A cautionary tale of a cruel, authoritarian America of the future that’s leavened by barbed wit and irreverence.
In Isaak’s posthumous SF novel, an accident victim, awakened from decades of suspended animation, confronts a United States that has become a corporate-run police state.
Isaak contributes to a well-known SF subgenre known as the “sleeper wakes” plot. The hero is 33-year-old California IT professional Toby Simmons. The author of numerous computer-program and technology patents, Toby has a promising career ahead of him. But he accidentally falls from a balcony while distracted by an enticingly naked neighbor, and his severe cranial and spinal injuries lead Simmons’ parents to cryonically preserve him. Miraculously, 80 years later, Toby is one of very few “cryonauts” with the lucky metabolic circumstances to be successfully revived and healed. But 2088 U.S. is unrecognizable in some ways and all too familiar in others. Wonders include hologram movies whose narratives change in response to audience stimuli and cosmetic surgery that makes almost everyone attractive (and the sex outstanding). But media is still celebrity-obsessed trash, and a minority of the superrich controls America’s stagnant economy, which, under feckless politicians, has made no progress in space exploration or much else worthwhile. Even Toby’s software skills and hacking tricks have not fallen far behind. Toby quickly surmises the cause of the country’s decline: Early-2000s pathologies, like overzealous law enforcement and privatization of government, have metastasized and made the once-free country into a China-like capitalist/fascist dictatorship, brimming with public controls and constant surveillance. Many American citizens face arrests, punitive fines, and confiscation of all property for sham offenses like “sedition,” “hate speech,” or “child pornography” (or simply being fat) and wind up in forced labor camps. As in Brave New World (1932), drugs are virtually mandated to keep society pacified and obedient. Toby, owing millions in medical bills to the state, is no criminal—yet. But he must figure out how to navigate this tomorrow while he still has novelty value and marketability as an unfrozen human commodity. Otherwise, he’ll become enslaved or need to escape the fortified borders to the outside world (a world which, understandably, regards the United States with loathing).
As in many sleeper-wakes yarns, there are op-ed lessons to be imparted via the glimpse into the future. For those who like to keep score of such things, the author lays blame on George W. Bush–era Republicans for setting in motion this dismal treadmill to dystopia, though much of the finger-pointing is toward government overreach and human failings (corporate fascism, police power, privacy invasion, ignorance, and greed) rather than individuals. And, when we meet the rebel-underground resistance, they come off more like dogma-yelling twits than sensible heroes. A trim page count, semisatirical wit (the Marx Brothers get an acknowledgment), and, yes, some really hot sex helps hold interest throughout. Readers should be well invested by the ending, which is more ambiguous than conclusive. Alas, sequels are not to be. A loving introduction is by Pamela Blake, the author’s widow (and high school sweetheart), who shepherded this narrative into print, along with several other novels in different genres, after Isaak’s death from cancer.
A cautionary tale of a cruel, authoritarian America of the future that’s leavened by barbed wit and irreverence.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781958840009
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Utamatzi Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Once again, a highly impressive must-read.
Second part of an alien-contact trilogy (The Three-Body Problem, 2014) from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.
In the previous book, the inhabitants of Trisolaris, a planet with three suns, discovered that their planet was doomed and that Earth offered a suitable refuge. So, determined to capture Earth and exterminate humanity, the Trisolarans embarked on a 400-year-long interstellar voyage and also sent sophons (enormously sophisticated computers constructed inside the curled-up dimensions of fundamental particles) to spy on humanity and impose an unbreakable block on scientific advance. On Earth, the Earth-Trisolaris Organization formed to help the invaders, despite knowing the inevitable outcome. Humanity’s lone advantage is that Trisolarans are incapable of lying or dissimulation and so cannot understand deceit or subterfuge. This time, with the Trisolarans a few years into their voyage, physicist Ye Wenjie (whose reminiscences drove much of the action in the last book) visits astronomer-turned-sociologist Luo Ji, urging him to develop her ideas on cosmic sociology. The Planetary Defense Council, meanwhile, in order to combat the powerful escapist movement (they want to build starships and flee so that at least some humans will survive), announces the Wallfacer Project. Four selected individuals will be accorded the power to command any resource in order to develop plans to defend Earth, while the details will remain hidden in the thoughts of each Wallfacer, where even the sophons can't reach. To combat this, the ETO creates Wallbreakers, dedicated to deducing and thwarting the plans of the Wallfacers. The chosen Wallfacers are soldier Frederick Tyler, diplomat Manuel Rey Diaz, neuroscientist Bill Hines, and—Luo Ji. Luo has no idea why he was chosen, but, nonetheless, the Trisolarans seem determined to kill him. The plot’s development centers on Liu’s dark and rather gloomy but highly persuasive philosophy, with dazzling ideas and an unsettling, nonlinear, almost nonnarrative structure that demands patience but offers huge rewards.
Once again, a highly impressive must-read.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7708-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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