The Escapist

Stanislav Blingstein writes "Cyberpunk just got a whole lot darker. The Escapist , by James Morris, takes the genre into a gloomy alley and gives it a good kicking. The main character, Bentley Dean, is more than just an anti-hero: he seems to enjoy being bad. His cast of accomplices aren't much better, either, and some are far worse. Most are pretty cartoon-like, too. But you still can't help liking Bentley Dean. He brings a certain charm to being a hacker with a cold-blooded killing streak." Read on for Blingstein's review. The Escapist author James Morris pages 167 publisher Ad Libbed Ltd rating 8 reviewer Stanislav Blingstein ISBN 1905290055 summary Cyberpunk with a darkly satirical edge

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.

Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Gadget Filled

[Rob_Warwick]

I just read the first paragraph off of his 'try' page. Quote:

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.

Re:Gadget Filled

[drsquare]

Do you usually get a lot of people and plot in the first paragraph?

Not necessarily, but that's not the point. It's not the exact content of the first paragraph, it's the way it's written. It seems that the author isn't very good. What I mean is, he doesn't know how to describe things. Therefore he just throws adjectives and names all over the place without any thought as to the result.

You can describe things, and you can mention doing things, but when you combine them the result is often a disaster. No offence to the author, but it's like the sort of think you get from a 10 year old who's learning to write stories, and has just been taught about adjectives:

"Bob got up from the big black chair. He walked across the blue carpet and opened the small wooden door with the shiny brass handle. He walked into the wide long dark corridor with a wooden floor..."

Also the use of 'impetuously' is completely incongruent. The style of the writing seems to be a very casual one, i.e. the narrator isn't exactly eloquent, he uses a lot of slang, probably with some sort of strong accent. But then someone like that wouldn't say 'impetuously'. When you're writing from the perspective of the narrator, you have to keep the style of writing congruent with the character. Otherwise someone reading it will feel that something isn't right, even if they don't know what it is. Like a bacon sandwich with coffee on it.

I'm afraid that the reason this author is effectively giving the book away is that it's no good. You can't judge a book by its cover, but you if the writing in the first paragraph is of a schoolboy level, the rest probably isn't going to be any better.

Like Howard Dean?

[Anonymous Coward]

" 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.

summary or sales pitch?

[192939495969798999]

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.

Re:Here you go.

[Txiasaeia]

Count Zero by Gibson
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.

When I saw the title..

[aurb]

.. the first thought that came to my mind was that this is a book about vi, the editor.

My review of The Escapist

[Ingolfke]

I have not RTFB, but in true Slashdot fashion that will not keep me from presenting my opinions. Here are some random notes I took while not reading TFB.

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

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.

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.

The best novel is often reality.

[CyricZ]

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.

Re:What I took from the review...

[wren337]

You didn't mention it, have you checked out Altered Carbon and Broken Angels? Highly recommended.

Re:What I took from the review...

[Johnboi Waltune]

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.