This Side of Judgment - Hardcover

Dunn, J. R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 015100076X ISBN 13: 9780151000760

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994

Synopsis

Investigating the gruesome murder of a dancer, a contrary-minded federal operative of the COSSF, Ross Bohlen, tracks down a killer among a community of "Chipheads," cybernetically enhanced people determined to hide their remaining numbers from the police.

About this title

About the Author

J.R. Dunn is a writer whose work has appeared in magazines, including Analog, Asimov's, Omni, Century, and Amazing. Most of his stories have been cited on best-of-year lists with many selected for anthologies. Dunn also works as an editor.Dunn lives in New Jersey, a small, barbarous region between New York and Pennsylvania.

Reviews

Known for his short stories in SF magazines, Dunn makes a solid book-length debut with this near-future adventure-thriller that combines elements of both The Fugitive and Frankenstein. In the 21st century, the U.S. has been fractured by invasion from the south and by foreign and domestic terrorism. The Latino troops have been routed and much of the Southwest has been depopulated, with thousands of survivors having made their way to the small, snowbound town of Ironwood, Montana. When a savagely mutilated corpse is discovered in Ironwood, the question that haunts local police and vigilante groups is whether the town's refugee camps shelter even more frightening "invaders": remnants of a group of cybernetically enhanced supermen from California, referred to as "Chipheads." Enter Ross Bohlen, a gifted but short-fused antiterrorist operative from Washington, D.C., who, in following his instincts in tracking down Chipheads, ends up at odds with his corrupt, bureaucracy-bound bosses and the shell-shocked local sheriff. Complicating the dramatic mix is the presence of another group of Chipheads who want to share their enhanced powers with humanity even while they're fighting off the pychosis-inducing effects of cerebral chip implantation. The satisfying cat-and-mouse development ends with a scene right out of the David Koresh files, proving that you don't have to be enhanced to be crazy. Though curiously old-fashioned in style and story line for a tale whose hard-science plot element is straight out of cyberpunk, Dunn's first novel proves a page-turner.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An isolated Montana community becomes the scene of a high-tech battle between a computer-enhanced killer and a renegade law-enforcement officer. Beneath the veneer of fast-paced action lies a deeper, sadder tale of experimental subjects created for government use and then abandoned to their own fates or targeted extermination. This elegantly atmospheric first novel deserves a wide readership.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

When a dancer's mutilated body ominously turns up on a Montana back road only miles from a bank raided through computer sabotage, Ross Bohlen, rebellious agent for the Computer Subversion Strike Force, suspects the misdeeds of a chiphead. Chipheads (so called for the cybernetic implants in their brains but known more respectfully to themselves as "imps") represent a megalomaniacal hacker's failed experiment in forcing humanity to the next stage of evolution. They will all eventually fall prey to a brain-wasting disease, but meanwhile Bohlen must venture among the scattered survivors and use his hacker skills and intuition to track and eliminate the killer before the killer eliminates him. Although sometimes relying too much on detective-fiction clich{}es to sustain its freshness, Dunn's first novel is an absorbing-enough combination of suspense and speculation on the future of computer technology to be must reading for cyberpunk fans. Carl Hays

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 015100076X
• ISBN 13: 9780151000760
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320