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See the Thread Drop
Deirdre is a Linker, a physician-scientist who can sequester illness in a virtual construct known as “the Labyrinth” and restore the terminally ill to perfect health, but only for a day or two. Mali belongs to a group of mind-connecting anarchists who are desperately searching for a cure to an engineered virus that has doomed the group to slow death. After a mysterious meeting, Deidre and Mali will inspire a small band of Linkers, anarchists, and fellow travelers to come to Geneva and carry out an unlawful experiment in defiance of the centralized power of the Medical Guild. Five brave souls, two men and three women — one critically ill — will attempt together to defeat ‘the Beast’ who inhabits the construct and to achieve what they believe is possible, a greater healing.
A novel set in the near future in a world where the insights and discoveries of information technology and neuroscience both enslave us and offer us hope for a new freedom.
An intriguing premise, with vivid melding of science and myth.
- Kirkus Reviews
Learn more at: www.dmsbooks.net
A novel set in the near future in a world where the insights and discoveries of information technology and neuroscience both enslave us and offer us hope for a new freedom.
An intriguing premise, with vivid melding of science and myth.
- Kirkus Reviews
Learn more at: www.dmsbooks.net
170 pages, Paperback
First published March 27, 2015
2 people are currently reading
249 people want to read
About the author
David M. Schuster
2 books2 followersDavid M Schuster is a doctor of medicine and a professor at Emory University in Atlanta. He often speaks at national and international conferences on Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. His poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous publications and he has performed his work on stage, radio, and television. He has also co-authored a medical textbook A Clinician’s Guide to Nuclear Medicine. Find out more at www.dmsbooks.net
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 8, 2015
(Note: I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads.)
The premise: in the not-too-distant future, technology has been developed to the point where people have started to be able to upload their minds onto the Internet; even link minds. The unexpected side effects include: people who link minds with sick people can use the link to cure them. The powers-that-be find all this mind-linking threatening, so they spread propaganda against it, limit its uses, and release an engineered virus to infect people who go over those limits. The main characters in this book: a group of disenchanted people who get together to try to push mind-linking further than ever before to try and cure this engineered virus.
It's an interesting story, with surprisingly good character development for how short it is. But there were two factors which somewhat undermined it:
1) All science fiction, of course, requires a degree of "suspension of disbelief". I'll show you what could happen in the future under certain conditions, says the author, as long as you accept those conditions as a premise. And there's nothing wrong with that; but, in this book, I found some aspects of the premise too difficult to swallow. Most particularly, the notion that a linkage between people's minds can completely cure someone's physical ailments.
2) An unreliable narrator. The story is being told from the point of view of many years in the future from when the events narrated actually took place. Occasionally the narrator breaks in to inform us that certain events are speculative; that historians have argued about what actually happened; that surviving video footage confirms that this happened, but that there's no footage to confirm that other thing. And, within those limits, there's the question of how much the narrator is just making up; at one point, after telling us that one event is uncertain, he says, "But you know how sneaky I can be in the art of analytical reconstruction." In other words: the whole narrative is coated with a thick, opaque layer of uncertainty.
Overall, it's not a bad book at all; it's certainly imaginative, and it has an appealingly subversive, anti-authoritarian quality. But I didn't like it well enough to strongly recommend it.
The premise: in the not-too-distant future, technology has been developed to the point where people have started to be able to upload their minds onto the Internet; even link minds. The unexpected side effects include: people who link minds with sick people can use the link to cure them. The powers-that-be find all this mind-linking threatening, so they spread propaganda against it, limit its uses, and release an engineered virus to infect people who go over those limits. The main characters in this book: a group of disenchanted people who get together to try to push mind-linking further than ever before to try and cure this engineered virus.
It's an interesting story, with surprisingly good character development for how short it is. But there were two factors which somewhat undermined it:
1) All science fiction, of course, requires a degree of "suspension of disbelief". I'll show you what could happen in the future under certain conditions, says the author, as long as you accept those conditions as a premise. And there's nothing wrong with that; but, in this book, I found some aspects of the premise too difficult to swallow. Most particularly, the notion that a linkage between people's minds can completely cure someone's physical ailments.
2) An unreliable narrator. The story is being told from the point of view of many years in the future from when the events narrated actually took place. Occasionally the narrator breaks in to inform us that certain events are speculative; that historians have argued about what actually happened; that surviving video footage confirms that this happened, but that there's no footage to confirm that other thing. And, within those limits, there's the question of how much the narrator is just making up; at one point, after telling us that one event is uncertain, he says, "But you know how sneaky I can be in the art of analytical reconstruction." In other words: the whole narrative is coated with a thick, opaque layer of uncertainty.
Overall, it's not a bad book at all; it's certainly imaginative, and it has an appealingly subversive, anti-authoritarian quality. But I didn't like it well enough to strongly recommend it.
February 27, 2016
This was an awesome read and definately recommended for anyone who is intriged with the medical future. David M. Schuster has miraculously combined Greek history with the future of medicine. This is a book to STAY on the shelves at all times so I may bury myself into it time and time again! ...I received this book for free, through the giveaway!
December 11, 2015
WON FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY
1/5 Stars was rather generous if you ask me
1/5 Stars was rather generous if you ask me
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews