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Medic!
The apocalypse came, the apocalypse went, and now there is nothing left but mad robots, madder life forms, and desperate survivors. Self-awareness long since left the bounds of flesh, and the non-human sapients that survived the cataclysm are as lost and desperate as anyone else. One such is Doctor MacIntyre, a self-aware ambulance. This former Lieutenant of the United Bay Autonomies is now a freelance medic offering help to whoever needs it: and he has no shortage of customers. In the violent, desperate world MacIntyre travels through, he can rely on nothing but his wits, his sometimes unwilling allies... and a few missile racks he had installed, just in case. He finds himself battling violent fanatics, would be conquerors of the ruins, and finally, a force that would snuff out any hope of rebuilding a better world.
- GenresScience Fiction
406 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 31, 2012
6 people are currently reading
59 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 27, 2014
This was an interesting read. The world is well-detailed, which helps set it apart from the many other post-apocalyptic stories I've read. The big idea in this novel is sentient technology. This provides us with our protagonist and a couple of the other characters throughout the novel. Enter Doctor MacIntyre, a sentient ambulance. He is the lens through which we view this war-ravaged world. He is not always the best narrator, nor the most entertaining. He offers commentary on the human condition, in the spirit of many Star Trek characters but not surpassing any of them. His unique viewpoint on his world and his evolving moral compass provide many interesting vignettes and conversations throughout the book.
I enjoyed both of the secondary characters who join MacIntyre on his journey, but both of them could have used a little more development time. Jill's story was told in a lengthy info dump, but it left me wanting to get inside her head for an extended period of the time.
Despite all of the meandering paths taken throughout the book, when I reached the last 100 pages I felt as though the ending came rushing up and flew past me as if I was strapped to a rocket. It could have used a little more polish to satisfy me.
In the end, the concept was just crazy enough to work, and if you enjoy post-apocalyptic science fiction or nonhuman protagonists, this book is definitely worth giving a shot.
I enjoyed both of the secondary characters who join MacIntyre on his journey, but both of them could have used a little more development time. Jill's story was told in a lengthy info dump, but it left me wanting to get inside her head for an extended period of the time.
Despite all of the meandering paths taken throughout the book, when I reached the last 100 pages I felt as though the ending came rushing up and flew past me as if I was strapped to a rocket. It could have used a little more polish to satisfy me.
In the end, the concept was just crazy enough to work, and if you enjoy post-apocalyptic science fiction or nonhuman protagonists, this book is definitely worth giving a shot.
July 4, 2017
I confess that I was looking forward to reading this book, since the author's The Rainbow Connection had been such a wonderfully fun and playful story. Although the Blackwyrm edition of this book is more recent than that one, this appears to be an early effort. It is still excellent, well plotted and well written, with reasonably good editing.
It is in one sense the story of the viewpoint character, who is what most of us would call an AI (Artificial Intelligence) but whom the author prefers to distinguish as SoulTech, an electronic mind which has somehow been designed to be indistinguishable from sentient human--but for two aspects. One is that it has much more of the computer in it, such as faster processing/thinking speed, greater data storage/access. The other is that it is usually connected to a "body" that is not human. Our central character, Doctor MacIntyre, is an ambulance, or perhaps more accurately a mobile surgical center. He was designed to work with a human partner, but as the story opens he does not have one.
We obtain the backstory gradually. It appears that the major nations of North America had, now well in the past, divided into smaller nation-states, Nevada its own country, a group of northwestern states becoming another, Vancouver its own country, and so on. These nations then went to war against each other--reasons never explored, but at the beginning Dr. MacIntyre believes that his side is right. In addition to being a sentient ambulance, he is an officer, a lieutenant, in his nation's military. Initially he is trying to fulfill his mission as a military doctor, filing reports whenever he comes to a data node. Gradually he recognizes that no one is receiving the reports, that the wars have reached the point that there are no people at the top, no nations fighting, just soldiers in the field doing what they were trained to do, along with automated systems which will not stop fighting until commands come from the top that will never come.
In this post-apocalyptic wasteland, he discovers that although he has the ability to help people, many people are terrified of SoulTech, and even of highly advanced machines. Although he has the ability to manipulate remotely a humanoid body form with a holographic exterior, it feels like a metal body, and more than once people he helped became frightened and aggressive once they realized "he" was not a person. Deciding that he needs a partner, he saves the life of a soldier and then coerces him to stay for a month's trial (by planting a bomb in his head), who gradually decides that using his mechanical skill to keep the doctor running and playing the face of the doctor via communications implants is a better life in this aftermath than he might otherwise have.
