HYPERTHOUGHT

Buckner, M. M.

ISBN 10: 0441010237 / ISBN 13: 9780441010233

Published by Ace Books, New York, 2003

About this Item

Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. Signed on the title page by Buckner. The author's first book. Buckner's "first three SF novels are set in an exceedingly grim but realistic planet Earth, though her excessively intricate plotting tends to divert attention from the harshness of the near future/moderately distant future she posits. HYPERTHOUGHT (2001) and WAR SURF (2005) -- the latter won the Philip K Dick Award for 2006 -- are closely linked. An accumulation of early twenty-first-century ecological disasters has driven humanity to the poles, though even there it is dangerous to go above ground; in the sequence, a 'surfer' is defined as a person who ventures onto the surface of the planet. After a century or so of this, the rich/poor divide has become even more grotesque than in the early years of this century; the rich are able to afford rejuvenation procedures, while billions of short-lived illiterate 'proles' clog the underground cities; huge corporations rule the planet. There are resemblances to the world David Marusek has evolved in the stories that climax in his COUNTING HEADS (2005), but Buckner is less sanguine, though the ending of WAR SURF, whose rejuvenated protagonist sacrifices himself to make others potentially immortal, reaches towards the kind of transcendental climax favored by hard SF writers like Stephen Baxter. The foreground of her tales is (somewhat damagingly) occupied by larger-than-life protagonists who usually speak to us in the first person, and whose adventures in dystopia are sometimes distracting: to war surf, for instance, is to get intimate with one of the planet's innumerable armed conflicts, and to come back to the polders of the rich with unbeatable footage." - John Clute, SFE (online). Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1986-2009. A fine copy. (#154782).

Seller Inventory # 154782

Bibliographic Details

• Title: HYPERTHOUGHT
• Publisher: Ace Books, New York
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0441010237
• ISBN 13: 9780441010233
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Signed: Signed
• Seller catalogs:
  • Dystopia
  • Utopian Literature
  • Tale of the Future

About this title

Synopsis

Jin, the son of a wealthy Com CEO, and Jolie, a tour guide to the splendors of Earth, join forces to overthrow the tyranny of the Coms over the north by unleashing the power of Jin's brain with experimental neurosurgery, while Jin's father tries to stop them. Original.

Reviews

In the late twenty-first century, Earth is wracked by brutal storms and toxins, and people have moved underground and poleward. The northern hemisphere is run by the .Coms, while the southern is free. Jolie runs Extreme Tours, taking the wealthiest commies to the surface, where the former tunnel rat somehow feels at home. When she introduces her friend Jin to Dr. Merida, she sets off quite a chain of events. First, Jin's father, head of Pacific.Com, arranges financing for Merida's experimentation--on Jin. Soon enough, Jin is to hear the underlying sound of the universe and understand his role in it. Rebellion breaks loose in the northern .Coms, and Jolie is caught up rescuing whom she can. In the midst of this, though, she goes to rescue Jin. Together they flee across the surface, playing one .Com against another, racing for survival as nanocytes in Jin's brain give him astonishing visions. This is one successful adventure story and a neatly packaged allegory on thought and the future. Regina Schroeder
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