Hard Questions by Ian Watson (First Edition)

When scientist Clare Conway travels to Arizona for a conference, she finds herself on the run from a religious cult, ruthless computer spies, and the government, of all whom think she knows the secrets of the Quantum computer, a device that may hold the key to life after death or set off another American Civil War

Contemporary science fiction/thriller involving computers and multiple realities, from the prolific Britisher (The Coming of Vertumnus, 1994, etc.). Cambridge University computer expert Clare Conway and psychologist Jack Fox will attend the Hard Questions symposium on artificial intelligence in Tucson--but a lurid article about Clare in a sleazy tabloid has alerted charismatic anti- computer cult leader Gabriel Soul and his promises of immortality through sexual ecstasy. The QX corporation of California is developing a quantum computer--it will operate in parallel universes--comparable, Clare thinks, to the human brain. Then Soul's murderous cultists snatch Clare; interrogated and threatened by Soul, she realizes that the first quantum computer must become self-aware. More, the personalities of the dead can be stored in the empty parallel universes where the computer operates! The US government assaults Soul's hideout and rescues Clare, though Soul himself escapes. But then a QX employee steals a prototype quantum computer, hijacking Clare and Jack in the process. And when Soul shows up, Clare powers up the computer, which becomes aware--and reality switches tracks. A hardworking tale, packed with incident, but undermined by Watson's usual anonymous characters, and computer logic that's more mushy than fuzzy. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Set in the present or near future, this most recent technothriller by British sf author Watson brings together a disparate crowd of characters with an interest in a newly developed quantum computer?a device so powerful that it can not only postulate alternate realities but also actually create them. In pursuit of this computer is a brilliant and sexy Cambridge professor who is the first to realize its potential, a David Koresh-type cult leader who pursues her, and a successful Silicon Valley computer geek who needs to pay off some gambling debts, to name a few. The many action scenes are well rendered, and the prose is clean and spare, but readers may find the constant introduction of new, often cliched characters and additional story lines irritating. The novel can be viewed as an interesting commentary on modern American life from a British point of view. Recommended for most general and sf collections.?Reba Leiding, Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.