Eventually they pick up third partner, an even more interesting character named Jill. Jill is technically dead, but when she was alive she became experimentally bonded to a machine, a SoulTech device designed as a gun. The two minds shared the two "bodies", the human giving the gun mobility and sensory exposure, the gun making the human an incredibly expert killing machine in demand in security services. Then Jill took a bullet to the head, and the gun lost her best friend and partner, but was able to continue operating the body and using the identity of Jill. She decided that MacIntyre needed her, and so persuaded them to take her with them.
In their travels they become aware of two threats in the world. One is a "New Northwest Army", which they decide is really a band of thugs (much like the group in The Postman), making themselves appear more powerful than they are but growing in power partly by raiding towns, killing resistors, and taking the children away to camps to be brainwashed and trained to be future soldiers. The other is much more of a mystery, some kind of mechanized seeding of the world creating pre-built community structures and then infecting humans with viruses that knock them back to primitive communities within them. They are trying to avoid interaction with the former but investigate the secrets behind the latter, and in this they become involved in a major undertaking which builds to a climactic ending.
And it was excellently plotted, frequently gripping, well-told, and even credible in its hard sci-fi way.
I want to say that the dialogue was well done, mostly because I've read a lot of books where it wasn't. One of my sons recently likened a new pair of tongs we'd gotten for the grill to an experience he had with a certain rent-a-car company. His employer had rented a car for him out in the Midwest, and periodically he would return the car and then a while later rent another, all over the country. Every time he attempted to return a car to an office in another state, he got a major run-around from office personnel who did not know how to do it and did not want to figure it out. Then on his final stop of the year he brought a car from somewhere in the Midwest to our local outlet, and the woman there did the job smoothly and without complaints or problems. He was so impressed that he wrote a commendation to her company about her--and said that the tongs were like that, that they worked exactly the way they were supposed to without him really noticing. Dialogue is like that: when it works, you don't notice it. Harac makes it work. The characters each have their own ideolect, but always the conversations are believable and consistent.
I hope I encounter another Ian Harac book. While this one was not as fun as Rainbow, it was a good read, an enjoyable story, a solid plot, and a good ending.
It is in one sense the story of the viewpoint character, who is what most of us would call an AI (Artificial Intelligence) but whom the author prefers to distinguish as SoulTech, an electronic mind which has somehow been designed to be indistinguishable from sentient human--but for two aspects. One is that it has much more of the computer in it, such as faster processing/thinking speed, greater data storage/access. The other is that it is usually connected to a "body" that is not human. Our central character, Doctor MacIntyre, is an ambulance, or perhaps more accurately a mobile surgical center. He was designed to work with a human partner, but as the story opens he does not have one.
We obtain the backstory gradually. It appears that the major nations of North America had, now well in the past, divided into smaller nation-states, Nevada its own country, a group of northwestern states becoming another, Vancouver its own country, and so on. These nations then went to war against each other--reasons never explored, but at the beginning Dr. MacIntyre believes that his side is right. In addition to being a sentient ambulance, he is an officer, a lieutenant, in his nation's military. Initially he is trying to fulfill his mission as a military doctor, filing reports whenever he comes to a data node. Gradually he recognizes that no one is receiving the reports, that the wars have reached the point that there are no people at the top, no nations fighting, just soldiers in the field doing what they were trained to do, along with automated systems which will not stop fighting until commands come from the top that will never come.
In this post-apocalyptic wasteland, he discovers that although he has the ability to help people, many people are terrified of SoulTech, and even of highly advanced machines. Although he has the ability to manipulate remotely a humanoid body form with a holographic exterior, it feels like a metal body, and more than once people he helped became frightened and aggressive once they realized "he" was not a person. Deciding that he needs a partner, he saves the life of a soldier and then coerces him to stay for a month's trial (by planting a bomb in his head), who gradually decides that using his mechanical skill to keep the doctor running and playing the face of the doctor via communications implants is a better life in this aftermath than he might otherwise have.
Eventually they pick up third partner, an even more interesting character named Jill. Jill is technically dead, but when she was alive she became experimentally bonded to a machine, a SoulTech device designed as a gun. The two minds shared the two "bodies", the human giving the gun mobility and sensory exposure, the gun making the human an incredibly expert killing machine in demand in security services. Then Jill took a bullet to the head, and the gun lost her best friend and partner, but was able to continue operating the body and using the identity of Jill. She decided that MacIntyre needed her, and so persuaded them to take her with them.
In their travels they become aware of two threats in the world. One is a "New Northwest Army", which they decide is really a band of thugs (much like the group in The Postman), making themselves appear more powerful than they are but growing in power partly by raiding towns, killing resistors, and taking the children away to camps to be brainwashed and trained to be future soldiers. The other is much more of a mystery, some kind of mechanized seeding of the world creating pre-built community structures and then infecting humans with viruses that knock them back to primitive communities within them. They are trying to avoid interaction with the former but investigate the secrets behind the latter, and in this they become involved in a major undertaking which builds to a climactic ending.
And it was excellently plotted, frequently gripping, well-told, and even credible in its hard sci-fi way.
I want to say that the dialogue was well done, mostly because I've read a lot of books where it wasn't. One of my sons recently likened a new pair of tongs we'd gotten for the grill to an experience he had with a certain rent-a-car company. His employer had rented a car for him out in the Midwest, and periodically he would return the car and then a while later rent another, all over the country. Every time he attempted to return a car to an office in another state, he got a major run-around from office personnel who did not know how to do it and did not want to figure it out. Then on his final stop of the year he brought a car from somewhere in the Midwest to our local outlet, and the woman there did the job smoothly and without complaints or problems. He was so impressed that he wrote a commendation to her company about her--and said that the tongs were like that, that they worked exactly the way they were supposed to without him really noticing. Dialogue is like that: when it works, you don't notice it. Harac makes it work. The characters each have their own ideolect, but always the conversations are believable and consistent.
I hope I encounter another Ian Harac book. While this one was not as fun as Rainbow, it was a good read, an enjoyable story, a solid plot, and a good ending.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 30, 2024
Medic! is a book that takes place in the familiar post apocalyptic landscape brought about by AI gone mad. Self replicating machines destroy large swathes of the former United States, carrying out defunct orders to take part in a war that ended decades prior. Our main character is a medical AI housed in an antonymous ambulance named Dr. Macintyre. The good doctor and a few companions he picks up along the way explore the ruins of the new world, giving aid to anyone who needs it while fighting off bandits, rising military factions, mindless kill bots, and a strange disease that is changing some of the surviving humans.
This is a book I have a really hard time writing a review for because the premise is so fun and creative. The moment someone described it as a sentient ambulance fighting off Skynet to save people I knew I had to check it out. Ian does a good job of creating a fun story in a bleak setting. The first chapter really gripped me with an ending I didn't see coming, and there is a lot of interesting takes on philosophy and what it means to be human.
The reason I find it hard to give a higher review is because of the last half of the book. There is a chapter near that point that drags on for longer than is needed and would have been better off being split into two. This is the section that also includes fight scenes that, again, drag on and might have looked cool on screen but don't translate well to page in my opinion. This is also where the main character, an AI, goes into 'battle' with other computer programs and it just comes off dull and hard to really get excited about. Not to mention the grand mystery of the book is revealed in a two page info dump near the end that comes out of nowhere.
All in all it is a good ride that needed some polish in the back half. I'd still suggest it as a read.
This is a book I have a really hard time writing a review for because the premise is so fun and creative. The moment someone described it as a sentient ambulance fighting off Skynet to save people I knew I had to check it out. Ian does a good job of creating a fun story in a bleak setting. The first chapter really gripped me with an ending I didn't see coming, and there is a lot of interesting takes on philosophy and what it means to be human.
The reason I find it hard to give a higher review is because of the last half of the book. There is a chapter near that point that drags on for longer than is needed and would have been better off being split into two. This is the section that also includes fight scenes that, again, drag on and might have looked cool on screen but don't translate well to page in my opinion. This is also where the main character, an AI, goes into 'battle' with other computer programs and it just comes off dull and hard to really get excited about. Not to mention the grand mystery of the book is revealed in a two page info dump near the end that comes out of nowhere.
All in all it is a good ride that needed some polish in the back half. I'd still suggest it as a read.
January 11, 2021
I loved this book. Was a bit hectic, but it all worked out well with the genre. The world is unique, the characters are easy to love. I'd like to read a sequel someday!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews