The Deep Sky

 The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei (2023) 399 pages

I listened to the audiobook on Hoopla. This was recommended by author Mary Robinette Kowal when she spoke and signed books at Left Bank Books last year. There is an explosion on a deep space ship called the Phoenix that kills a small number of crew members. Who did it? The crew had spent ten years in cryogenic sleep. Now they are awake at about the halfway point to an unknown planet. The entire 80-something crew members are women. They are all expected to be impregnated by sperm donors, give birth in space, and then the new generation will continue humanity's existence on the planet that is their destination. Asuka is Japanese-American and a generalist with some skills in many departments. She survived the explosion when she was about to go on a space walk for repairs. She becomes the amateur detective tasked with finding who is sabotaging the mission. A large portion of the story is flashbacks. The Earth is facing environmental collapse. There were hundreds of pre-teen girls from many countries that applied for a highly competitive astronaut training program. We get to know a select group of these girls through their pre-teen and teen years. Some will be part of the deep space mission, some will be eliminated. Their relationships and stressful training adds great context. Countries are competing to have representatives make it through the program besides the interpersonal competition over grades. On Earth and in space virtual and augmented reality is very popular. On the Phoenix, there is a den mother type AI and augmented reality devices are implanted in the crew's temples. What could go wrong as Asuka investigates who planted the explosives??

The Fortunate Fall

The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed (1996) 289 pages

I read an article by Jo Walton on the Reactor magazine website a couple years ago that caused me to put this on my reading list. The article is edited from the introduction Walton wrote for this re-released edition of the book. I was intrigued by this cyberpunk world that wasn't so engulfed in noir. Most of the story takes place around Kazakhstan and it is a dystopian future. Maya Andreyeva is a "camera" working for a news network. She has audio and video equipment implanted in her head that can live broadcast what she hears and sees. There are also "screeners," who are like virtual producers providing research and graphics and editing for the broadcasts. Maya wants to investigate a holocaust/genocide that a previous world power committed and then nearly completely covered up. This leads her to finding a survivor from that time named Voskresenye. Maya interviews Voskresenye and falls deep into his scheming plans. Voskresenye had nearly died and was brought back to life Frankenstein style. He can only move around in the world with a cyborg carapace, which I imagined as a crab-like exoskeleton. He takes the place of the mad scientist who created him and furthers the cybernetic experiments. There are a few elements of this story that feel like a fairy tale. It constantly surprised me with the twists in the plot. The title and Voskresenye's ultimate goal to eliminate emotional suppression and restore the soul is tied to his own brand of theology. Maya developing feelings for the new "screener" assigned to her is engrossing until the end, when their lesbian romance just becomes angsty.

Neuromancer

Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984) 288 pages

This originated the term Cyberpunk. It is a hard-boiled crime novel with a heist as the central plot device. It takes place in a futuristic world that would inspire the Blade Runner movies and The Matrix movies. Designer drugs, genetic manipulation, violence, and virtual reality are present everywhere. The main character Chase, while working to plant a computer virus as part of the heist, has to navigate three layers of virtual reality. The technobabble, made up terms for the future technology and the slang used in talking about it, is pretty dense. It was a struggle to find my bearings in the beginning. What is a noun and what is a verb in the sentence? From context, I'm pretty sure this is a noun. But is it a person, place, or thing? It is a bit shocking being dropped into this world, and each scene moves along very quickly. Eventually, I did become more accustomed to Gibson's use of language and went along for the fast-paced ride.
 

Ready Player Two

 

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (2020) 370 pages

I listened to about half of this from a Libby audiobook before I ran out of time. Like the first book in this series it was narrated by Wil Wheaton. Then I finished it with a print copy.

The first book was definitely a case of liking the book better than the movie adaptation for me. This sequel continues directly after the events of the first book. Most of the main characters are back. There is quite a bit of exposition before the new quest, which will be the bulk of the adventure, is revealed. The virtual world of the OASIS becomes even more immersive with new tech. Cline succeeds in raising the stakes for this quest. Wade and his avatar Parzival lionize Halliday the creator of the OASIS in the first book. This time a corrupted copy of Halliday's consciousness in the form of his avatar Anorak holds much of the real world hostage. The other two co-creators of the OASIS, Ogden Morrow and Kira Underwood, get more of the focus, especially Kira. The new quest is all built around Kira's nerdy interests and reveals her love story with Og. Because of the life and death stakes there is a sense of rushing to collect each of the seven parts of the gemstone without spending too much time in any of the virtual worlds that the quest sends the heroes to, but I felt like it was enough time in each of the previously unexplored worlds. I wish the new characters who assist Wade with a side quest got a little more time to shine. Otherwise, I really don't understand the many negative reviews on Goodreads. It is as if people were set against this book even before publication and couldn't give it a fair chance.

Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

Fall; or, Dodge in Hell: a novel by Neal Stephenson  896 pp.

Richard "Dodge" Forthrast, a character introduced in Stephenson's novel REAMDE, suddenly becomes brain dead after a routine medical procedure. The billionaire's only will is a cut & paste affair with instructions on freezing his body to be cryogenically preserved until technology advances enough to reanimate him. His family ultimately uploads the contents of his brain into digital cloud storage created for that purpose. Dodge and other uploaded brains have a sort of amnesia but he creates a virtual world based on what he does remember. As more and more brains are uploaded the world of Dodge's creation is inhabited with beings who evolve in a myriad of ways. Dodge, who has named himself Egdod finds himself in a battle for supremacy against El, the mentally ill, billionaire megalomaniac Elmo Shepherd. El overpowers Egdod and seals him away then proceeds to subjugate the other inhabitants of the cloud with himself as God. A group of former friends and colleagues of Dodge join together in a quest to release him and defeat the evil El. In addition to Dodge, there are characters, or descendants of characters in other Stephenson novels most prominently The Baroque Cycle. This one has earned a spot in my favorite novels by this author.

Ready Player One

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline  374 pp.

This is such a fun book. I enjoyed its geekiness even though I'm not a gamer. The premise of a future where real life is so awful everyone prefers to live in a virtual world called the "OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation)" provides the setting for the ultimate video game with billions of dollars at stake. What makes this novel so enjoyable is the stream of pop culture references from the 1970s & 80s. Songs, movies, and early video games are all a part of the contest game set up by the designer of the the OASIS as his legacy. Protagonist Wade Watts and a few others have taken the lead in the contest. But an evil corporation enters the contest pitting multiple players against the individuals playing on their own and the contest turns deadly. The audiobook version is read by Wil Wheaton who does an acceptable job but I kept waiting to hear the line "Shut up, Wesley!"

The Unseen World: a Novel / Liz Moore, 451 pp.

13-year-old Ada Sibelius leads a very special life in 1980s Boston.  Her father, David Sibelius, runs a computer science lab at the BIT (Boston Institute of Technology, you get the idea), and as a single parent, he homeschools Ada while she works in the lab, takes her on delightful and enriching outings, and generally creates a loving world for her in almost complete isolation from her peers.  And Ada is happy until David's memory begins to fail.  Then Ada's life is turned upside-down and bewildering secrets surface.

A thoughtful meditation on artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and identity, this was ably and unobtrusively read by Lisa Flanagan.  Not a thrill ride, but an intelligent and engaging listen.

Red Robin: Seven Days of Death/Fabian Nicieza

Red Robin:  Seven Days of Death by Fabian Nicieza and J. T. Krul; young adult, graphic novel; 208 pages

This is the final collection of Red Robin stories prior to the DC New 52 reboot.  While the reboot didn't affect the Batman family of titles as drastically as it did others, it ended this storyline, so sadly, this is my last collection I can review.

To be honest, the story here started to lose focus, so maybe that ending wasn't such a bad thing.  Rather than showing us one arc as the other collections have done, this volume instead collects several small one and two-issue arcs. The biggest of these is the one in which Tim Drake tries to take down the Unternet, a virtual reality network which uses brainwave manipulation to make super villains more evil.  I had the most trouble with this story--it's was difficult at times to tell what was going on in real life versus what was going on in the virtual environment.  The story also kind of stalled out on the character development front.  Tim's relationships with Tam, Lynx, and the rest of Wayne clan just sort of stagnate here, though there's apparently some kind of resolution from a Teen Titans storyline I know nothing about.  The ending here is also strange.  In the final issue collected here, Red Robin faces off against Captain Boomerang, the criminal who killed his father.  He arranges an elaborate scenario in which Captain Boomerang must *always* choose to do the more evil thing, and that series of choices ends with him near death.  At the last minute Tim relents and saves him, but Bruce is still quick to chastise him for putting Boomerang in that situation to begin with.  Tim's left pondering which route to take:  stick to Batman's moral code, or veer more towards the grey areas he's been flirting with for the whole series.  He doesn't make a decision, which is just frustrating.  Not a bad book, but certainly not on par with the first volume. 

I think I'll go back and read The Grail again so I can remember how awesome this series once was.