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PsyBot: A Novel of Virtual Reality
PsyBot is every programmer's the bug that gets loose on the user side of the interface. When a cyber virus infects Joe Norton and drives him toward a deadly mission, he discovers that virtual reality is not confined to hardware. Is the only way out, to go further in? Seeking the elusive target, Norton confronts a wider mind-control agenda poised to launch on his success.
274 pages, ebook
First published August 31, 2013
2 people are currently reading
6 people want to read
About the author
Nowick Gray
48 books21 followersNowick Gray writes in a variety of genres, each work teasing the dynamics of choice among multiple realities: whether romantic relationships, plot endings, murder suspects, virtual worlds, alternate timelines, narrative loops, stylistic colorings.
Nowick works as a freelance copy editor, performs and teaches West African drumming, and enjoys nature photography. Educated at Dartmouth College and the University of Victoria, he taught in Inuit villages in the Arctic before carving out a homestead in the BC mountains. In more recent years he calls Victoria, BC home, while wintering in tropical locations.
Nowick works as a freelance copy editor, performs and teaches West African drumming, and enjoys nature photography. Educated at Dartmouth College and the University of Victoria, he taught in Inuit villages in the Arctic before carving out a homestead in the BC mountains. In more recent years he calls Victoria, BC home, while wintering in tropical locations.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 15, 2016
PsyBot: A Novel of Virtual Reality is a well crafted sci-fi thriller. And I would imagine that fans of the Science Fiction & Fantasy genre will love sinking their teeth into this one! This is my first time reading this author and I must say I was very impressed.
The story had every element a good story should have. An exciting plot, attention to detail, but best of all fleshed out, well-written and well-rounded character development. There’s an abundance of well illustrated scenes that really make you feel like you are right there in the story, and that's something I really look for in a good book. ‘It’s both gritty and poetic, about virtual reality and the consequences of choice. Blending psychological suspense and magic realism with sci-fi themes of alternate timelines, artificial intelligence, mind control, corporate conspiracy, and astral projection, this noir nod to cyberpunk traces the quest of protagonist, Joe Norton, for survival, sanity, and love.’
This captivating and commendable work had me immersed from the beginning. The story flows from scene to scene with ease (for the most part), and the author shows exceptional skill when it comes to storytelling. There are twists and turns in this page turner that will take the reader on a gripping journey!
It’s one of those stories that come along once in awhile that makes you want to read it non-stop until you get to the end. I’m giving nothing further away here. And this, I hope, will only add to the mystery and enjoyment for the reader!
Author Nowick Gray writes in a variety of genres, teasing the dynamics of choice among multiple realities: romantic relationships, plot endings, murder suspects, virtual worlds, alternate timelines, narrative loops, and stylistic coloring's.
His mystery of the Canadian Arctic, Hunter's Daughter, was published in 2015 by Five Rivers. Other books include Rendezvous, an wilderness adventure tale with a paranormal twist; PsyBot, a novel of virtual reality and My Country: Essays and Stories from the Edge of Wilderness. Since 1976 Nowick's short fiction and nonfiction has appeared in a wide variety of periodicals and anthologies, in print and online.
Educated at Dartmouth College and the University of Victoria, he taught in Inuit villages in the Arctic before carving out a homestead in the British Columbia Mountains. In more recent years he calls Victoria home, while wintering in tropical locations.
I’ll certainly be looking forward to reading more from Nowick Gray in the future! I would definitely recommend this book! Five stars from me.
The story had every element a good story should have. An exciting plot, attention to detail, but best of all fleshed out, well-written and well-rounded character development. There’s an abundance of well illustrated scenes that really make you feel like you are right there in the story, and that's something I really look for in a good book. ‘It’s both gritty and poetic, about virtual reality and the consequences of choice. Blending psychological suspense and magic realism with sci-fi themes of alternate timelines, artificial intelligence, mind control, corporate conspiracy, and astral projection, this noir nod to cyberpunk traces the quest of protagonist, Joe Norton, for survival, sanity, and love.’
This captivating and commendable work had me immersed from the beginning. The story flows from scene to scene with ease (for the most part), and the author shows exceptional skill when it comes to storytelling. There are twists and turns in this page turner that will take the reader on a gripping journey!
It’s one of those stories that come along once in awhile that makes you want to read it non-stop until you get to the end. I’m giving nothing further away here. And this, I hope, will only add to the mystery and enjoyment for the reader!
Author Nowick Gray writes in a variety of genres, teasing the dynamics of choice among multiple realities: romantic relationships, plot endings, murder suspects, virtual worlds, alternate timelines, narrative loops, and stylistic coloring's.
His mystery of the Canadian Arctic, Hunter's Daughter, was published in 2015 by Five Rivers. Other books include Rendezvous, an wilderness adventure tale with a paranormal twist; PsyBot, a novel of virtual reality and My Country: Essays and Stories from the Edge of Wilderness. Since 1976 Nowick's short fiction and nonfiction has appeared in a wide variety of periodicals and anthologies, in print and online.
Educated at Dartmouth College and the University of Victoria, he taught in Inuit villages in the Arctic before carving out a homestead in the British Columbia Mountains. In more recent years he calls Victoria home, while wintering in tropical locations.
I’ll certainly be looking forward to reading more from Nowick Gray in the future! I would definitely recommend this book! Five stars from me.
September 10, 2014
“PsyBot” was published in 2014 and was written by Nowick Gray (http://nowickgray.com). Mr. Gray has published two novels, “PsyBot” being his second.
I obtained a galley of this novel for review through https://www.netgalley.com. What I read of this Science Fiction novel is written in the first person, with the primary character being Joe Norton.
Joe is approaching middle age and is in a loose relationship with Moira. While they are not exclusive to one another, the relationship starts to fall apart when Moira mistakenly thinks Joe has been sleeping with her sister Sheila. To make matters worse, after they have a argument over it, Joe does sleep with Sheila.
Sigh . . . I really tried with this novel, reading thru chapter 3 (about 23% of the book). At that point I gave up as I could not discern what the plot was. This is the first NetGalley novel I have just put down and walked away from. I give this novel a 1 out of 5.
Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at http://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/.
I obtained a galley of this novel for review through https://www.netgalley.com. What I read of this Science Fiction novel is written in the first person, with the primary character being Joe Norton.
Joe is approaching middle age and is in a loose relationship with Moira. While they are not exclusive to one another, the relationship starts to fall apart when Moira mistakenly thinks Joe has been sleeping with her sister Sheila. To make matters worse, after they have a argument over it, Joe does sleep with Sheila.
Sigh . . . I really tried with this novel, reading thru chapter 3 (about 23% of the book). At that point I gave up as I could not discern what the plot was. This is the first NetGalley novel I have just put down and walked away from. I give this novel a 1 out of 5.
Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at http://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/.
June 3, 2015
The Plot: Computer programmer Joe Norton juggles a series of awkward relationships with women while working for a tech company that's facing a merger. As if this isn't bad enough, he experiences strange and disturbing hallucinations and nightmares, in some of which he is offered a rifle for an unknown purpose. Maybe they're psychotic episodes. Or worse -- maybe he's somehow caught a virus from one of the computer programs he works with. Accident, conspiracy or karma? Joe struggles to make sense of it all, growing ever more flummoxed and distressed. He seeks answers from coworkers, girlfriends and a psychiatrist, embarking on a search for his "home brain."
The Characters: Joe is a middle-aged guy with a pretty drab life. His reality doesn't quite measure up to his rather modest expectations. He goes to work, eats TV dinners in front of the "UltraScreen," changes girlfriends frequently and anxiously. To be honest, it's pretty hard to care much about him. The other characters, seen through Joe's eyes (since he's the narrator), range from quirky to repellent. The most sympathetic ones are Harry, a coworker, and Giselda, the boss's assistant, but even they are somewhat peculiar.
The Setting: Philadelphia in the fall -- as described by Joe, a pretty bleak place. Gritty streets of drab brick buildings. Joe's girlfriends' apartments, the office where he works, the eateries he frequents. And a variety of "virtual" situations -- airplanes (or airships?), transit stations in space, windowless rooms, festering jungles.
On the plus side, Gray produces good prose. He assembles well-chosen words into coherent sentences, often creating vivid images or displaying a sly humour:
"Distracted from the flimsy newsprint, I rode forward carried along on a wave -- no, a rising tide -- of compulsion toward a greater reality, a more expansive dimension than I had known. At the same time neither joy not freedom beat in my heart. Too much instead of that dark dread, the taste of black ooze in my mouth. And I don't mean the coffee."
Even though the plot revolves around computer programs and virtual reality, the occasional occurrences of technical language are not incomprehensible. Readers who can relate to metaprograms, branching logic and metamovers that window to lot-caches may derive more from the story than those who do not, but the latter can skim over those sections without losing the thread.
The premise of the novel is interesting and original. Unfortunately, its execution bogs down in excessive detail soon after the opening scenes. The first quarter of the book, in which the drabness of Joe's life is contrasted with his bizarre visions, is excruciatingly slow. Finding little to charm or captivate me, I nearly bailed around page 40; only my resolve finish the book in order to write this review kept me going. By page 100, I was intrigued. Joe was starting to engage with his problem and trying various strategies to solve it.
Sadly, this promising thread frayed out into a repetitious series of further bizarre incidents with little coherence. Reaching the end of the novel became my primary motivation again, rather than a desire to discover the reason for Joe's weird experiences and curiosity about how things work out for him. I wasn't willing to wallow in disembodied strangeness again and again. "Goodbye Joe, and good luck," I thought, but once the end was in sight, I kept plugging away.
I'm happy to say that the final 20 pages brought a fairly satisfying resolution. Despite (or perhaps because of) its denseness, PsyBot is a book that gives a reader plenty to think about.
The Characters: Joe is a middle-aged guy with a pretty drab life. His reality doesn't quite measure up to his rather modest expectations. He goes to work, eats TV dinners in front of the "UltraScreen," changes girlfriends frequently and anxiously. To be honest, it's pretty hard to care much about him. The other characters, seen through Joe's eyes (since he's the narrator), range from quirky to repellent. The most sympathetic ones are Harry, a coworker, and Giselda, the boss's assistant, but even they are somewhat peculiar.
The Setting: Philadelphia in the fall -- as described by Joe, a pretty bleak place. Gritty streets of drab brick buildings. Joe's girlfriends' apartments, the office where he works, the eateries he frequents. And a variety of "virtual" situations -- airplanes (or airships?), transit stations in space, windowless rooms, festering jungles.
On the plus side, Gray produces good prose. He assembles well-chosen words into coherent sentences, often creating vivid images or displaying a sly humour:
"Distracted from the flimsy newsprint, I rode forward carried along on a wave -- no, a rising tide -- of compulsion toward a greater reality, a more expansive dimension than I had known. At the same time neither joy not freedom beat in my heart. Too much instead of that dark dread, the taste of black ooze in my mouth. And I don't mean the coffee."
Even though the plot revolves around computer programs and virtual reality, the occasional occurrences of technical language are not incomprehensible. Readers who can relate to metaprograms, branching logic and metamovers that window to lot-caches may derive more from the story than those who do not, but the latter can skim over those sections without losing the thread.
The premise of the novel is interesting and original. Unfortunately, its execution bogs down in excessive detail soon after the opening scenes. The first quarter of the book, in which the drabness of Joe's life is contrasted with his bizarre visions, is excruciatingly slow. Finding little to charm or captivate me, I nearly bailed around page 40; only my resolve finish the book in order to write this review kept me going. By page 100, I was intrigued. Joe was starting to engage with his problem and trying various strategies to solve it.
Sadly, this promising thread frayed out into a repetitious series of further bizarre incidents with little coherence. Reaching the end of the novel became my primary motivation again, rather than a desire to discover the reason for Joe's weird experiences and curiosity about how things work out for him. I wasn't willing to wallow in disembodied strangeness again and again. "Goodbye Joe, and good luck," I thought, but once the end was in sight, I kept plugging away.
I'm happy to say that the final 20 pages brought a fairly satisfying resolution. Despite (or perhaps because of) its denseness, PsyBot is a book that gives a reader plenty to think about.
June 30, 2014
Note: I received a free copy of PsyBot in exchange for an honest review.
PsyBot is an interesting but strange read that I couldn't figure out until the very end. Despite the straight-forward summary that piqued my interest, I wasn't sure what was truly happening and what was only in the main character's head.
This calls to mind one of my favorite books, Slaughterhouse Five, with its surrealistic imagery and jumps between time and place. I found myself questioning Norton's sanity--which was compounded by his absolute dedication to his belief that this was a computer virus infiltrating his mind. Even his friends and lovers drifted away from him as he explained to them what was happening. He was fearful of their disbelief but more committed once they showed doubt.
As with Mr. Gray's Strange Love / Romance Not For Sale , the characters in PsyBot are distinctive and interesting. Creating living, breathing people seems to be his forte. Despite my questioning of Norton's sanity, he was never too far gone that I didn't like him or his observations. Despite being a ladies' man (OK, I really hate that term, but if the shoe fits ...), his endearing self-deprecation never made me dislike him as a person. And it's not just the main character, but every one character populating the book was his or her own person.
If you enjoy bizarre books that you can't quite pin down and fascinating three-dimensional characters, I recommend PsyBot. I look forward to meeting Mr. Gray's future characters and seeing what mischief they get themselves into.
Also posted on my blog, Magic & Mayhem Book Reviews.
PsyBot is an interesting but strange read that I couldn't figure out until the very end. Despite the straight-forward summary that piqued my interest, I wasn't sure what was truly happening and what was only in the main character's head.
This calls to mind one of my favorite books, Slaughterhouse Five, with its surrealistic imagery and jumps between time and place. I found myself questioning Norton's sanity--which was compounded by his absolute dedication to his belief that this was a computer virus infiltrating his mind. Even his friends and lovers drifted away from him as he explained to them what was happening. He was fearful of their disbelief but more committed once they showed doubt.
As with Mr. Gray's Strange Love / Romance Not For Sale , the characters in PsyBot are distinctive and interesting. Creating living, breathing people seems to be his forte. Despite my questioning of Norton's sanity, he was never too far gone that I didn't like him or his observations. Despite being a ladies' man (OK, I really hate that term, but if the shoe fits ...), his endearing self-deprecation never made me dislike him as a person. And it's not just the main character, but every one character populating the book was his or her own person.
If you enjoy bizarre books that you can't quite pin down and fascinating three-dimensional characters, I recommend PsyBot. I look forward to meeting Mr. Gray's future characters and seeing what mischief they get themselves into.
Also posted on my blog, Magic & Mayhem Book Reviews.
December 27, 2016
I have read another book from this author and enjoyed it, so I was interested in reading something else they had written. I was also interested because this novel is of a completely different genre and I was intrigued to see how the author could write across several genres successfully. Of course, the low price of the book is another incentive which helps when taking a chance on an unknown author and a book that hasn’t been specifically recommended to you. This novel is certainly different and is built on an unusual, at times peculiar, plot premise which would appeal to readers looking for something very different in the science fiction/cyber punk genre. I had not read anything in the cyberpunk genre before so I wasn’t sure what to expect really, but I could appreciate the decent writing skills of the author and the very imaginative aspects of this novel. I am not sure this genre is for me, but for those who do already enjoy this genre I am sure this novel would be a unique, deep, interesting, more literary approach to the science fiction/cyberpunk genre which allows it to stand apart from the norm. Good writing, unusual themes and lots of multi-dimensional fantasy and imagination elements do make this an interesting novel for those who love this genre.
May 21, 2015
PsyBot, set in a future Philidelphia not too far-removed from today's world, follows Joe Norton, an everyman whose stalled life (dead-end relationship, job with no hope of advancement) is shaken up by a hijacking of his mind. But is it a conspiracy from some external force, or is he slowly succumbing to madness? I was kept guessing the answer to this question until the very end. From the very first scene we are in Norton's head and in the midst of his mind-trips. It was disconcerting at first to not know which scene was Norton's 'real life' and which was not, but as I read further it perfectly matched Norton's dilemma--he doesn't know what's real, either.
The author fills the pages with lyrical descriptions, and I especially liked his turns of phrase ('full of warm October air so foul you could spit it out'), and details of the world (such as Norton's screensaver of a giant blinking eye staring at him). The book reminded me of a philosophical version of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and while it was a bit on the long side, it was an fascinating dive into the psyche of a mind struggling with reality.
Author provided a copy for an honest review.
The author fills the pages with lyrical descriptions, and I especially liked his turns of phrase ('full of warm October air so foul you could spit it out'), and details of the world (such as Norton's screensaver of a giant blinking eye staring at him). The book reminded me of a philosophical version of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and while it was a bit on the long side, it was an fascinating dive into the psyche of a mind struggling with reality.
Author provided a copy for an honest review.
December 28, 2016
This novel certainly gives the reader something very different from the usual, standard sci-fi and cyberpunk novels out there. I was very intrigued with the synopsis of this novel, as it definitely sounded like it would have a complex, thought-provoking plot that contained lots of interesting and imaginative elements of sci-fi, fantasy and cyberpunk. This book is relatively short yet it packs in plenty of action, drama, complex themes and other elements which require the reader to think and pay attention. I can appreciate how this book might read as being quite heavy to some, and it is, but I found the plot to be interesting, and as long as I took my time to properly absorb everything I could keep up with what the book was attempting to get across and what was happening. This book is not for everyone, but if you enjoy the cyberpunk/sci-fi genre and appreciate novels which are deep, unusual and complex in nature, but still have plenty of action, pacing, and interesting characters then this could be the book for you.
August 4, 2015
I was very confused through the whole book. Normally a short book like this would take me a couple days. This book took over a week. I was having to reread and still not understand what was happening. I could get into the characters at all or the storyline and by the end I was almost wishing I was the intended target of the hit in the book. the only part I really understood. I hate giving bad reviews but I'm supposed to be honest. It was just not a good read for me.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews