The Digital Dead

The Forge of Mars #2

by Bruce Balfour

Bruce Balfour, the acclaimed author of The Forge of Mars , brings us to a future age in which virtual versions of the dead control the desires of those they've left behind-with terrifying results.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

384 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 29, 2003

Reviews

[Maberan Potato · Rating 1 out of 5]

So this is a sequel I haven't read the prequel to. But since it never advertised itself as such, whether it be the Goodread page of the book, the blurb or the actual fucking book, I'll judge it as a stand-alone because THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR BEING LAZY YOU CUNT.

Ok so I believe that even if I'd read The Forge of Mars this would still have been shit. There's too many damned characters, the chapters are too short and everything goes all over the place and it's just a big ugly mess. So as a stand-alone, where a lot of the characters relationships and pasts are never fucking explained, it's utter nonsense. In the end this feels like several short stories mashed together like rotten potatoes.

So! The characters. I swear to you, 80 pages in they're still being introduced! Like... I have no words. Let's see... there's some junkie bitch named Ariel whose husband died and who's joining a virtual church, another bitch Yvette that's a NASA director hanging out in Russia and who listens to 'Ride of the Valkyries' in the morning and who FUCKING ATTACKS EVERYONE LIKE BE CIVILIZED CHIRST. Then there's some dude Tau who fishes naked and has 200-words monologues about the Navajos and I'm zzzzzzz and his girlfriend reporter Kate who gets kidnapped by another group of mercenaries? I think? Named like Persinger and Ross and Nygaard and THEY'RE EVIL GUYS. Look he wants to kill his men isn't he evil? Haha. Then there's another dude Norman that wants to talk to his grand-dad and also made all the chips that transform you into an AI after you die? So why isn't he the leader of this thing? There's also some politicians that have like two chapters in all and just WHY ARE YOU WASTING MY TIME?? OH AND THERE'S ALSO NOVIKOV- unless it's Nokivov? Ah who cares. I SWEAR when this dude first is introduced the author starts talking about the Russian earth and the historical architecture and the symmetry of the sky with my ass and just NO. You do NOT introduce a character in a book by slowly zooming on them having a shit. NO.

This is the book's first problem. IT'S TOO FUCKING CROWDED. I didn't even mention all the secondary characters, by the way. BE GLAD.

Let's talk about MCs, okay. What's the best number to have? It depends on the story. Since The Digital Dead is trying to be a grand-scale story, I'll judge the number by that genre.

One main character makes it more personal, especially in first-person, but it can also cut you off from a lot of action if your character gets split up or stuck somewhere.

Two MC are a little better for an epic, but there's major risks that they'll get shipped together no matter what happens, ESPECIALLY if it's a boy/girl duo and they argue all the time.

Three, to me, is the best number for a grand-scale story; the odd number makes it harder for people to ship the characters and there's enough combinations of personality to have unique chemistry in a group setting; Ice Queen/Genki Girl/Deadpan Loli, Noble Demon/The Trickster/Polyanna, etc etc.

At four you're going back to shipping ground, because the chemistry will again be even and two separate groups will definitely form, even if they might not be apparent.

Five is dangerously big, especially if the characters are all scattered around the world with their own stories. If every character has 100 pages to themselves, that'll be a 500-page book.

Six and above can be well-done, as Six of Crows and the Heroes of Olympus series showed; but only because the characters were all together for the former, and the HoO were all introduced in groups of three (!) before being grouped together, so you already had a good grip on everyone's character.

THIS is just utter nonsense! It reminded me of Furies of Calderon in the sense that that book, while having less characters than this (still too many tho), took fucking FOREVER to get to the point! So you end up halfway through and all that's been accomplished is talking and a sheep was found dead.

It's the same with this! The characters are so under-developed, even though the author tries to make them quirky and unique, and the chapters are so short I can't even begin to understand what the fuck is being accomplished.

AND NO I DON'T CARE ABOUT The Forge of Mars. IF THIS WAS A SEQUEL YOU FUCKING SAY IT. REAP WHAT YOU SOW HAHAHA.

And yeah, the story. I was expecting something interesting, at least, as I want to read more science-fiction. And the idea of people becoming AI when they die is really neat! Think of all that could be done; there could be an heist and the only other person to know the code to the vault is the owner's father, or an AI refuses to believe he's dead and keeps living his life in a robot suit, or families give robot suits to all their deceased so you have like a very strange living situation with your great-great-grandmother living with your grandchildren...

What do we get instead? Tau lecturing us about the Navajos- by the way, I KNOW ALL ABOUT NATIVES AMERICANS, ALRIGHT? HERE WE'RE TAUGHT THAT SHIT FROM DAYCARE TO UNIVERSITY, SO FUCK OFF.

Then there's Thoth that shows up in Kate's dreams???? And he wants to become her or something??? And he's apparently an Alien AI???? LIKE WHAT THE FUCK

Then Yvette rudely attacks a secretary and I wanted her to die, Kate escapes, Tau's father dies- oh no not him he was my favorite characteeeeeeer. Nygaard dies??? I think? Or what is Norman? I think it was Norman. Anyway he and Tau are friends and he does something and Tau faints and so does Kate and everything's fine at the end? Nevermind that you wasted my life with Novikov's bullshit HONESTLY HE SHOULDN'T EVEN BE THERE WHAT WAS HIS POINT, UH???? HE GETS SHOT BUT NOT??? IS HE A ROBOT???? WHAT

FUCK YOU DAMMIT

I can't tell you what happened in the middle, I skimmed it IT WAS SO BADLY WRITTEN. So flat and boring and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I'm not even giving it the benefit of the doubt that it gets better if I read Forge; you didn't say nowhere it was a sequel, SO SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR THROAT AND CHOKE ON IT AHAHAHAH.

That's like five hours I'm never getting back.

[Tricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was ok. It certainly wasn't mind blowing for me. It is about being able to upload your consciousness to a virtual heaven on death and being able to be visited by friends and family for a fee.

There is a bit of referencing of events that was in the previous book to this.

[Cynthia Odom · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I could give a negative review of this book, I would.
I trudged through about thirteen chapters, each from a new pov, until suddenly we are a lady who’s boobs booble boobily and I’m going to be honest, I closed the book.
The main(?) character is a shameless self insert who’s car is more interesting than himself. The author is painfully oblivious to how women’s bodies function on any level or how they think. His lacking grasp of their inherent humanity and attempt at writing them entirely as sex objects is therefor insufferable.
Was there character development? Who knows! I couldn’t stomach the book long enough to find out.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like a decent science fiction story, it does not have to be amazing, just fun. And Bruce Balfour's The Digital Dead was certainly fun. Was it overly complex with a lot of characters? Sure. Did it not fully flesh out many of these characters, such as the protagonist Tau Wolfsinger? Frustratingly so. However, I enjoyed the discussions of Artificial Intelligence, the ethical quandaries of producing a virtual copy of an individual's memories and personality while they are alive and then after they die allowing them to inhabit an artificial afterlife, and how politicians (or advertisers!) might exploit such a social construct for their own ends. I also appreciated Balfour's references to Navajo culture, Egyptian myth, the art of Dosso Dossi and Hieromymus Bosch. What any good science fiction story should do is make you ponder some possible future that you may find yourself in or it should transport you to some other world/reality that you will never encounter. Balfour elected in this book to deal with a possible future where "Whole Brain Emulation" (WBE) is a reality and is in widespread use. Some derivation of this already exists; social media sites like Facebook have had to hash out what do with an account when the end user dies. Relatives have demanded that Facebook keep up their deceased relation's accounts as a permanent memorial to their loved ones. Ethical and existential questions abound in The Digital Dead; also a lot of silliness. This book is a sequel to Balfour's The Forge of Mars and consequently there is a lot clumsy references to that previous novel in this book. So, gentle reader, I would strongly recommend reading these books in their proper order.

I enjoyed a Lord Byron quote cited by one of the digital damned (according to his own virtual opinion) in the final portion of the novel:

"If that high world, which lies beyond
Our own, surviving love endures:
If there the cherish'd heart be fond
The eye the same, except in tears--
How welcome those untrodden spheres!
How sweet this very hour to die!
To soar from earth, and find all fears
Lost in thy light--Eternity!

It must be so: 'tis not for self
That we tremble on the brink;
and striving to o'verleap the gulf,
Yet cling to Being's severed link.
Oh! in that future let us think
To hold each heart the heart that shares;
With them the immortal waters drink,
And soul in soul grow deathless theirs!"

[Scott Holstad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a bad book, but not a great book either. Could have been better. First, though, it's about a new company called Elysian Fields that offers eternal life by implanting chips in people's heads and then when you die, an electronic copy of your personality is stored in a digital universe for people to interact with as though you're still alive. It's an odd premise and hard to pull off. I'm not convinced the book accomplished that for me. This book is also a sequel, which I wish I would have known. I could never figure out why an alien version of the Egyptian god Thoth was wandering around Kate's head. Very strange. Ultimately the book is about power, and the scramble to attain it. The thing that irritated me about the book was that there were too many darn characters! I'm not completely stupid, but I had a hard time keeping up with them all. It doesn't help that I read 4-6 books at a time, so I'd set this down for a couple of days and then had a hard time catching up when I picked it up again. I just kept think that Dick and Pohl, two of my sci fi favorites, never had to resort to dozens of characters. You usually have one or two with them and they still pull off a mean story. It just aggravated me and I almost gave up reading the book several times. However, I managed to finish and I guess I'm glad I did. Things were haphazardly tied up at the end, so I guess all is well with the universe. I'm still not completely satisfied with what happens to all of the digitally living dead people at the end of the book, but I won't write a spoiler. I guess I mildly recommend the book, but with some reservation. Three stars max.

[Andreas · Rating 1 out of 5]

In the setting for novel, one can get an implant that takes a snapshot of the brain at death (a little like in Altered Carbon). This snapshot is transferred to the databanks of the company Elysian Fields and a sort of electronic heaven. So the dead are not really dead. Looks promising, but my first question is: If these dead can be “alive” why don’t they just implant their cybernetic consciousnesses into cyborgs and roam free? This question is answered, but not really to anyone’s satisfaction.

The story is rather complex, with a host of characters being introduced in the first eighty pages or so. It remains complex for most of the novel, but without ever really coming into focus. The driving threat feels abstract and the actions of the characters are rather erratic.

The writing is average. Many good ideas are competently presented, but there is no sign of prose virtuosity. The author tries a bit too hard with the near future clichés, such as “Brooks Armani”, or the worst one yet: “President Schwarzenegger”. Not because it is implausible, but because it is so uncool. His descriptions of locales are formulaic and boring and I found myself skimming through them.

I was left dissatisfied. I could barely work up the energy to finish the book, and it took a long time. Balfour has some great ideas, but does not present them nearly well enough.

http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=377

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was like a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. It seems like it should be really good, but then while you eat it, you realize it's sugary, but not really delicious. It ought to be delicious! But it's not. And then when you're done, you think, "Did I really just eat a whole bowl of that?"

This book wasn't labeled a direct sequel, but it obviously builds from Balfor's previous work (The Forge of Mars, or something). The main character is either an amazing super-agent guy, or just some Navajo dope, and you can't tell from this book. It's got that whole soap-opera vibe going, too, with multiple storylines. Unfortunately, none of them ever really get developed well enough.

It touches on some really interesting ideas, but just like the storylines, they're not developed in any real depth.

So... Meh.

[Mark Lacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I initially tried to get into this book, but just couldn't. It didn't seem that interesting. But I tried again a few years later, and it turned out to be interesting after all. But it wasn't a *great* read. For example, there were too many subplots that weren't tied together till near the end. That got confusing and aggravating. Like "The Forge of Mars", it had a variety of different themes in it, including chase scenes and espionage worthy of a thriller.

[Macha · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 & 1/2 stars. nicely done. who is this guy? i thought, intending to search out more. designer of the early game classic Neuromancer, as it turns out, a game i still remember fondly. and that's just nifty.

[Jonathan]

This book is so good so far - that I intend to find a copy of the first book Forge of Mars so that I can read that as well. Great writing.

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun ride. Bounces around a little toward the end and leaves me wanting more details on the conspiracies that are resolved abruptly. But fun regardless.