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In brief: The beginning of this cyberpunk satire is a little slow, the middle's excellent, though some of how it depicts the Internet shows glaring inaccuracies, and the ending sucks -- But I have to admit, it makes sense in a strange Malkavian way. However, for all it's faults, I still think this is one of the best books I've read in awhile.
InfonuggetsNifty little boxes are scattered throughout Headcrash explaining extra details that you don't absolutely need to know, but might find interesting anyway. Slightly more than half of them were completely gratuitous with no actual content, such as the ones saying "Ok, this is the last one!" |
The book chats with you in the distinct voice of the protagonist, Jack "Pyle" Burroughs, throughout. Jack is a twenty-three year old socially-challenged (of course!) cybergeek living in his Mom's basement in St. Paul, Minnesota. MAX_KOOL (his alter-ego on the Net), on the other hand, is a suave, handsome, black-leather-clad biker with (gasp!) a sex-life.
Everything's going reasonably unpleasently in his life until two important things happen at more or less the same time: 1. a mysterious woman known as Amber seeks him out on the net and asks him to retrieve "stolen" files for her, and 2. He's fired from his job at MDE (Monolithic Diversified Enterprises, a megacorp that has departments ranging from "Global EthniFoods" to "Sanguinary TechSystems" to "Dead Trees Publishing"). But when you're being paid 1 million dollars (wowza!) to retrieve files, it's a little hard to mind being laid off from a job you hate.
Aided by his best friend, Joseph "Gunnar" LeMat, an experimental new neural interface for VR provided by Amber, and a cyberspace mob boss named Don Vermicelli, Jack has to deal with obstacles ranging from an angry ex-girlfriend to the Church of Vegentology to (utterly ridiculous) defenses on the computer he has to break into. All I have to say is, Good luck Jack.
(Written circa 1996)