers could ever think like us, and what that would mean, theres food for thought here, hidden among the humour. The Escapist is a book which just doesn't stop hitting you with idea after idea, some of them serious and some intended entirely for darkly comic relief.
The Escapist's main fault is just this -- it tries to do too much in too few pages. It's so fast that at times you have trouble keeping up, and sometimes you wish the characters would just slow down and admire the scenery. And if you need a truly sympathetic character to relate to in your novels, you might find Bentley Dean is just too mean. He's also too much like a cross between James Bond and Kevin Mitnick. But if you have a perverse streak, and a penchant for satire, you'll like The Escapist. You may even wish it was a bit longer.
As well as being available in printed form, The Escapist can also be bought as a PDF direct from the website. And since the novel is published under a Creative Commons license, once you've got hold of one of these PDFs, you can share it around and print it out as much as you like. The cover art is well worth seeing on a real book, though -- it has an evocative mystery all of its own.
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This reveiw doesn't make me want to get it, I'm sure of that though.
My other car is a Popemobile
Reading this review is like seeing too many previews from a movie! you know you've seen all the good thing and it's pretty pointless to go see the movie.
In this case read that book!
They arrested the code dudes in an operation sweeping the entire city. My Pocket Assistant beeped impetuously as Rodriguez dialled the tip-off pager number. Something heavy was going down. Nobody used those digits unless it was a dire emergency. I flipped the cover off the Phoenix handheld and studied the holographic touch screen. The message flashed across in chiselled 3D text:
Reading that doesn't fill me with any desire to read farther. I prefer my fiction to be about the people and the plot, not the gadgets and the buzzwords.
" Bentley Dean. He brings a certain charm to being a hacker with a cold-blooded killing streak." "
Sounds like a ripoff of Howard Dean, but a lot nicer.
"antihero" == "not remarkable", "not heroic".
An antihero would be a milquetoast everyman who doesn't do heroic things, or who has every good thing he tries to do turn out badly.
An example: "The cover art is well worth seeing on a real book, though -- it has an evocative mystery all of its own."
Care to describe that "evocative mystery" for us? I'm surprised that a review would mention something like that instead of just describing it. IMHO, this "review" reads more like a sales pitch, dancing around everything but saying nothing.
stuff |
Mindplayers by Cadigan (sort of)
Islands in the Net by Sterling
Holy Fire by Sterling
Burning Chrome (short story) by Gibson
Cyberpunk (short story) by Bruce Bethke
City Come A Walkin' by John Shirley (if by "cyberspace" you mean a proto-network comprised of anthropomorphised city-AIs, and if by "hacking" you mean said city-AIs messing around with the real world via this network)
Eclipse trilogy by John Shirley (a lot of dystopian, but a fair amount of "hacking" and man-machine interfaces, which might interest you)
That's all I've got for now.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
.. the first thought that came to my mind was that this is a book about vi, the editor.
It's just a nomenclature problem.
He said "...a hacker with a cold-blooded killing streak", but he meant "...a sysadmin with a cold-blooded killing streak", which is, of course, perfectly understandable and quite common.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
First, the protaginists name, Bentley Dean, leads me to believe that a prequal will at some point be writeen about this man's previous career in the adult film industry.
Two, this book is trying to be a movie. Morris cunningly creates a universe where space travel seems to exist, but most of the action takes place on Earth so he can have a future, cyber-punk, technothriller action movie without the big budget requirements that a space travel flick would demand.
Three, one area I wish the book would have explored more was Bentley Dean's (shudder) emotional side; what is driving this wonderful and delightfully animated character? Clearly he's been hurt in the adult film industry... used by so many men... that you'd think this subject matter would lay an interesting foundation and rationale for Dean's cold-blooded killing streak. I can understand how the author wouldn't want to cover some of the details of Dean's exploitation as they may be too close to some of his own experiences in the underground Mexican adult film industry.
One thing is clear, without RTFB I was able to see just how ridiculous it is and provide insightful karma-building comments to the rest of the community. I was however thrilled to read that
So, got out and buy it, spread it like a weed, and when you're done reading it feel free to read another wonderful book that is slightly more coherent and literarily pure.
How about tad Williams's otherland!
He's not Super Hardcore geek guy! but i thought that his 4 books on VR gone crazy was good! it's a sci-fi fantasy novel though, not just techie stuff.
The best cyberpunk novel I have found is reality. My grandson tipped me off to the hellholes that are the GameFAQs.com discussion forums, so I started reading the postings there out of curiosity. Indeed, what I found there startled me.
The moderators were your average schoolyard bullies. The thugs who attack innocent people in the night. I'm thinking more along the lines of Clockwork Orange here. Not just physical attacks, but they partake in the worst sort of psychological perversions.
They are the stereotypical "cyberpunks": nerdy teens with the mentality of 12 year olds who are physically unable to be anything of importance in the non-Internet world, thus they become the punks of the Internet. And their presence really destroys the quality of the forums. But while the quality of the forums as a place for discussion is shitshot, the entertainment value rises immensely.
The best part is that I don't have to chip out a pence to read such novelry. The GameFAQs forums take the best of cyberpunk novels and combine them with an ever-changing reality.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
You didn't mention it, have you checked out Altered Carbon and Broken Angels? Highly recommended.
I am left with the distinct impression that there cannot be much depth (or character development) in the 167 pages that comprise this book. By the time you load it "full of one-liners" and punny place names all you probably have left is room for a dash of seriousness.
The story seems almost arbitrary...tries to do too much in too few pages
Virtual reality...artificial intelligence...technology ranging from insightful to mundane. And more explosions. Yea. Is the author hoping for a movie-rights deal?
One, your review does not encourage me to run out and grab this book. Two, why did you give this an 8?
There are plenty of books out there that are both short and good but, based upon your review, it seems that the author should have spent more time exploring one theme in a modicum of detail than attempt to pass off a screen-play treatment as a novel.
As well as being available in printed form, The Escapist can also be bought as a PDF direct from the website. And since the novel is published under a Creative Commons license, once you've got hold of one of these PDFs, you can share it around and print it out as much as you like.
This smacks of self- or vanity-publishing particularly when combined with the fact that "Ad Libbed, Ltd.", the listed publisher, has no web-presence that I could easily find. Sometimes self-publishing is the right way to go - most of the time it means you couldn't get anyone else to pick up your stuff. Based upon your review, it seems the reader would have been better served had the author turned his novella into a serial short and got it published in a sci-fi magazine or something.
This book, The Escapist was self-published here. This site actually has an interview w/ the author (or hack whichever you prefer). Here are a few choice tidbits from the interview. My comments are added in italics
/.?
...send me some money...viral marketing ...
...I've had one review on a popular computing news website as well so far. Oh really, and where would you find editors of a popular computing news website lazy enough to publish said review... oh... sorry, silly question
What is the Escapist about?
It's an epic, picaresque tale, which I've somehow managed to squeeze into 168 pages. which the author later revealed took him 13 years to write... roughly 13 pages per year on the average.
Why did you decide to self publish your book?
I had tried sending The Escapist to a few agents. I'm sure if I'd carpet bombed all the relevant agencies I would eventually have found representation and some form of publishing deal. Sure you would have... well considering what they publish... you acutally might have But it could have taken ages, and I was confident my book was good enough for prime time. By prime time... you mean posting your own review on
You've taken a Creative Commons license. Why did you do that?
How are you going to market your book?
Well, I hope someone likes it. Read the PDF, burn a copy... to a CD or otherwise... and send this guy some money, but not enough to make him think about writing a follow up.
I'll second that recommendation. If you're looking for a seminal "future noir" detective/cyberpunk novel, look no further than 'Altered Carbon' by Richard Morgan. It's about an ex-military private detective who is released from prison and hired by a rich man to find out who killed him and why. (A key feature of the series is that in this future, most people have their consciousness backed up to an implanted storage device, and it can be restored into any other body.)
'Broken Angels', the sequel, borrows the main character from Altered Carbon, but little else. It's primarily a future war novel where the main character and his small group face off against military and corporate interests during a planetary civil war. Both novels contain plenty of violent and sexual content.
There's a third book in the series called 'Woken Furies', just recently released.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
Tad needs to fire his editor. His novels tend to ramble on and on pointlessly. He has some really good ideas that translate fairly well on book form (although at times it feels like reading a summer action movie), but his books tend to bog down rather badly in the middle.
I read the internet for the articles.
This tough-but-fair reviewer apparently shares an e-mail address with the fabulous novelist James Morris, widely hailed author of The Escapist. I'm sure this is merely a coincidence and not the result of someone so completely lame that he had to review his own book in order to get anyone to say something positive about it.