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Overclocked
** This is an alternate-cover edition of ISBN 978-0-9871445-9-1 **
In a new world, there are new challenges, new dangers…new ways to die.
Carl Orin, Basement Five’s first cybernaut is lost in a universe of bits and bytes. His rival, Dr. Tania Flowers, should be happy that karma has bitten Carl in the backside, but she’s itching to get into cyberspace herself and what better excuse than a one-woman rescue mission?
Tania thinks she’s prepared for what she’ll find, but she’s about to discover that the digital world is more dangerous than she imagined. When she finds Carl, she faces a bigger issue than her injured pride. An AI-fuelled botnet is devastating the digital landscape, and only a suicide mission into its core will avert total disaster. In the midst of their rekindled passion, hard decisions need to be made. Who will attempt the impossible? Who will stay behind? And what happens if either of them fails?
In a new world, there are new challenges, new dangers…new ways to die.
Carl Orin, Basement Five’s first cybernaut is lost in a universe of bits and bytes. His rival, Dr. Tania Flowers, should be happy that karma has bitten Carl in the backside, but she’s itching to get into cyberspace herself and what better excuse than a one-woman rescue mission?
Tania thinks she’s prepared for what she’ll find, but she’s about to discover that the digital world is more dangerous than she imagined. When she finds Carl, she faces a bigger issue than her injured pride. An AI-fuelled botnet is devastating the digital landscape, and only a suicide mission into its core will avert total disaster. In the midst of their rekindled passion, hard decisions need to be made. Who will attempt the impossible? Who will stay behind? And what happens if either of them fails?
- GenresScience Fiction
Unknown Binding
First published September 1, 2012
About the author
K.S. Augustin
35 books24 followersKS “Kaz” Augustin is an Australian author who considers herself a citizen of the world. She has several University degrees, ranging from Computer Science to International Politics, is an avid reader of military history and tactics, and writes in several genres, from space opera to romance to fantasy. The one thing that remains the same through all of this is the amount of research she brings to each world, peopled by rich and varied characters. She has visited, lived and/or worked on four continents and hopes to make it all seven in the future.
Kaz is Chief Editor of Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly and she and her husband run Sandal Press. The Augustin family consists of two human offspring, a brace of eccentric cats and a miniature Bull Terrier with a bark bigger than her entire body. Kaz is a Linux geek. For fun, she reads, cooks, is learning Latin and dotes on her twin-cab diesel truck.
You can find details of all my releases at http://www.KSAugustin.com
Kaz is Chief Editor of Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly and she and her husband run Sandal Press. The Augustin family consists of two human offspring, a brace of eccentric cats and a miniature Bull Terrier with a bark bigger than her entire body. Kaz is a Linux geek. For fun, she reads, cooks, is learning Latin and dotes on her twin-cab diesel truck.
You can find details of all my releases at http://www.KSAugustin.com
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 16, 2013
Tania Flowers and Carl Orin are lovers and rivals. Both are elite scientists for a super secret lab known only as Basement Five. And both are angling to be the very first cybernaut -- a person whose consciousness is catapulted into cyberspace to explore the world of bytes and bits.
Through chicanery, Carl earns that special honor. But something goes awry. While his physical body is peacefully sleeping in a monitored room in Basement five, his psyche has been lost adrift somewhere in cyberspace. Tania insists on going in to find him. If she can't, his physical body will atrophy and he will lapse into a vegetative state and die.
Tania manages to find Carl alright, but she quickly realizes that they are not the only ones there.
The first sample chapter of this novella gives absolutely no clue about what the story is about. In fact, it is nothing really but an extended erotic love scene. Normally, that would not in anyway prompt me to buy a book. As a matter of fact, it just might do the opposite as my decision to read or buy a book has never been prompted by a sex scene. But the writing was strong enough, even in an erotic love scene, that I was intrigued enough to continue reading the sample. Instead, it was the small, tiny bit of the second chapter made available that hooked me. That was the nugget that gave me a glimpse of the true plot of the story and made me want to read the book.
I thought the author did a really good job of anthropomorphizing the net and data systems. Tania and Carl's brains caused the net to manifest itself as a city, with areas of high bandwith looking like eight-lane highways while low bandwidth looked like a single lane country road. Secure systems looked like impenetrable buildings with no way in, while unsecured networks were houses that you can just walk into he front door.
The author also plays with the concept of time as a computer system can calculate information at a faster rate than normal human consciousness does, so Tania and Carl find themselves adjusting to the pace of cyberspace and it has an interesting effect on their perception. It also has a direct bearing on the plot.
I enjoyed their adventure -- and the story is really an adventure --- that I could see easily translated to a sci-fi action movie. There is even a villain, of sorts.
This is a novella, not a full length novel. I generally do not like novellas since more often than not, I have found that the authors sacrifice a lot of character development and story progression to word count. But just as I have found that Illona Andrews is able to work wonders in this length, so has this author. This is a well paced, self contained story. And there is enough plot/story here to make me feel like it is truly complete. Not only did we manage to get a pretty decent sci-fi action story, we also got a great romance in the bargain as well.
This is a new to me author whose works I've had on my radar for a while. I think I may just bump the next one up.
Through chicanery, Carl earns that special honor. But something goes awry. While his physical body is peacefully sleeping in a monitored room in Basement five, his psyche has been lost adrift somewhere in cyberspace. Tania insists on going in to find him. If she can't, his physical body will atrophy and he will lapse into a vegetative state and die.
Tania manages to find Carl alright, but she quickly realizes that they are not the only ones there.
The first sample chapter of this novella gives absolutely no clue about what the story is about. In fact, it is nothing really but an extended erotic love scene. Normally, that would not in anyway prompt me to buy a book. As a matter of fact, it just might do the opposite as my decision to read or buy a book has never been prompted by a sex scene. But the writing was strong enough, even in an erotic love scene, that I was intrigued enough to continue reading the sample. Instead, it was the small, tiny bit of the second chapter made available that hooked me. That was the nugget that gave me a glimpse of the true plot of the story and made me want to read the book.
I thought the author did a really good job of anthropomorphizing the net and data systems. Tania and Carl's brains caused the net to manifest itself as a city, with areas of high bandwith looking like eight-lane highways while low bandwidth looked like a single lane country road. Secure systems looked like impenetrable buildings with no way in, while unsecured networks were houses that you can just walk into he front door.
The author also plays with the concept of time as a computer system can calculate information at a faster rate than normal human consciousness does, so Tania and Carl find themselves adjusting to the pace of cyberspace and it has an interesting effect on their perception. It also has a direct bearing on the plot.
I enjoyed their adventure -- and the story is really an adventure --- that I could see easily translated to a sci-fi action movie. There is even a villain, of sorts.
This is a novella, not a full length novel. I generally do not like novellas since more often than not, I have found that the authors sacrifice a lot of character development and story progression to word count. But just as I have found that Illona Andrews is able to work wonders in this length, so has this author. This is a well paced, self contained story. And there is enough plot/story here to make me feel like it is truly complete. Not only did we manage to get a pretty decent sci-fi action story, we also got a great romance in the bargain as well.
This is a new to me author whose works I've had on my radar for a while. I think I may just bump the next one up.
July 7, 2015
I received this as a freebie at RT15.
DNF
I really hated this book. The hero was the biggest a-hole I've read in a while. He and the heroine are in competition for a project as well as sleeping with each other. They have each devoted themselves to being chosen. The night before the big meeting at 9:30am the hero and heroine have sex and he blindfolds her. The hero talks her into falling asleep with the blindfold on and then leaves. She wakes up to find the blindfold still on so she can't see the morning light, he turned off her alarm, and it's two hours after the meeting. She finally gets to the secret underground lab to find he was chosen for the project and it has already begun.
Minor spoiler and the second reason I hated this book so much:
DNF
I really hated this book. The hero was the biggest a-hole I've read in a while. He and the heroine are in competition for a project as well as sleeping with each other. They have each devoted themselves to being chosen. The night before the big meeting at 9:30am the hero and heroine have sex and he blindfolds her. The hero talks her into falling asleep with the blindfold on and then leaves. She wakes up to find the blindfold still on so she can't see the morning light, he turned off her alarm, and it's two hours after the meeting. She finally gets to the secret underground lab to find he was chosen for the project and it has already begun.
Minor spoiler and the second reason I hated this book so much:
August 9, 2013
Technical team tries to retrieve marooned cybernaut.
Overclocked takes place in a laboratory complex called Rimshot. Carl and Tania are rival computer scientists who know how to push each others hot-keys in the boardroom and in the bedroom. They are working on a project to launch a person's consciousness into cyberspace or what they call The Blue.
The tale takes us on a sort of techno-astral-projection into a digital dreamscape, where the environment is manipulated by cybernauts as much as they explore it. In a way, the cybernaut's consciousness and brain is blended with the computer's and the story explores the psychological/ neurological impact of the process.
Overclocked refers to the speed time moves within cyberspace. While in their non-corporeal forms, cybernauts sync their minds to computer speed by "clocking-up". Without the limits of physical bodies, their minds true capability is freed and the cyber-explorers essentially function at light speed. There is even an instance of literal cybersex.
Actually, there are two sex scenes in the story. One is right at the beginning and the other is around chapter 6. They are explicit, but used very smartly within the context of the story. The First one is a candid character relationship setup, and the second one cleverly connects to the first, where a lost character is reminded he is a corporeal being through sex.
If you enjoy stories like Neuromancer, Matrix, Tron or Summer Games, or if you are intrigued by Houston-we-have-a-problem types of thinking-crisis-tales, I suspect you will enjoy Overclocked.
Oh, did I forget to mention there is a strange creature lurking in The Blue?
Hackers welcome.
Overclocked takes place in a laboratory complex called Rimshot. Carl and Tania are rival computer scientists who know how to push each others hot-keys in the boardroom and in the bedroom. They are working on a project to launch a person's consciousness into cyberspace or what they call The Blue.
The tale takes us on a sort of techno-astral-projection into a digital dreamscape, where the environment is manipulated by cybernauts as much as they explore it. In a way, the cybernaut's consciousness and brain is blended with the computer's and the story explores the psychological/ neurological impact of the process.
Overclocked refers to the speed time moves within cyberspace. While in their non-corporeal forms, cybernauts sync their minds to computer speed by "clocking-up". Without the limits of physical bodies, their minds true capability is freed and the cyber-explorers essentially function at light speed. There is even an instance of literal cybersex.
Actually, there are two sex scenes in the story. One is right at the beginning and the other is around chapter 6. They are explicit, but used very smartly within the context of the story. The First one is a candid character relationship setup, and the second one cleverly connects to the first, where a lost character is reminded he is a corporeal being through sex.
If you enjoy stories like Neuromancer, Matrix, Tron or Summer Games, or if you are intrigued by Houston-we-have-a-problem types of thinking-crisis-tales, I suspect you will enjoy Overclocked.
Oh, did I forget to mention there is a strange creature lurking in The Blue?
Hackers welcome.
July 17, 2013
I got a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.
This was a marvelously intricate story for a novella, meaty and satisfying. There were parts of it that, despite the author's down-to-earth explanations, still went over my head, but I'm okay with reading material that challenges me.
I enjoyed the evolution of Carl from playboy scientist out for the fame and glory to a self-sacrificing man who believed his actions could, and were necessary to, save the world.
The descriptions of the internal landscape of the internet were useful in visualizing what Carl and Tania were experiencing - not everyone who was there saw things the same way, and the differences were interesting in themselves.
As with the previous book I read, the formatting was phenomenally well-done, and really made reading this a pleasure - chapters were clearly divided, no orphaned lines or stray words in the middle of paragraphs. A lot of indie-published authors are less perfectionist, and I deeply appreciate the care that Augustin takes in making these books easy on the eyes.
This was a marvelously intricate story for a novella, meaty and satisfying. There were parts of it that, despite the author's down-to-earth explanations, still went over my head, but I'm okay with reading material that challenges me.
I enjoyed the evolution of Carl from playboy scientist out for the fame and glory to a self-sacrificing man who believed his actions could, and were necessary to, save the world.
The descriptions of the internal landscape of the internet were useful in visualizing what Carl and Tania were experiencing - not everyone who was there saw things the same way, and the differences were interesting in themselves.
As with the previous book I read, the formatting was phenomenally well-done, and really made reading this a pleasure - chapters were clearly divided, no orphaned lines or stray words in the middle of paragraphs. A lot of indie-published authors are less perfectionist, and I deeply appreciate the care that Augustin takes in making these books easy on the eyes.
October 4, 2015
Pretty interesting.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews