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Biodigital
As American-led forces assemble in Saudi Arabia for the largest military operation since Normandy, computer designer Todd Griffith discovers a secret function buried within the Kali chip. That night he is shot in the head. Five years later, burnt-out Silicon Valley software engineer Nick Aubrey boards a "red-eye" flight to Boston and winds up seated next to a very disturbed man who claims to know the secret of Gulf War Syndrome. Over Utah, Nick's chance companion meets his dramatic demise, and the police accuse Nick of murder. Soon the police are the least of Nick's worries. On the run from a Silicon Valley tech messiah and the hacker cult that venerates him, tempted by exotic foreign beauties, betrayed by those closest to him, Nick must solve the Gulf War enigma or spend the rest of his life on the lam. The only person who doesn't want a piece of Nick, it seems, is his estranged wife Bartlett, a genetic scientist with secrets of her own. All clues lead to a pharmaceutical laboratory in Basel Switzerland, where scientists are working on submicrosopic machines to rearrange human DNA. But Nick can't find out what's really going on without Todd's help, and Todd's been in a coma for nearly half a dozen years.
Careful readers may notice that this is nearly identical to the synopsis of Acts of the Apostles. What gives?
Biodigital and Acts of the Apostles
The novel Biodigital is a half-new novel largely based on Acts of the Apostles. To a rough approximation, the texts of Acts and Biodigital are about 60% congruent. Each book also contains another 40% of material that is not in the other. So they're the same but different, kinda like different versions of Superman or Batman "origin" movies, or the original (John Wayne) and remake (Jeff Bridges) versions of True Grit. Or maybe like the 1858 and 1867 editions of Leaves of Grass.
Got it. But What's the Difference Between the Books and Which One Should I Read?
Acts of the Apostles is a more convoluted book than Biodigital is. Its plot has curlicues and diversions and intricacies and improbabilities. Depending on your tastes, this is either a bug or a feature. (In my opinion, it's a little of both). Biodigital is more straight ahead, more of a pure thriller, more Dan Brown than Neil Stephenson, which in some ways makes it a less sophisticated book. But on the other hand, the roles of four characters, most signicantly Nick's wife Bartlett, are substantially enhanced in Biodigital. And as a consequence, the actions of the main villain are also seen to be much less arbitrary than they are in Acts, and hence even more sinister. Plus, I've rewritten the opening chapters to make them more logical and faster paced than their counterparts in Acts. And significantly, because Bartlett is on stage much more in Biodigital than she was in Acts, so too is her science. I think the overall verisimilitude is enhanced, given recent real-world developments in brain and genetic sciences.
One more point: Acts of the Apostles is part of the Mind over Matter trilogy, which also includes Cheap Complex Devices and The Pains. But most of the parts of Acts that hook into these other two books are not present in Biodigital.
This is so fascinating! Give Me the Gory Backstory of How You Decided to Remake Your Classic "Acts"!
Here's how Biodigital came about. About four years ago I sold the rights to Acts of the Apostles, my 1999 self-published novel that has acquired a modest but passionate fan base, to a small publishing house (call it "U") whose titles I much esteemed. The terms of the deall were that some "small edits" might be required before the book could be published; the editorial director ("V") would direct me. As the process of "cleaning up" the book began, it became clear that V had in mind a book substantially different from Acts. Although the main plot and most of the characters were the same, some sub-plots and characters were to deleted, some characters changed names and/or took on greater or lesser roles than in the original book. It was pretty much a wholesale overhaul. I did it because I wanted to see how the book would do with a "real" publisher.
Although many of the changes sought (or demanded) by V were clearly improvements, as time wore on the process became less and less fun. Every change I made gave rise to new demands for ever more revisions. Although my editor had some good editorial instincts, V and I simply had very different conceptions of what the book was about. Among other things, at V's direction I deleted most of the "hooks" that connected Acts with the other two books in the Mind over Matter trilogy. At some point we decided that the book was different enough from the original Acts of the Apostles to deserve a new name. I christened it Biodigital.
Anyway, after I had spent a year revising Acts / creating Biodigital, U and V finally declared that they were finally happy with it. But, to my dismay, they then said that they ...
Careful readers may notice that this is nearly identical to the synopsis of Acts of the Apostles. What gives?
Biodigital and Acts of the Apostles
The novel Biodigital is a half-new novel largely based on Acts of the Apostles. To a rough approximation, the texts of Acts and Biodigital are about 60% congruent. Each book also contains another 40% of material that is not in the other. So they're the same but different, kinda like different versions of Superman or Batman "origin" movies, or the original (John Wayne) and remake (Jeff Bridges) versions of True Grit. Or maybe like the 1858 and 1867 editions of Leaves of Grass.
Got it. But What's the Difference Between the Books and Which One Should I Read?
Acts of the Apostles is a more convoluted book than Biodigital is. Its plot has curlicues and diversions and intricacies and improbabilities. Depending on your tastes, this is either a bug or a feature. (In my opinion, it's a little of both). Biodigital is more straight ahead, more of a pure thriller, more Dan Brown than Neil Stephenson, which in some ways makes it a less sophisticated book. But on the other hand, the roles of four characters, most signicantly Nick's wife Bartlett, are substantially enhanced in Biodigital. And as a consequence, the actions of the main villain are also seen to be much less arbitrary than they are in Acts, and hence even more sinister. Plus, I've rewritten the opening chapters to make them more logical and faster paced than their counterparts in Acts. And significantly, because Bartlett is on stage much more in Biodigital than she was in Acts, so too is her science. I think the overall verisimilitude is enhanced, given recent real-world developments in brain and genetic sciences.
One more point: Acts of the Apostles is part of the Mind over Matter trilogy, which also includes Cheap Complex Devices and The Pains. But most of the parts of Acts that hook into these other two books are not present in Biodigital.
This is so fascinating! Give Me the Gory Backstory of How You Decided to Remake Your Classic "Acts"!
Here's how Biodigital came about. About four years ago I sold the rights to Acts of the Apostles, my 1999 self-published novel that has acquired a modest but passionate fan base, to a small publishing house (call it "U") whose titles I much esteemed. The terms of the deall were that some "small edits" might be required before the book could be published; the editorial director ("V") would direct me. As the process of "cleaning up" the book began, it became clear that V had in mind a book substantially different from Acts. Although the main plot and most of the characters were the same, some sub-plots and characters were to deleted, some characters changed names and/or took on greater or lesser roles than in the original book. It was pretty much a wholesale overhaul. I did it because I wanted to see how the book would do with a "real" publisher.
Although many of the changes sought (or demanded) by V were clearly improvements, as time wore on the process became less and less fun. Every change I made gave rise to new demands for ever more revisions. Although my editor had some good editorial instincts, V and I simply had very different conceptions of what the book was about. Among other things, at V's direction I deleted most of the "hooks" that connected Acts with the other two books in the Mind over Matter trilogy. At some point we decided that the book was different enough from the original Acts of the Apostles to deserve a new name. I christened it Biodigital.
Anyway, after I had spent a year revising Acts / creating Biodigital, U and V finally declared that they were finally happy with it. But, to my dismay, they then said that they ...
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First published April 30, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 10, 2014
Will write a real review later, but I had a lot of fun reading Biodigital. Although afterwards, I started seeing conspiracy theories everywhere. Like the books seemed to be following my life around- I worked at Intel on chip design, chasing bogons in the tapeout. I've been in the secret passageways at Bell Labs, I've been to Antonio's Nut House and walked the halls at MIT. Maybe the software on the unglue.it site has been hacked to customize the book for each reader. You think that's possible?
OK, here's my review, from Go To Hellman.
It used to be that a book was finished. Set the lead type and that was the book, for better or for worse. In some ways that's a virtue- the authors' pregnancy was finite; the labored give and take with publisher and editor would result in a pretty package of ink on bound paper. But at the same time it's a liability. Non-fiction books become obsolete as time leaves them behind. The artistic process isn't neat and clean. For great works of literature, generations of graduate students pore over notebooks, letters and ephemera to try to figure out what the great artist really meant, maybe it was just a big fish?
I find that the most interesting things going on in the ebook world now are being done by people who see books as continuing processes that need not be contained within EPUBs or frozen into PDFs. I notice that these creations fit poorly into today's book publishing machine. Formats go flat, conventional copyrights do copy wrongs; ISBNs go bonkers, bookstores start selling teddy bears and libraries look the other way.
Which brings me to John Sundman's Biodigital. Oh my god it was good.
As a reader, I found it profoundly disturbing. Disturbing the same way I felt the first time I experienced an earthquake. Having grown up on the east coast, earthquakes were abstractions to me. On moving to Palo Alto after college to take a job at Intel, earthquakes became something we joked about in the fab as we heated silicon wafers to 1200°C inside monstrous quartz tubes. I vaguely thought it would be fun to feel the earth shake. The next year I was a graduate student at Stanford and I felt my first real quake, the one centered in Coalinga. At first it was exciting, but then, as the ground started to roll, I began to worry if it was going to stop. When it was over, my cognitive relationship with the ground had changed. I had never doubted its solidity; suddenly I knew different.
Books aren't carved in stone any more. They are mutable. There, I've ruined them all for you. And there's a deadly earthquake in Biodigital. Whoops, I spoiled that one for you too.
Biodigital is a remix. About 60% of it came from Sundman's earlier novel, Acts of the Apostles, or so he tells us. 40% of Biodigital is new. I've not yet read that Acts, which makes me one of a very small number of people who have read Biodigital first. (I'll report back after reading Acts.) That subversive knowledge nagged at me through the whole book. "Was this chapter newly written, or was it 'original'?" Also, is the reader meant to know the book is remixed? What's supposed to be real in the book? There's a fictional corporate lab, Emverk, in Biodigital that's clearly supposed to be Xerox PARC, but does that make the fictional company real? Why do I care?
You may not share my paranoia of fictional reality if you read Biodigital. Because the reality is extremely vivid and fast-faced. At one point I had the notion that the book was written expressly for me, with inserted references to places I've been, things I've done, and people I've met. I've stood on a ridge on Skyline Drive, I've pored over chip schematics looking for the misplaced hunk of poly causing the glitch on the scope trace; and I've met that crazy guy at the bar in Antonio's Nut House. Somehow I missed that Sundman was there, taking notes. But by the end of the book, things become surreal, dead people start chasing you, and you don't know anymore whether the aromas you were smelling from Peking Garden existed at all.
Acts of the Apostles never really found its place in the publishing pantheon. It was Sundman's first novel. And since Sundman worked in technical documentation in the milieu of the pre-web internet, publishing it himself seemed natural. Soon after the licenses were introduced in 2003, Sundman's friend Cory Doctorow convinced him to adopt Creative Commons for his novels, so Acts was just the second Creative Commons novel ever. Slashdot reviewed it and it became a hackerish cult phenomenon, even outselling Dan Clancy, Michael Crichton and Stephen King - for a few hours - on Amazon. Two sequels, Cheap Complex Devices, and The Pains followed Acts.
But Sundman still wanted a real publisher and the audience a real publisher can connect to. And after many rejections, he finally found a small publishing house that was doing some great things and he managed to get the publisher interested. As Sundman recounts, she
offered to hire an editor, at her expense, to read Acts, write an analysis, and make suggestions for improving it. So I said, “fine”, and she did so, and a few weeks later she sent me the result, and I had to agree that the outside editor had spotted the weak spots in the book and made reasonable suggestions for improving it. The suggestions were basically for fine-tuning the book that’s already written, not for a wholesale rewrite.
and so the rights to Acts were sold, and Sundman began working on the book that would become Biodigital. Remixing the raw material in Acts, if you will.
Long story short, the indy publisher was sold to another publisher, and the rights to Acts/Biodigital were reverted. So now what to do? How do you go about selling a book that's a remix of another book that's been free? From the buyer's point of view it's very confusing. Which book should be read first? Is Biodigital supposed to replace Acts as the first book in the series? If you've read Acts, do you really want to read Biodigital? From the bookseller's point of view, who's the audience- people who loved Acts?
Unglue.it's "Buy to Unglue" program was a good fit for the book. It uses a dated Creative Commons license on the books it sells. So on April 27, 2016 or sooner, depending on sales, Biodigital gets a CC BY-SA license. That means that Sundman isn't the only one who gets to remix the book. You can rewrite it to Pseudo-BioDigital if you want, and release it yourself under the same license, as long as you credit Sundman. It's a "Free Culture" license (albeit not yet) that allows the book to be never finished.
Biodigital is a novel of technopotheosis. Google that word, by the way. It's the process of humans merging with technology to become gods. But don't get the wrong impression. Biodigital isn't about technopotheosis. It's about the reactions of people to the way technology changes us. One reaction is to decide it's fictional. Another is to be scared. And a third is to become a god. Really, we're all choosing, one way or another.
So we're merging real technology with real books to make them give them new life, giving them immortality. Bibliopotheosis?
OK, here's my review, from Go To Hellman.
It used to be that a book was finished. Set the lead type and that was the book, for better or for worse. In some ways that's a virtue- the authors' pregnancy was finite; the labored give and take with publisher and editor would result in a pretty package of ink on bound paper. But at the same time it's a liability. Non-fiction books become obsolete as time leaves them behind. The artistic process isn't neat and clean. For great works of literature, generations of graduate students pore over notebooks, letters and ephemera to try to figure out what the great artist really meant, maybe it was just a big fish?
I find that the most interesting things going on in the ebook world now are being done by people who see books as continuing processes that need not be contained within EPUBs or frozen into PDFs. I notice that these creations fit poorly into today's book publishing machine. Formats go flat, conventional copyrights do copy wrongs; ISBNs go bonkers, bookstores start selling teddy bears and libraries look the other way.
Which brings me to John Sundman's Biodigital. Oh my god it was good.
As a reader, I found it profoundly disturbing. Disturbing the same way I felt the first time I experienced an earthquake. Having grown up on the east coast, earthquakes were abstractions to me. On moving to Palo Alto after college to take a job at Intel, earthquakes became something we joked about in the fab as we heated silicon wafers to 1200°C inside monstrous quartz tubes. I vaguely thought it would be fun to feel the earth shake. The next year I was a graduate student at Stanford and I felt my first real quake, the one centered in Coalinga. At first it was exciting, but then, as the ground started to roll, I began to worry if it was going to stop. When it was over, my cognitive relationship with the ground had changed. I had never doubted its solidity; suddenly I knew different.
Books aren't carved in stone any more. They are mutable. There, I've ruined them all for you. And there's a deadly earthquake in Biodigital. Whoops, I spoiled that one for you too.
Biodigital is a remix. About 60% of it came from Sundman's earlier novel, Acts of the Apostles, or so he tells us. 40% of Biodigital is new. I've not yet read that Acts, which makes me one of a very small number of people who have read Biodigital first. (I'll report back after reading Acts.) That subversive knowledge nagged at me through the whole book. "Was this chapter newly written, or was it 'original'?" Also, is the reader meant to know the book is remixed? What's supposed to be real in the book? There's a fictional corporate lab, Emverk, in Biodigital that's clearly supposed to be Xerox PARC, but does that make the fictional company real? Why do I care?
You may not share my paranoia of fictional reality if you read Biodigital. Because the reality is extremely vivid and fast-faced. At one point I had the notion that the book was written expressly for me, with inserted references to places I've been, things I've done, and people I've met. I've stood on a ridge on Skyline Drive, I've pored over chip schematics looking for the misplaced hunk of poly causing the glitch on the scope trace; and I've met that crazy guy at the bar in Antonio's Nut House. Somehow I missed that Sundman was there, taking notes. But by the end of the book, things become surreal, dead people start chasing you, and you don't know anymore whether the aromas you were smelling from Peking Garden existed at all.
Acts of the Apostles never really found its place in the publishing pantheon. It was Sundman's first novel. And since Sundman worked in technical documentation in the milieu of the pre-web internet, publishing it himself seemed natural. Soon after the licenses were introduced in 2003, Sundman's friend Cory Doctorow convinced him to adopt Creative Commons for his novels, so Acts was just the second Creative Commons novel ever. Slashdot reviewed it and it became a hackerish cult phenomenon, even outselling Dan Clancy, Michael Crichton and Stephen King - for a few hours - on Amazon. Two sequels, Cheap Complex Devices, and The Pains followed Acts.
But Sundman still wanted a real publisher and the audience a real publisher can connect to. And after many rejections, he finally found a small publishing house that was doing some great things and he managed to get the publisher interested. As Sundman recounts, she
offered to hire an editor, at her expense, to read Acts, write an analysis, and make suggestions for improving it. So I said, “fine”, and she did so, and a few weeks later she sent me the result, and I had to agree that the outside editor had spotted the weak spots in the book and made reasonable suggestions for improving it. The suggestions were basically for fine-tuning the book that’s already written, not for a wholesale rewrite.
and so the rights to Acts were sold, and Sundman began working on the book that would become Biodigital. Remixing the raw material in Acts, if you will.
Long story short, the indy publisher was sold to another publisher, and the rights to Acts/Biodigital were reverted. So now what to do? How do you go about selling a book that's a remix of another book that's been free? From the buyer's point of view it's very confusing. Which book should be read first? Is Biodigital supposed to replace Acts as the first book in the series? If you've read Acts, do you really want to read Biodigital? From the bookseller's point of view, who's the audience- people who loved Acts?
Unglue.it's "Buy to Unglue" program was a good fit for the book. It uses a dated Creative Commons license on the books it sells. So on April 27, 2016 or sooner, depending on sales, Biodigital gets a CC BY-SA license. That means that Sundman isn't the only one who gets to remix the book. You can rewrite it to Pseudo-BioDigital if you want, and release it yourself under the same license, as long as you credit Sundman. It's a "Free Culture" license (albeit not yet) that allows the book to be never finished.
Biodigital is a novel of technopotheosis. Google that word, by the way. It's the process of humans merging with technology to become gods. But don't get the wrong impression. Biodigital isn't about technopotheosis. It's about the reactions of people to the way technology changes us. One reaction is to decide it's fictional. Another is to be scared. And a third is to become a god. Really, we're all choosing, one way or another.
So we're merging real technology with real books to make them give them new life, giving them immortality. Bibliopotheosis?
July 12, 2017
I met John Sundman at the Synbiobeta 2016 conference in San Francisco, where he was advertising his books. As a book snob, I have always been wary of authors I haven't heard of. However, I decided to go with my gut and buy "Biodigital." I actually didn't have the means to pay for the book initially--I had no cash and my Paypal account wasn't working. John gave me the book anyways and trusted me to bring the money for it the next day, which I did. I am extremely glad that I went with my gut and bought the book, despite my snobbishness for buying books only written by extremely well-known authors with thousands of reviews.
On to the review for the book...
Before I say anything about the book, I have to mention that "Biodigital" persuaded me to apply for PhD programs at Tufts University after hearing about the character Bartlett's career at Tufts. I am now beginning my PhD program at Tufts University in biomedical engineering this fall (2017). This book has made a 5.5 year impact on my life.
This book had me hooked. Hooked. I dropped everything else I was reading (which is saying a lot for me; I am currently reading 10 books) to read Biodigital. The science is sound--I have done years of research in organic chemistry and was happily surprised when hearing Sundman's description of Diels-Alder adducts for a specific technology mentioned in the book. Everything else is scientifically feasible as far as I can tell, and the scientific descriptions were a true pleasure to read about. The story line is engrossing and still leaves me wary of the motives of some real biotech companies. This book really makes you think about the role of industry in science in the 21st century. Even if you don't consider yourself tech-savvy, this novel is probably the most interesting mystery/cerebral book you'll read all year.
Honestly, all I can say is to go with your gut and buy this novel and any other novels by John Sundman. He's a thoughtful, intelligent man who knows his stuff, and his novels are more than worth reading.
On to the review for the book...
Before I say anything about the book, I have to mention that "Biodigital" persuaded me to apply for PhD programs at Tufts University after hearing about the character Bartlett's career at Tufts. I am now beginning my PhD program at Tufts University in biomedical engineering this fall (2017). This book has made a 5.5 year impact on my life.
This book had me hooked. Hooked. I dropped everything else I was reading (which is saying a lot for me; I am currently reading 10 books) to read Biodigital. The science is sound--I have done years of research in organic chemistry and was happily surprised when hearing Sundman's description of Diels-Alder adducts for a specific technology mentioned in the book. Everything else is scientifically feasible as far as I can tell, and the scientific descriptions were a true pleasure to read about. The story line is engrossing and still leaves me wary of the motives of some real biotech companies. This book really makes you think about the role of industry in science in the 21st century. Even if you don't consider yourself tech-savvy, this novel is probably the most interesting mystery/cerebral book you'll read all year.
Honestly, all I can say is to go with your gut and buy this novel and any other novels by John Sundman. He's a thoughtful, intelligent man who knows his stuff, and his novels are more than worth reading.
November 9, 2021
Biodigital by John Sundman is a fabulous book! I highly recommend it.
Biodigital combines the best qualities of good science fiction, realistic and visionary science, with a great story line that flows well, and prose of a quality usually associated with great literature. The characters are well drawn with intriguing interweaving stories. The story quality reminds me of the work of Margaret Atwood or J.B. Priestley, two of my favorite authors and storytellers.
Biodigital provides a sophisticated perspective on science at the interface of biology and computers, specifically drawing together neurobiology, synthetic biology, genomics, nanotechnology, robotics, computer architecture, and computer science. The book particularly resonates because this interdisciplinary science is today’s science and the issues faced by the characters can and may soon be our issues.
The story line has an evil genius drawing on the various strands of science and computer technology along with his manipulation of people to attempt to achieve world hegemony. The heroic characters bring together their own skill sets with great interdisciplinary teamwork and remarkable courage as they face an array of powerful and evil forces. As with the best novels, it became compulsive reading towards the end. Once into the last 100 pages, I couldn’t put it down until finished.
It is surprising to me that this book has not gotten a larger popular following and more reviews in the press. I expect an exponential growth in the popularity of Biodigital and John Sundman's work as people become aware of it.
Biodigital combines the best qualities of good science fiction, realistic and visionary science, with a great story line that flows well, and prose of a quality usually associated with great literature. The characters are well drawn with intriguing interweaving stories. The story quality reminds me of the work of Margaret Atwood or J.B. Priestley, two of my favorite authors and storytellers.
Biodigital provides a sophisticated perspective on science at the interface of biology and computers, specifically drawing together neurobiology, synthetic biology, genomics, nanotechnology, robotics, computer architecture, and computer science. The book particularly resonates because this interdisciplinary science is today’s science and the issues faced by the characters can and may soon be our issues.
The story line has an evil genius drawing on the various strands of science and computer technology along with his manipulation of people to attempt to achieve world hegemony. The heroic characters bring together their own skill sets with great interdisciplinary teamwork and remarkable courage as they face an array of powerful and evil forces. As with the best novels, it became compulsive reading towards the end. Once into the last 100 pages, I couldn’t put it down until finished.
It is surprising to me that this book has not gotten a larger popular following and more reviews in the press. I expect an exponential growth in the popularity of Biodigital and John Sundman's work as people become aware of it.
November 7, 2015
Delicious cyberpunk, nicely seasoned with paranoia
John Sundman's Biodigital is a completely enjoyable read. It's an exciting and thoroughly engaging sci-fi thriller: a page-turner from beginning to end.
Set in Maynard, MA and Santa Clara, CA the story follows protagonist Nick Aubrey as he peels back the layers of an international conspiracy and assembles an eclectic team of geeks to fight it. There are explosions, trysts, fights, chases, escapes, double-crosses and no assurance that anyone will make it out alive.
This book has one of the lowest eye-roll per chapter quotients of any sci-fi I've ever read. Suspension of disbelief may be necessary for fiction but, with no more than some college physics, I find that some of the nonsense that passes for science in the sci-fi genre totally sticks in my craw. One of the best things about Biodigital is its accuracy. I worked in the DEC Mill and I swear I recognize rooms in one of the chase scenes. I worked on computers from that era and they looked and sounded like the descriptions in the novel.
Biodigital is based on one of Sundman's earlier works, "Acts of the Apostles". I read the original some years ago. The new work is different, better and more mature. Having read "Acts" might even have improved the experience of reading Biodigital, like hearing a promo track and the studio version of the same tune.
John Sundman's Biodigital is a completely enjoyable read. It's an exciting and thoroughly engaging sci-fi thriller: a page-turner from beginning to end.
Set in Maynard, MA and Santa Clara, CA the story follows protagonist Nick Aubrey as he peels back the layers of an international conspiracy and assembles an eclectic team of geeks to fight it. There are explosions, trysts, fights, chases, escapes, double-crosses and no assurance that anyone will make it out alive.
This book has one of the lowest eye-roll per chapter quotients of any sci-fi I've ever read. Suspension of disbelief may be necessary for fiction but, with no more than some college physics, I find that some of the nonsense that passes for science in the sci-fi genre totally sticks in my craw. One of the best things about Biodigital is its accuracy. I worked in the DEC Mill and I swear I recognize rooms in one of the chase scenes. I worked on computers from that era and they looked and sounded like the descriptions in the novel.
Biodigital is based on one of Sundman's earlier works, "Acts of the Apostles". I read the original some years ago. The new work is different, better and more mature. Having read "Acts" might even have improved the experience of reading Biodigital, like hearing a promo track and the studio version of the same tune.
October 8, 2015
A turn-of-the-century technothriller, soaked in the twin angsts of the ascendant Internet and Human Genome Project, at once nostalgic & prescient. Give it a try!
(This was an earlier ebook edition, never published to Kindle Store; you can get an updated edition there now: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...)
(This was an earlier ebook edition, never published to Kindle Store; you can get an updated edition there now: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...)
November 8, 2018
Outstanding scifi story that had me gripped from the beginning. First time author for me, but can’t wait to read more bythis fascinating writer.
September 30, 2023
Quite a good book - The Author did well and I would happily read more from this author!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews