Hardwired

Hardwired #1

by Walter Jon Williams, Stefan Rudnicki

Ex-fighter pilot Cowboy, "hardwired" via skull sockets directly to his lethal electronic hardware, teams up with Sarah, an equally cyborized gun-for-hire, to make a last stab at independence from the rapacious Orbitals.

Genres: Cyberpunk, Science Fiction, Fiction, Audiobook, Dystopia, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy

Audiobook

First published June 1, 1986

About the author

Walter Jon Williams has published twenty novels and short fiction collections. Most are science fiction or fantasy -Hardwired, Voice of the Whirlwind, Aristoi, Metropolitan, City on Fire to name just a few - a few are historical adventures, and the most recent, The Rift, is a disaster novel in which "I just basically pound a part of the planet down to bedrock." And that's just the opening chapters. Walter holds a fourth-degree black belt in Kenpo Karate, and also enjoys sailing and scuba diving. He lives in New Mexico with his wife, Kathy Hedges.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Struggling to slap a rating on this novel really crystallized for me the problem with the current star rating system. It's not a bad book. It was moderately entertaining and had some excellent moments of action, story and character interaction. 

It doesn't deserve the stigma that is associated with the 2 star rating. 

However, I also didn't "like it" enough to bestow the 3rd star and thus proclaim to the world that all should read this. Tis a quandary.

Thus, I figured I could either round up to 3 stars and spend the review hating on all the things I didn't enjoy or basically hating on the story, or I could stick with 2 stars and try to be more balanced in my assessment. 

In the end, “balance” won.

PLOT SUMMARY:

Written in 1986, this early cyberpunk story takes place in a world that has become cliché for these kinds of novels: 

**mean, faceless mega-corporations now run the planet from orbital satellites; 
**artificial intelligence is a reality;
**bio-mechanical implants and enhancements are the norm;
**guns and ammo are ubiquitous; and 
**data piracy vs. data safeguarding is the way of life.  

If the above does not sound familiar, than you have not done enough cyberpunking. 

Our story centers on Cowboy, a cybernetically enhanced ex-fighter pilot who now acts as a smuggler in a now balkanized United States. Cowboy spends his time scratching out a living helping to break the power-grip of the corporate controlled orbitals. Cowboy eventually teams up with Sarah, a street-wise bodyguard/assassin. Together, with an eclectic band of misfits and talented ruffians,  they go about trying to bring a world of pain to the  whoreporations running the show. 

Um…not exactly ground-breaking as far as plots go: 


Let me say that despite the well worn premise (which, admittedly, was not as well worn at the time it was written), the writing was solid and there were some interesting moments of genuine fun. Unfortunately, I never really got connected to the plot and when you are reading a high-octane, action-orientated, punked thriller like this and you find you attention wondering fairly consistently, than I think it's a pretty bad sign. 

I eventually had to call Houston informing them of my problem. 

That said, Walter Jon Williams has writing chops and this book is not bad. I will probably give the next book in the series at some point. With Williams at the helm, this series has the potential to be entertaining. This one just, for whatever reason, didn’t resonate with me. 

To sum up, okay but not great. 

2.5 stars. 








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[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know why I never got around to reading this back when I used to see it all the time in the bookstores, even knowing that I was such a cyberpunk fan and the whole field was blowing up left and right. Maybe it was all the hardware and the focus on guns and metal that turned me off. I didn't really care about this kind of "punk" so much as I cared for the "cyber".

Granted, back in those days, I might have picked it up, read the blurb, maybe a few random dozen pages, and concluded that it was too cowboy-ee for me to care and I never would have begun anyway.

But today, I have a slightly more refined sensibility. I still don't care for westerns that much, but at least I've picked up the classics and seen that they were, in fact, good. I'm a fan of Clint Eastwood.

So while I'm still not a huge fan of the genre, I can at least appreciate what it does very well, and in some cases, much better than any other type of fiction. The main characters are Cowboy (yeah, that's what he goes by,) and Sarah, and both of them are very well rounded and interesting characters, full of subtle and not so subtle flaws and merits, detailed and fleshy histories, and an eventual love story that is neither gushy, idiotic, or verbose. It was built on quiet respect and blooming friendship. It was almost completely unlike what I was beginning to suspect the novel would wind up being.

Oh no, though, you say, what happened to the cyberpunk aspects? Was there lots of computer-y stuff and explosions?

Why, hell yes, I say! Dogfights in the sky! A battle against the orbitals, lots of scary smuggling runs, but more importantly, a heroic message about getting out from under the short-sighted concerns of the crazy, sick, and bodyless brains in crystal. The worldbuilding is more than solid, filled with past and lost wars, body-sculpting professions, and cocaine-rockets. (This did come out in 1987, after all, and it both shows and shows itself off well.)

Was I expecting it to be a bit of a knock-off of Neuromancer, riding the wave of such a fantastic book? Well, yeah, I guess I was. How did it stand up? Great, if you like more hardware and aerial battles that would make rather more pedestrian space-operas hang their heads in shame. I actually got into the battles, and I've never been one to particularly like military fiction.

I was very impressed not only by the execution of this novel, which never felt much like a knock-off, but because I really got into both the main characters. They weren't flashy or snarky. They weren't bigger than life like Holden in the Expanse or unreliable but still awesome like Kvothe in Name of the Wind.

Cowboy and Sarah felt like real people with real problems in a real world doing their real goddamned best in a really shitty situation.

I honestly liked this book a lot, even if it isn't my normal cup of tea. Why isn't this author sitting on more laurels?

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know the bit in Species where Natasha Henstridge sticks her tongue down Anthony Guidera's throat and out through the back of his head? It won the 1996 MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss, admittedly against a fairly weak field - Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls was a nominee. But all the same.

Anyway, what I wanted to say was: if you liked that scene, then you'll probably like Hardwired too. Just my little tip for the day.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very cool, hard edged cyberpunk/dystopic world building. Well written, at times poetic, yet the adrenaline fueled plot is overly dense with scores of factions, shifting loyalties and betrayals to the point of confusion.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a deep personal weakness for 80s cyberpunk, and though I waited many years to finally read this one, it delivers all the chrome and lasers and screaming cybernetic air battles and corporate skullduggery my teenage self could have ever desired. A gritty froth of all that was best and brightest in the SF cliches of a quarter century ago.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I read Gibson's Neuromancer when it came out, I am just now reading the equally vintaged Hardwired. Wish I have discovered it earlier.

[Chuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

71 out of 100 for 2010

Honest and for true, this is the best novel to come out of the Cyberpunk movement; every time I read it I pick up on more layers-the way Williams uses myth, the ethical dilemmas the characters face, the postmodernity of the way much of the novel "lives" in the cultural referents of film and other Southwestern novels . . . really an amazing novel.

The novel has two protagonists, Cowboy, a former fighter pilot, and Sarah, a street smart "hired gun" who's trying to save her brother (who probably isn't worth saving). Set in a post-Apocalyptic world in which corporations, which have set up shop in orbit, have subdued all the governments of the Earth, the polot of the novel finds Cowboy trying to break the power of the "Orbitals" and Sarah just trying to stay alive long enough to join them.

If you like SF a little bit, you have to read this book.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

For My Money, The Best-Written Cyberpunk Book of the 1980s
William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984) is by far the more famous and iconic cyberpunk novel, but I think Hardwired, which came out just a year later, was better written, with a muscular, hard-edged, poetic style, two main characters vastly more interesting that any in Neuromancer, and plenty of intense, pulse-pounding action sequences. It has a lot more similarities in tone to Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon (2002), which I suspect took some inspiration from it. It's a classic story of a hard-luck jaded cybernetic panzer freelancer and ex-pilot Cowboy and conflicted professional assassin Sarah given assignments from shady dealers that find themselves pitted again the all-powerful Orbitals that smashed the planet into submission in the Rock Wars, the underdogs using all their hard-won battle skills to try and do the impossible in pursuit of a likely hopeless cause. A really underrated classic in my view, and hard to believe it is over 40 years old now!

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah, 80s cyberpunk! I have read a fair amount of Williams, but not his early cyberpunk stuff, so this was something of a treat. It is a bit dated-- the characters are always looking for payphones after all-- but holds up well overall. There are two leads-- Cowboy, a cyberpilot, and Sarah, a cyberenhanced bodyguard and former prostitute. The Orbitals have achieved their independence from Earth and national governments via a bloody 'rock war' (where major earth cities were obliterated by rocks dropped from space) and nationstates are fractured remnants of themselves. Cowboy is basically a high tech smuggler that used to fly goods from west coast to the east, but is now a hoverjockey doing the same thing. As the orbitals start to move into the black market, however, even the free hover jockeys are feeling the pinch. Cowboy feels he has to make a stand, perhaps his last, for freedom.

Lots of jargon (perhaps too much) make the start of this novel a bit frustrating, but you get the hang of it rather soon. Good plotting is marred a bit by pretty flat characters; it think Williams got hung up with the tech and failed to develop the characters to any degree. Still, a good story. 3.5 stars.

[Temucano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Novela que empieza de forma vertiginosa y no para hasta el mismísimo final. Tiene todo lo que un libro de cyberpunk debe tener: implantes directos, drogas varias, armas modernas, nubes de información y mucha acción, esta última a raudales (en batallas de tierra, aéreas, disparos en la ciudad y peleas cuerpo a cuerpo). A destacar la pareja protagonista: Cowboy, el intrépido piloto que se enchufa y brilla en cualquier máquina; y Sarah, peligrosa mujer de los bajos fondos, con la cual es mejor no pestañear, mi personaje favorito de la novela. Me recordó a Molly.

Quizás algunas resoluciones salen un poco fáciles, pero no inciden mayormente en el resultado de entretener....a alta velocidad, sin descanso ni sosiego, enchufado al panzer, esnifando unos torpedos y vamos con todo contra los Orbitales. Excelente.

[Mouldy Squid · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not sure how I managed to miss this gem. Hardwired is hard-core, old school cyberpunk which means lots of action, some introspection and all kinds of inventive technologies. While parts of the novel feel dated (and they are) the Williams manages to get the reader to invest in both of his protagonists; the wily and lethal Sarah and the just as wily and lethal Cowboy. Full of victories and setbacks, the action never flags and the heroes suffer betrayals and duplicities from all sides, including each other. Particularly intriguing is that the novel is set in the aftermath of a devastating war where orbital habitats have bombed the Earth with meteors. The world is starkly drawn and intricate at the same time, believable and unique.

A terrific read.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good selection if you like the cyber-punk genre of Sci-Fi. Williams adds his own twist on the type by incorporating a western theme as part of his story. It still has a lot of the urban computer tech stuff of all the good cyber-punk stories. The main characters are familiar but still they grab your sympathy and you want them to succeed. If you like the genre you will enjoy this story as I did.

[Soo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Notes:

Currently on Audible Plus

- I recommend reading this one vs listening to it. Narration was great. Stefan Rudnicki is one of the good ones out there. However, only parts of the story came across in a clear/vivid manner. I felt that the plot had uneven pacing but that could be due to listening vs reading the book.

- The overall vibe of the story is more like Takeshi Kovacs more than the Neuromancer. But! That's just my opinion.

[Иван Величков · Rating 4 out of 5]

Уилиамс разработва киберпънка като жанр заедно с Гибсън, а и по същото време. Интересно как е убегнал от погледа на родния фен. Сюжетите му са наситени с много престрелки и екшън, героите му са доста пълнокръвни. Може би изостава от Гибсън единствено при описанието на световете си, въпреки че светоизграждането му е на ниво. Скъсах се да се смея, когато още в началото на книгата с две изречения беше обхваната цялата фабула на „Водосрез”.
Земята е екологична и социална кочина, управлявана от корпорации, намиращи се в орбита. На този фон наемници и контрабандисти се опитват да оцелеят, прецаквайки орбиталните, но май дори тези им усилия се контролират от корпорациите.
Каубой е контрабандист и крадец, бивш военен летец, който си вади хляба с удари по конвоите на фармацефтичните корпорации. Сара е наемен бодигард и понякога убиец, израстнала в бордеите на Земята. Брат и е пристрастен към ендорфина мъжка проститутка и мечтата и е да изкара достатъчно, за да заживеят в орбита.
Когато златния шанс се появява пред Сара, под формата на посредник на голяма фирма, тя го грабва. Естествено, едно „кално” момиче, бива винаги прецакано, но Сара успява да се измъкне жива. От там се запознава с Каубой и двамата се замесват в огромен удар, който ще свали един от орбиталните. По случайност, точно този, който се опита да светне Сара.
Четена сега, книгата сякаш обхваща всяко едно клише в жанра, но разглеждана към времето, когато е писана става ясно, че тия клишета Уилиамс ги е измислил. Другото хубаво нещо е, че няма влияния от Гибсън – историята се развива по съвсем друг начин и сюжетните и стилистичните похвати са съвсем различни. Като добавим и една екологична нотка, и стиска биопънк намигания,отново новост по времто на излизане на книгата и виждаме от кого се е учил Бачигалупи.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hardwired is like a datablast straight from the cyberpunk id. Guns-and-drugs-and-sex-and-tech-and-power all tangled up and flashing with neon lights.

Cowboy is a panzerboy, the pilot of an armored hovercraft smuggling lifesaving medicine across what used to be the midwest, before the orbital corporations shattered Earth's government in a hostile take-over proceeded by meteor bombardment. Sarah is a bodyguard and assassin, hustling in Tampa to buy herself and her brother two tickets off-world. When a job and a betrayal brings the two of them together, they decide to fight back: for money, for revenge, for respect, for the sheer thrill of armored combat in the glow of the interface.

What transpires is some high-octane action in a neon hellscape, as Cowboy and Sarah slash across a damaged world writhing under the exploitation of the orbitals. There's all the cyberpunk tropes you'd expect: Addicts, deviants, megacorps, mercenaries, operators, and that awesome mid-80s computer tech. Hardwired doesn't aspire to high art or grand statements, but it gets what it means to be an outlaw and to fight for what you believe in against something huge and slick and inhuman in all aspects.

This is one of my new favorite books, a cyberpunk essential, and has catapulted Williams way up my 'to read' list.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Ideas y escenas que no terminan de casar con fluidez desde la perspectiva global del libro.-

Género. Ciencia-Ficción.

Lo que nos cuenta. En unos Estados Unidos de América futuristas, en las que el verdadero control político y social recae en las corporaciones con sede en la órbita terrestre, Cowboy es un antiguo piloto de combate que debió redirigir su vida profesional hacia el pilotaje de blindados, mediante conexiones neuronales a la máquina, unos vehículos que normalmente se usan para actividades ilegales relacionadas con el contrabando. Sarah alterna su trabajo como chica de compañía con el de guardaespaldas, tiene una relación compleja con su hermano y, tras un contrato, se verá en peligro y su destino terminará relacionándose con el de Cowboy.

¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....

[Jonny Illuminati · Rating 5 out of 5]

This here is some god damn good cyberpunk.

I will be reading the rest.

[Burt · Rating 4 out of 5]

More than anything else, Hardwired has shown me how bad the author wants to be William Gibson. To Walter Jon William's credit, who doesn't?

Hardwired takes place sometime in the more distant than not future. The Earth is not doing well. The oceans have rise, pollution is rampant, and the nations that are left standing have balkanized. From low earth orbit, the Orbitals, a group of spaceborne corporations, are calling the shots. Governments answer to them as they have the ulitmate in air superiority - the ability to drop massive chunks of rock from great heights un cities who don't tow the line.

Cowboy and Sarah though have decided they've had enough. Both are wrapped up in the Orbital efforts to control both the legitimate and black markets, screwing both of them in the process. The unlikely pair team up with a group of like minded criminals, and together they take on Tempel I.G., the Phartmaceutical company that has begun to slowly take them apart.

It's not a bad book, but to be honest... I read Neuromancer once before. I could actually pull out a pad of paper and a pencil, write down character names from Neuromancer, then draw a line to their Hardwired counterpart. Cyberpunk fiction has a tendency to do this - Billy and Bruce can't help but have this sort of effect on their sub-genre. With that said, it's worth a read for the mirrorshade crowd.

[Raja]

Good old fashioned cyberpunk. Impressively, it doesn't feel dated, although that may partly be my due to my love for the genre. The two point of view characters are both reasonably fleshed-out and appealing for different reasons. The tech is delicious, as it should be, and it's a very plausible mix of vehicles, computing, and biochemical developments.

The setting -- an Earth dominated by and completely dependent on orbital corporations -- is unique and chillingly plausible, and the narrative fits the setting like a glove.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have had this book on my shelf for ten years. I don't know why I waited to read this book.

I enjoy cyberpunk novels. This has all the ingredients of a cyberpunk novel. Evil Corporations, Implants, Cybernetics, Drugs and the Anti-Hero.

Williams has captured the internal struggle between the common man and "the man", aka the people with the power.

I found it hard to put the book down. The story starts off slow but then slams into to you with full force. The plot isn't so intricate that you get lost, but keeps you guessing what will happen next.

A strong addition to the genre of cyberpunk or techno-thriller, what ever you want to call it. A good read and well worth picking up your own copy.

[Bee · Rating 3 out of 5]

That was fun. Real old school feeling hard sci-fi. Hard, steel eyed men in large fast planes and hover-things fighting the good fight against Bad Corporations in orbit.

It was fast and explosive and had some really great moments. But it also left me pretty cold.

I like this style more than his later books, but the later books had significantly warmer and more engaging characters.

[Dev Null · Rating 4 out of 5]

This classic piece of cyberpunk's history is all style over substance.

That sounds like criticism, but its not. Its style _over_ substance, not style instead of substance. There's a plot here, and its interesting enough, but its not the point. The point is the flash of neon on chrome and the sound of alcohol-fueled turbines drowning out the chatter of miniguns. Its raw and elegant. I liked the story, but if you're still reading to find out what happens next instead of _how_ it happens, then like the smugglers who pay the panzerboys to run the Line, and think its all about the money, you just don't get it.

I love this book for all the things in it that would have been fairly novel when he wrote it, and are now just part of the genre. Most of it still rings true (though Our Heroes tooling around town to find a payphone to call their friends feels kind of weird from a post-cellphone viewpoint. Remember, this was written in '86!)

[Luke Hindmarsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant--deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Neuromancer. What more needs to be said?

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another Williams novel that owes something to Zelazny--this time to the action/adventure masterpiece, "Damnation Alley." (I feel safe in making this assumption, considering that part of the inscription reads, "And special thanks to Roger Zelazny, who let me play in his Alley.") And the first section of the novel confirms the inscription. Originally called "Panzerboy" (it appeared in Asimov's in the April 1986 issue), this is Cyberpunk Alley and Williams treads the line between both styles with a firm step. The other half of the book is even better, as Williams moves into the realm that William Gibson introduced us to and Bruce Sterling defined. This book is Cyberpunk, and it's not just a clone as others have argued. In Gibson, it is the style and the imagery that we can't help but envy and wonder at. With Sterling, especially in Schismatrix, it was the never-ending barrage of ideas. But Williams is the one that brings us the world of adventure. Perhaps another example might serve: if Gibson is Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, and Sterling is Brunner's The Sheep Look Up, then Williams is The Shockwave Rider.

This emphasis on adventure has been the main cause for contention that Hardwired, and Walter Jon Williams, does not deserve the title Cyberpunk. Well, so what? Label or no label, Hardwired comes across as an exciting science fiction novel, dealing with interesting characters and ideas. Though Hardwired owes its inspiration to Zelazny and Neuromancer, it can stand by itself as another writer's perspective of that horizon.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best cyberpunk classics. For fans of the genre, there is very little new here -- it hits upon all of the tropes -- but the author is a great writer who manages to make his prose poetic without being obscure (as Gibson often is). The author's understanding of technology is thorough enough to paint a post-apocalyptic world with a fair amount of realistic detail, and without resorting to excessive techno-babble.

The real strength of the novel is the characters. Cowboy and Sarah are familiar archetypes, but they have a depth not often seen in this genre, and they undergo real character development. For once, we are spared an ending in which everybody betrays their friends for personal gain.

[Roger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back when cyberpunk first arrived on the literary scene, I ravenously read any book I could find of this exciting new genre. "Hardwired" was among the most enjoyable of the cyberpunk books I have read.

Cyberpunk sometimes has a short shelf life. Technological advancements can render cyberpunk outdated. Hopefully, "Hardwired" will hold its own upon re-reading. I have not read "Solip:System" the novelette that links "Hardwired" to its full length sequel (set 100 years after), "Voice of the Whirlwind".

I recently re-read "Voice of the Whirlwind". I did not like it as much as I had previously, although it was an entertaining book.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked This Is Not A Game and its sequel Deep State, but hadn't read anything else by Walter Jon Williams. Hardwired was the oldest book the library had and it was very different. Stylistically it was cyberpunk, not a genre I particularly go for. Basically an after the day, corporate domination of the world from orbital space setting up a Damnation Alley blockade run. Lots of drugs, lots of violence, bunches of ideas though - a semi-okay read - not really what I was looking for. Call it 3.5 of 5.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very definitely a cyberpunk novel, right down to the Gibson-esque "multiple narrators telling interweaving stories."

There's some good action here, and the premise is solid, but it doesn't stand tremendously well on its own as a novel. I have not read the two sequels, and they may improve on the milieu, but independently, the book sets up a bunch of threads that are left dangling, and the conflict is resolved via a completely ridiculous deus ex machina that is only hinted it in one sentence elsewhere in the book. Chekhov's Gun, I suppose, but still.

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Cyberpunk from its 1980s prime period. The novel spins a web of impersonal megacorporate interests and espionage, with the two lead characters trying to make their way through the dangerous lines. The action, though, is sharp as razors and ice cold vodka. The cover on the edition I read was pretty terrible, though.

On my third read of this book, I find it's influence is even greater than I originally thought. For Cyberpunk 2020/Red/2077/Edgerunners, this is pretty much an ur-test.

[G.S. Jennsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is like an electric shock applied directly to your brain. It isn't always enjoyable, but you're unlikely to forget it. I could say more, but it's better to be experienced.

Okay, I will say this. When I heard that this book was the inspiration for the Cyberpunk board games and video game, I was skeptical. But I believe it now - Sarah's world reads *exactly* like a novelization of Cyberpunk 2077 (in actuality, it's the reverse).