What do you think?
Rate this book
Follows the devastating effects of a virus spawned by means of the Internet on a future world fraught with rival virtual reality operating systems
304 pages, Hardcover
Published July 7, 1998
2 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 21, 2020
Fun at first, but not all that satisfying. The author didn't worry about creating any kind of internal consistency, and one was never sure what the plot was. He was just having fun with a lot of zany ideas, from virtual realities to metaphysics.
June 12, 2014
There are defining moments - ground zero points - in literature, when boundaries are set and terms are defined. '‘The Lord of The Rings'’ was one such point, spawning an entire new genre of heroic fantasy, as was Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ which, in 1984, reinvented Science Fiction as Cyberpunk and fictionalised the embryonic internet for a whole generation of new readers. For some reason - maybe it’s the obligatory Japanese connection, Buddhism seems to feature a great deal in these post-Gibson novels. (See for instance Grimwood’s ‘Red Robe’)
Besher’s work is less bleak than the cheerless cyber landscapes of Grimwood or Simon Ings, maybe because the emphasis is shifted away from the literary special effects of software and cyberspace to that of the protagonists themselves. Besher takes great care to carefully construct his characters and fit them seamlessly into a background of Omnispace, fabulous gadgetry and exotic locations. This is the sequel to the unfortunately titled ‘RIM’, in which Tibetan Buddhism played a major part. This time, it’s Russia. The Tsar has been restored to power, along with a whole new Russian aristocracy, or maybe technocracy.
The central figure is Trevor Gobi, who as a child in ‘RIM’ was trapped in a virtual reality game and rescued by his father, Frank. Trevor is now a grown man with a girlfriend, Nelly (Trevor and Nelly do seem like an unlikely pair of names to turn up in a cyberpunk novel, but maybe Besher has figured that antiquated names will re-emerge to be fashionable in the future).
Nelly has somehow acquired a mobile and sentient tattoo during a shoot-out in a French Riviera Café, a tattoo which holds a Russian military virus - at home in either biological or software systems - which several parties are keen to acquire. The virus however, develops and agenda of its own.
A question arose halfway through the book. Is this actually Science Fiction, or is it a high tech thriller? It’s a moot point. Indeed one could even ask at what point extrapolated contemporary scientific ideas cease to become SF and become fantasy.
Modern SF generally complies to what have become conventions of the genre, and being a narrow and competitive arena, books have to conform to some kind of standard consistent with the conventions.
An SF novel can not really get away with what TV (and film) Sci-Fi does, in that Captain Janeway of Starship Voyager can blather on for hours about temporal or gaseous anomalies, fractures in the warp plasma conduit sub-field casing, or a gel-pack malfunction the sub-space array relay etc etc etc. SF novelists do not get away with throwing in technobollocks so easily, or at least, only the very good ones do.
There is a tendency in Besher to over-extrapolate without a link to any contemporary science we may be familiar with, which is why the tattoos - fantastic creations though they may be - moved slightly, for me, into the realm of fantasy.
I didn’t find enough of a relationship to contemporary science for their existence given the internal logic of the book.
The Count - one of the Russian nouveau riche - has a fabulous Faberge egg in his safe. Of course, it’s not just an egg. It’s a virus storage device but it’s employed in this novel as a ‘magic’ egg whose magic the Count is planning to sell to enemies of the King (Communist rebels plotting against the Tsar)
The Count is killed, but the egg’s magic contents have vanished. Those who come to investigate the egg find that the wizard Count has left a final ‘spell’ to deal with those who attempt to discover the egg’s secrets (another military grade virus which alters the perception of its victims, making them believe they’re serving a life-sentence in a Russian Gulag)
Is Cyberpunk the new Science Fantasy?
It is, of course, Science Fiction. It is made so if only by the extrapolated social evolution of Russia, but the novel employs Fantasy novel devices, and it will be interesting to examine the evolution of cyberpunk and see how far it tends to fantasy in the future.
There’s also a metaphysical aspect to Besher’s work based for the most part in Buddhist philosophy and practice, and which again blurs the boundaries between - for want of a better phrase - the paranormal, and the magic of science.
Dorje, the Buddhist lama cab-driver, and a ‘medicine man’ whom two of the protagonists meet somewhere in the Middle East, display abilities which are derived from psychic, rather than technological sources.
The ending is somewhat confusing, and though I believe I’ve worked out what happened, I’m still not entirely clear.
Besher’s work is less bleak than the cheerless cyber landscapes of Grimwood or Simon Ings, maybe because the emphasis is shifted away from the literary special effects of software and cyberspace to that of the protagonists themselves. Besher takes great care to carefully construct his characters and fit them seamlessly into a background of Omnispace, fabulous gadgetry and exotic locations. This is the sequel to the unfortunately titled ‘RIM’, in which Tibetan Buddhism played a major part. This time, it’s Russia. The Tsar has been restored to power, along with a whole new Russian aristocracy, or maybe technocracy.
The central figure is Trevor Gobi, who as a child in ‘RIM’ was trapped in a virtual reality game and rescued by his father, Frank. Trevor is now a grown man with a girlfriend, Nelly (Trevor and Nelly do seem like an unlikely pair of names to turn up in a cyberpunk novel, but maybe Besher has figured that antiquated names will re-emerge to be fashionable in the future).
Nelly has somehow acquired a mobile and sentient tattoo during a shoot-out in a French Riviera Café, a tattoo which holds a Russian military virus - at home in either biological or software systems - which several parties are keen to acquire. The virus however, develops and agenda of its own.
A question arose halfway through the book. Is this actually Science Fiction, or is it a high tech thriller? It’s a moot point. Indeed one could even ask at what point extrapolated contemporary scientific ideas cease to become SF and become fantasy.
Modern SF generally complies to what have become conventions of the genre, and being a narrow and competitive arena, books have to conform to some kind of standard consistent with the conventions.
An SF novel can not really get away with what TV (and film) Sci-Fi does, in that Captain Janeway of Starship Voyager can blather on for hours about temporal or gaseous anomalies, fractures in the warp plasma conduit sub-field casing, or a gel-pack malfunction the sub-space array relay etc etc etc. SF novelists do not get away with throwing in technobollocks so easily, or at least, only the very good ones do.
There is a tendency in Besher to over-extrapolate without a link to any contemporary science we may be familiar with, which is why the tattoos - fantastic creations though they may be - moved slightly, for me, into the realm of fantasy.
I didn’t find enough of a relationship to contemporary science for their existence given the internal logic of the book.
The Count - one of the Russian nouveau riche - has a fabulous Faberge egg in his safe. Of course, it’s not just an egg. It’s a virus storage device but it’s employed in this novel as a ‘magic’ egg whose magic the Count is planning to sell to enemies of the King (Communist rebels plotting against the Tsar)
The Count is killed, but the egg’s magic contents have vanished. Those who come to investigate the egg find that the wizard Count has left a final ‘spell’ to deal with those who attempt to discover the egg’s secrets (another military grade virus which alters the perception of its victims, making them believe they’re serving a life-sentence in a Russian Gulag)
Is Cyberpunk the new Science Fantasy?
It is, of course, Science Fiction. It is made so if only by the extrapolated social evolution of Russia, but the novel employs Fantasy novel devices, and it will be interesting to examine the evolution of cyberpunk and see how far it tends to fantasy in the future.
There’s also a metaphysical aspect to Besher’s work based for the most part in Buddhist philosophy and practice, and which again blurs the boundaries between - for want of a better phrase - the paranormal, and the magic of science.
Dorje, the Buddhist lama cab-driver, and a ‘medicine man’ whom two of the protagonists meet somewhere in the Middle East, display abilities which are derived from psychic, rather than technological sources.
The ending is somewhat confusing, and though I believe I’ve worked out what happened, I’m still not entirely clear.
April 2, 2013
I felt a bit disappointed by it. The story is good - Trevor Gobi and his girlfriend are on holiday, trying to get their relationship back on track. But they are caught in a police raid on two smugglers, and suddenly Nelly finds she has a new tattoo. For the smuggler was passing a virus, Mir, and when things go wrong it takes refuge in his sentient tattoo, which escapes his dying body and takes up residence on Nelly. But they soon realise that she isn't the only one and the virus is spreading, sucking the energy from the users of VR and allowing the avatars to enter our world.
To be honest, instead of following Trevor and a myriad of other characters around, I think it would have been more interesting to follow Nancy's story, but you do get drawn in to this future world where everything is done in VR. The ending was a real let down - a huge build up, the promise of a huge climax and then, well, nothing, followed by a chapter of the characters talking about their 'feelings'. So you never really get to know. I can't remember if the threads of this book are picked up in the third, but am looking forward to finding out - mainly to see if the author has picked up any good tips about good writing! Overall verdict - good idea, ok writing, but bad plot planning.
To be honest, instead of following Trevor and a myriad of other characters around, I think it would have been more interesting to follow Nancy's story, but you do get drawn in to this future world where everything is done in VR. The ending was a real let down - a huge build up, the promise of a huge climax and then, well, nothing, followed by a chapter of the characters talking about their 'feelings'. So you never really get to know. I can't remember if the threads of this book are picked up in the third, but am looking forward to finding out - mainly to see if the author has picked up any good tips about good writing! Overall verdict - good idea, ok writing, but bad plot planning.
October 27, 2010
A friend trying to get me to read sci-fi. Well, I read RIM first, which was a bit better than this one. It had a storyline, and it vaguely made sense and had an ounce of believability.
This one... I didn't know what I was even reading for most of the time and I'm still puzzling over why the little... things... were even called tattoos in the first place, as they obviously bore no resemblance to what we traditionally think of as tattoos. Maybe that was the point, but it totally evaded me.
This one... I didn't know what I was even reading for most of the time and I'm still puzzling over why the little... things... were even called tattoos in the first place, as they obviously bore no resemblance to what we traditionally think of as tattoos. Maybe that was the point, but it totally evaded me.
Read
August 23, 2008isbn,original
May 1, 2011
Not as good as the first one, but it was good weekend reading.
October 23, 2008
more of the same- see RIM
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews