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Tomorrow and Tomorrow
In this “wild mash-up of Raymond Chandler, Philip K. Dick, and William S. Burroughs”*, a man who uses virtual reality to escape the horror of his dystopian world becomes obsessed with a mystery that could drive him mad.
Pittsburgh is John Dominic Blaxton’s home even though the city has been uninhabitable ruin and ash for the past decade. The Pittsburgh Dominic lives in is the Archive, an immersive virtual reconstruction of the city’s buildings, parks, and landmarks, as well as the people who once lived there. Including Dominic’s wife and unborn child.
When he’s not reliving every recorded moment with his wife in an endless cycle of desperation and despair, Dominic investigates mysterious deaths preserved in the Archive before Pittsburgh’s destruction. His latest cold case is the apparent murder of a woman whose every appearance is deliberately being deleted from the Archive.
Obsessed with uncovering this woman’s identity and what happened to her, Dominic follows a trail from the virtual world into reality. But finding the truth buried deep within an illusion means risking his sanity and his very existence...
“ Tomorrow and Tomorrow is many a near-future cyberpunk thriller in the tradition of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling; a funny, gloomy meditation on technology and mental illness in the tradition of Phillip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard; a cynically outrageous mystery less in the tradition of Chandler than that of James Ellroy. A bleak, gorgeous romp through a pornographic and political American id. If books like this are the future of fiction, I'm not afraid for books at all.”— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
*Stewart O'Nan
Pittsburgh is John Dominic Blaxton’s home even though the city has been uninhabitable ruin and ash for the past decade. The Pittsburgh Dominic lives in is the Archive, an immersive virtual reconstruction of the city’s buildings, parks, and landmarks, as well as the people who once lived there. Including Dominic’s wife and unborn child.
When he’s not reliving every recorded moment with his wife in an endless cycle of desperation and despair, Dominic investigates mysterious deaths preserved in the Archive before Pittsburgh’s destruction. His latest cold case is the apparent murder of a woman whose every appearance is deliberately being deleted from the Archive.
Obsessed with uncovering this woman’s identity and what happened to her, Dominic follows a trail from the virtual world into reality. But finding the truth buried deep within an illusion means risking his sanity and his very existence...
“ Tomorrow and Tomorrow is many a near-future cyberpunk thriller in the tradition of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling; a funny, gloomy meditation on technology and mental illness in the tradition of Phillip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard; a cynically outrageous mystery less in the tradition of Chandler than that of James Ellroy. A bleak, gorgeous romp through a pornographic and political American id. If books like this are the future of fiction, I'm not afraid for books at all.”— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
*Stewart O'Nan
384 pages, Paperback
First published July 10, 2014
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February 14, 2019
My introduction to the fiction of Tom Sweterlitsch is his debut novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and this is one of the most thrilling pieces of futuristic science fiction that I've read. Published in 2014, Sweterlitsch shoots for a very difficult floor routine with his first book, aspiring to a hard boiled detective mystery set fifty or so years from today. This is far enough in the future to require true vision in portraying how certain technological and geopolitical shifts could transform American life, but not so far in the future that the author wouldn't need to ground his concepts in present reality. It's an ambitious play and the first-time author pulls it off.
The story begins in Washington D.C., where research firm archival assistant John Patrick Blaxton investigates a claim for Hannah Massey, a Carnegie Mellon student who disappeared ten years ago, shortly before what the world comes to know as "Pittsburgh" occurred when an Islamic terrorist detonated a nuclear device in Katz Plaza, reducing half a million people and most of the Steel City to ash. Among those missing and presumed dead in the attack--Blaxton was spared while attending a conference in Columbus--were his wife Theresa Marie and their unborn daughter.
To combat fraudulent life insurance claims, State Farm and others insist on proof of death, which archivists like Blaxton can track down in a virtual reality network known as the City-Archive, where surveillance or personal video footage have reconstructed virtually every foot of Pittsburgh as it existed months, weeks, days, hours, minutes or seconds prior to its annihilation. Blaxton enters the archive using his Adware, implanted wiring and retinal cams which allow consumers access to the world wide web, streaming data and video onto the cornea. The City-Archive allows survivors to immerse themselves in VR environments with loved ones before or even at the moment of their deaths.
She loved walking here. On Walnut Street, in Shadyside. She loved window-shopping here--the Apple Store, Williams-Sonoma, Kawaii, e.b. Pepper--but her favorite place was an upscale general store called Kards Unlimited. Theresa died here--wearing blue jeans tucked into riding boots, an oatmeal-colored cardigan draped over her pregnant belly. I've stood with her outside of Kards Unlimited's picture window as she sipped an iced mocha from Starbucks, looking at the T-shirts on display. My Other Ride Has A Flux Capacitor. Llamacorn. The Folding Chair Parking Authority. A Clockwork Orange. I've watched her many times looking at these shirts, and have come to believe that at the end, at the very moment the world ended for her, she was reading a Mr. Rogers T-shirt, It's a Neighborly Day in the Beautywood. The sky burns. Cameras record. Theresa squints. Her hair catches fire at the tips, then flashes like a diadem across her head. She dies too quickly, I believe, to have felt any pain.
Blaxton uses the City-Archive to locate Hannah Massey in a river bed, proving she was murdered prior to the attack. Haunted by ghosts he's tracked in the archives, Blaxton visits his cousin Gavril, a superstar installation artist whose Czech is translated to English by Adware. Blaxton has been using a stimulant called brown sugar to enhance his archive experiences and when one of Gavril's models slips him a pill laced with heroin, he's arrested in Dupont Circle for disturbing the peace, his fifth such offense. He loses his job and an eight-year prison sentence is waived pending his participation in a grief support group for men affected by Pittsburgh PTSD
The support group leader, Dr. Timothy Reynolds, makes Blaxton an offer, matching the convict's skills set with a job for his mentor, Theodore Waverly, Ph.D, head of a consultancy firm called Focal Networks. Waverly is a good friend of President Meecham, a former Miss Teen Pennsylvania and sex tape star installed as U.S. president for life following Pittsburgh. Blaxton meets with Waverly and the tycoon offers to waive all of Blaxton's sentencing requirements in exchange for locating his daughter Albion O'Hara Waverly, a stunning redhead missing and presumed dead in Pittsburgh. For reasons unknown, someone has also deleted Albion from the City-Archive, killing her twice.
Immersing himself in the City-Archive, Blaxton tracks Albion to Polish Hill, where she's been replaced by a model who calls herself "Zhou." Subsisting on Pepsi and Ho Hos, Blaxton connects Albion/ Zhou to a model named Peyton Hannover and to strange graffiti on her building. Before his search in the City-Archive gets far, Blaxton is confronted by a man calling himself Legion who threatens to delete Blaxton's wife from the archive unless he gives up trying to find Albion. Back in D.C., Dr. Reynolds threatens to gum up Blaxton's sentencing unless he stays on the case. Blaxton discovers that Waverly and Reynolds may be connected in the murder of Hannah Massey.
Think.
Load notes for case #14502 and resume my research where I'd left off for Kucenic and State Farm, tracking Hannah during her final hours before she was reported missing--on campus, at Carnegie Mellon, a few weeks before spring semester finals.
She's slept late this morning, the night before a raucous double rehearsal for her acting troupe's Spring Carnival performance of Spamalot. Hannah's role is the Lady of the Lake, and in these final hours in the Archive she trudges through a late spring dusting of snow still singing the music she'd heard the night before, full-voiced despite the relatively early hour. In a few weeks, her troupe will stage Spamalot without her, dedicating the show to her, the missing girl, the stage festooned with flowers. The programs will feature her high school senior portrait and a tribute written by her friends, and after each performance the actors will stand among the exiting crowds taking up a collection to aid in the search efforts. But now, this morning, Hannah sings "Diva's Lament," a freshman Psych major in Barbie-pink boots and a camel hair coat, blonde waves tumbling from beneath her knit beret. She's effortless, burgundy sweatpants and a plaid sweatshirt, comfy stuff for a day shuffling between the library and her semester's remaining few classes. I've followed her this morning before--
Tomorrow and Tomorrow blew me away with how seamlessly Tom Sweterlitsch propels a 1950s-set pulp fiction into a vivid and eeriely palpable future one hundred years later in time. James Ellroy bleeds all over this; the exploitation and grisly unexplained murder of a beautiful ingénue in Hollywood is taken to its next step in a virtual reality world wide web, where beauty and fashion can lead to overnight stardom or anonymous death. As with Ellroy, beguiling ghosts go unavenged and haunt the detective, while the powerful are able to erase their crimes. Sweterlitsch's vision is mesmerizing, with Adware burying its users with data streams or advertising.
A private Panda Electronics clinic in Chevy Chase. The showroom fills with spots for Panda Electronics, hallucinations of Chinese girls wearing cosplay lingerie and panda bear ears, cuddling with panda bear cubs, offering deals on personal devices. The clinician is dressed in Ralph Lauren, a polo shirt and white slacks--simple, but she's a stunner, black hair and pale, high cheekbones and vivid violet eyes. A plastic surgeon must have installed her Adware because the scarring cresting her forehead resembles the veins of a leaf rather than the haphazard gridding most people have. Her profile's set to public-- Agatha Kramer, a biocommunications major at Georgetown, a cheerleader for the Redskins, vids of her in mustard and yellow spandex, doing high kicks on the sidelines. Her profile pic's one of Gavril's "Street Fashion" series--so she'd been one of his impromptu models for the blog. She smiles as we approach.
This novel worked its doomsday spell over me by prophesying things that are personally terrifying to me: nuclear apocalypse, invasion of privacy, assault with advertising, a monarch president. The way in which women are no more in control of their fates in the virtual world than the real one is unsettling. In Sweterlitsch's future, glamour, fashion and retail branding seem to dominate culture, and citizens seek the comfort of virtual reality to escape the mounting problems of the world. This scenario is not new to science fiction, but Sweterlitsch makes his future credible and the psychic trauma inflicted on his character seem real.
Length: 92,982 words
The story begins in Washington D.C., where research firm archival assistant John Patrick Blaxton investigates a claim for Hannah Massey, a Carnegie Mellon student who disappeared ten years ago, shortly before what the world comes to know as "Pittsburgh" occurred when an Islamic terrorist detonated a nuclear device in Katz Plaza, reducing half a million people and most of the Steel City to ash. Among those missing and presumed dead in the attack--Blaxton was spared while attending a conference in Columbus--were his wife Theresa Marie and their unborn daughter.
To combat fraudulent life insurance claims, State Farm and others insist on proof of death, which archivists like Blaxton can track down in a virtual reality network known as the City-Archive, where surveillance or personal video footage have reconstructed virtually every foot of Pittsburgh as it existed months, weeks, days, hours, minutes or seconds prior to its annihilation. Blaxton enters the archive using his Adware, implanted wiring and retinal cams which allow consumers access to the world wide web, streaming data and video onto the cornea. The City-Archive allows survivors to immerse themselves in VR environments with loved ones before or even at the moment of their deaths.
She loved walking here. On Walnut Street, in Shadyside. She loved window-shopping here--the Apple Store, Williams-Sonoma, Kawaii, e.b. Pepper--but her favorite place was an upscale general store called Kards Unlimited. Theresa died here--wearing blue jeans tucked into riding boots, an oatmeal-colored cardigan draped over her pregnant belly. I've stood with her outside of Kards Unlimited's picture window as she sipped an iced mocha from Starbucks, looking at the T-shirts on display. My Other Ride Has A Flux Capacitor. Llamacorn. The Folding Chair Parking Authority. A Clockwork Orange. I've watched her many times looking at these shirts, and have come to believe that at the end, at the very moment the world ended for her, she was reading a Mr. Rogers T-shirt, It's a Neighborly Day in the Beautywood. The sky burns. Cameras record. Theresa squints. Her hair catches fire at the tips, then flashes like a diadem across her head. She dies too quickly, I believe, to have felt any pain.
Blaxton uses the City-Archive to locate Hannah Massey in a river bed, proving she was murdered prior to the attack. Haunted by ghosts he's tracked in the archives, Blaxton visits his cousin Gavril, a superstar installation artist whose Czech is translated to English by Adware. Blaxton has been using a stimulant called brown sugar to enhance his archive experiences and when one of Gavril's models slips him a pill laced with heroin, he's arrested in Dupont Circle for disturbing the peace, his fifth such offense. He loses his job and an eight-year prison sentence is waived pending his participation in a grief support group for men affected by Pittsburgh PTSD
The support group leader, Dr. Timothy Reynolds, makes Blaxton an offer, matching the convict's skills set with a job for his mentor, Theodore Waverly, Ph.D, head of a consultancy firm called Focal Networks. Waverly is a good friend of President Meecham, a former Miss Teen Pennsylvania and sex tape star installed as U.S. president for life following Pittsburgh. Blaxton meets with Waverly and the tycoon offers to waive all of Blaxton's sentencing requirements in exchange for locating his daughter Albion O'Hara Waverly, a stunning redhead missing and presumed dead in Pittsburgh. For reasons unknown, someone has also deleted Albion from the City-Archive, killing her twice.
Immersing himself in the City-Archive, Blaxton tracks Albion to Polish Hill, where she's been replaced by a model who calls herself "Zhou." Subsisting on Pepsi and Ho Hos, Blaxton connects Albion/ Zhou to a model named Peyton Hannover and to strange graffiti on her building. Before his search in the City-Archive gets far, Blaxton is confronted by a man calling himself Legion who threatens to delete Blaxton's wife from the archive unless he gives up trying to find Albion. Back in D.C., Dr. Reynolds threatens to gum up Blaxton's sentencing unless he stays on the case. Blaxton discovers that Waverly and Reynolds may be connected in the murder of Hannah Massey.
Think.
Load notes for case #14502 and resume my research where I'd left off for Kucenic and State Farm, tracking Hannah during her final hours before she was reported missing--on campus, at Carnegie Mellon, a few weeks before spring semester finals.
She's slept late this morning, the night before a raucous double rehearsal for her acting troupe's Spring Carnival performance of Spamalot. Hannah's role is the Lady of the Lake, and in these final hours in the Archive she trudges through a late spring dusting of snow still singing the music she'd heard the night before, full-voiced despite the relatively early hour. In a few weeks, her troupe will stage Spamalot without her, dedicating the show to her, the missing girl, the stage festooned with flowers. The programs will feature her high school senior portrait and a tribute written by her friends, and after each performance the actors will stand among the exiting crowds taking up a collection to aid in the search efforts. But now, this morning, Hannah sings "Diva's Lament," a freshman Psych major in Barbie-pink boots and a camel hair coat, blonde waves tumbling from beneath her knit beret. She's effortless, burgundy sweatpants and a plaid sweatshirt, comfy stuff for a day shuffling between the library and her semester's remaining few classes. I've followed her this morning before--
Tomorrow and Tomorrow blew me away with how seamlessly Tom Sweterlitsch propels a 1950s-set pulp fiction into a vivid and eeriely palpable future one hundred years later in time. James Ellroy bleeds all over this; the exploitation and grisly unexplained murder of a beautiful ingénue in Hollywood is taken to its next step in a virtual reality world wide web, where beauty and fashion can lead to overnight stardom or anonymous death. As with Ellroy, beguiling ghosts go unavenged and haunt the detective, while the powerful are able to erase their crimes. Sweterlitsch's vision is mesmerizing, with Adware burying its users with data streams or advertising.
A private Panda Electronics clinic in Chevy Chase. The showroom fills with spots for Panda Electronics, hallucinations of Chinese girls wearing cosplay lingerie and panda bear ears, cuddling with panda bear cubs, offering deals on personal devices. The clinician is dressed in Ralph Lauren, a polo shirt and white slacks--simple, but she's a stunner, black hair and pale, high cheekbones and vivid violet eyes. A plastic surgeon must have installed her Adware because the scarring cresting her forehead resembles the veins of a leaf rather than the haphazard gridding most people have. Her profile's set to public-- Agatha Kramer, a biocommunications major at Georgetown, a cheerleader for the Redskins, vids of her in mustard and yellow spandex, doing high kicks on the sidelines. Her profile pic's one of Gavril's "Street Fashion" series--so she'd been one of his impromptu models for the blog. She smiles as we approach.
This novel worked its doomsday spell over me by prophesying things that are personally terrifying to me: nuclear apocalypse, invasion of privacy, assault with advertising, a monarch president. The way in which women are no more in control of their fates in the virtual world than the real one is unsettling. In Sweterlitsch's future, glamour, fashion and retail branding seem to dominate culture, and citizens seek the comfort of virtual reality to escape the mounting problems of the world. This scenario is not new to science fiction, but Sweterlitsch makes his future credible and the psychic trauma inflicted on his character seem real.
Length: 92,982 words
May 1, 2021
If The Gone World felt oppresive to me, this one surpassed it tenfold. It's a cyberpunk thriller, set in a world where almost everyone lives with an Adware implanted in their skulls, ruled by pornographic news & adds which are drawn from even the most mundane event.
Dominic, through whose eyes we follow his story, still mourns after his wife and unborn child, killed when a nuclear bomb obliterated Pittsburgh. He became an expert in searching the Archive, the only thing where he can still find his wife and relive moments with her.
One day he found the body of a young student, murdered and buried in mud. He became obsessed with bringing justice to her, and tries to find her killer. Only he finds himself in something much more grusome than he had ever imagined.
For a debut novel, the worldbuilding and story complexity are impressive. It's just that so much violence and porn on repeat is sickening. He portrays such a depraved american society that it is hard to really enjoy or even focus on the storyline.
But even so, it was a gripping story, his writing is hypnotic, and if he ever writes another it will go straight on my tbr list. I just wish he would cut a bit on the violence part. That was the only thingh which held me back to give his Gone World 5 stars.
Dominic, through whose eyes we follow his story, still mourns after his wife and unborn child, killed when a nuclear bomb obliterated Pittsburgh. He became an expert in searching the Archive, the only thing where he can still find his wife and relive moments with her.
One day he found the body of a young student, murdered and buried in mud. He became obsessed with bringing justice to her, and tries to find her killer. Only he finds himself in something much more grusome than he had ever imagined.
For a debut novel, the worldbuilding and story complexity are impressive. It's just that so much violence and porn on repeat is sickening. He portrays such a depraved american society that it is hard to really enjoy or even focus on the storyline.
But even so, it was a gripping story, his writing is hypnotic, and if he ever writes another it will go straight on my tbr list. I just wish he would cut a bit on the violence part. That was the only thingh which held me back to give his Gone World 5 stars.
July 15, 2014
3.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum http://bibliosanctum.com/2014/07/14/b...
Cyberpunk is another one of those science fiction subgenres that have been more miss than hit with me in the past, but that hasn’t stopped me from giving more of it a try, hoping to find something that’s more my liking. So even after my inability to get into William Gibson’s Neuromancer – a book considered a seminal work in the cyberpunk field – I still decided to check out Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which has been described as leading in the next wave following in the footsteps of Gibson.
Indeed, in the classic cyberpunk tradition, the book has its setting in a near-future dystopian with elements of hard-boiled detective film noir and overall a very bleak worldview. The city of Pittsburgh is a pile of rubble and ash after its destruction by terrorists in a nuclear blast. Ten years later, survivor John Dominic Blaxton still mourns his wife and unborn child while most of the world has moved on. Our protagonist is a marginalized loner, addicted to drugs as much as he is addicted to his memories of his lost life by immersing himself in the Archive where he can relive moments with his wife in a fully interactive digital reconstruction of Pittsburgh.
Dominic’s work also involves investigating deaths recorded in the Archive for insurance companies. One day, while pursuing a claim, he becomes obsessed with the apparent murder of a young woman when he discovers that her records have been tampered with, evidence that someone is trying to cover up the circumstances of her death. His digging around doesn’t go unnoticed. Like many cyberpunk protagonists, John finds himself manipulated by higher forces and trapped into a situation where he has little control.
Thomas Sweterlitsch has created a future where technology runs rampant. Everyone has an adware implant in their head and access to information is near ubiquitous. People have become wholly dependent on the computer chips in their brains, and the result is a dehumanized society with a strong sense of disenchantment and nihilism. Feeds run continuously in an endless stream, with up-to-the-second news updates. Grisly details of accidents or crime scenes are made public at the speed of an eye blink, along with the darker secrets of the victims’ lives. The society eats up their sex tapes as voraciously as they revel in the graphic violence.
It’s this brutal, emotionally numbing aspect of cyberpunk that makes it so hard for me to click with this genre. Strangely enough, I can handle most kinds of gritty, dark fantasy without issue, but these near-futures and the negative effect of technology on human society have a way of cutting too close for comfort. All everyone seems to care about anymore is pornography and violence, and it is so off-putting not to mention mentally draining. The themes of grief and loss are also at the forefront of this novel, which makes reading it a real struggle if you’re not feeling in the mood for something so despairing. It’s hard to watch Dominic go through life relying so heavily on the Archive; instead of helping, the technology has pretty much halted his healing all together, and he hangs on to his grief like his wife died yesterday instead of a decade ago.
This wasn’t a bad novel, however. I thought the world-building was fantastic and the mystery, hardboiled noir and crime thriller elements were done very well. This is a story about a man destroyed by tragedy and the events that ultimately pulled him out of his funk and allowed him to move on, but it is for the most part a very stark, very depressing and sometimes disturbing book. I don’t regret reading it and I would recommend this to cyberpunk fans, but consider holding off if you’re in the mood for something lighter.
Cyberpunk is another one of those science fiction subgenres that have been more miss than hit with me in the past, but that hasn’t stopped me from giving more of it a try, hoping to find something that’s more my liking. So even after my inability to get into William Gibson’s Neuromancer – a book considered a seminal work in the cyberpunk field – I still decided to check out Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which has been described as leading in the next wave following in the footsteps of Gibson.
Indeed, in the classic cyberpunk tradition, the book has its setting in a near-future dystopian with elements of hard-boiled detective film noir and overall a very bleak worldview. The city of Pittsburgh is a pile of rubble and ash after its destruction by terrorists in a nuclear blast. Ten years later, survivor John Dominic Blaxton still mourns his wife and unborn child while most of the world has moved on. Our protagonist is a marginalized loner, addicted to drugs as much as he is addicted to his memories of his lost life by immersing himself in the Archive where he can relive moments with his wife in a fully interactive digital reconstruction of Pittsburgh.
Dominic’s work also involves investigating deaths recorded in the Archive for insurance companies. One day, while pursuing a claim, he becomes obsessed with the apparent murder of a young woman when he discovers that her records have been tampered with, evidence that someone is trying to cover up the circumstances of her death. His digging around doesn’t go unnoticed. Like many cyberpunk protagonists, John finds himself manipulated by higher forces and trapped into a situation where he has little control.
Thomas Sweterlitsch has created a future where technology runs rampant. Everyone has an adware implant in their head and access to information is near ubiquitous. People have become wholly dependent on the computer chips in their brains, and the result is a dehumanized society with a strong sense of disenchantment and nihilism. Feeds run continuously in an endless stream, with up-to-the-second news updates. Grisly details of accidents or crime scenes are made public at the speed of an eye blink, along with the darker secrets of the victims’ lives. The society eats up their sex tapes as voraciously as they revel in the graphic violence.
It’s this brutal, emotionally numbing aspect of cyberpunk that makes it so hard for me to click with this genre. Strangely enough, I can handle most kinds of gritty, dark fantasy without issue, but these near-futures and the negative effect of technology on human society have a way of cutting too close for comfort. All everyone seems to care about anymore is pornography and violence, and it is so off-putting not to mention mentally draining. The themes of grief and loss are also at the forefront of this novel, which makes reading it a real struggle if you’re not feeling in the mood for something so despairing. It’s hard to watch Dominic go through life relying so heavily on the Archive; instead of helping, the technology has pretty much halted his healing all together, and he hangs on to his grief like his wife died yesterday instead of a decade ago.
This wasn’t a bad novel, however. I thought the world-building was fantastic and the mystery, hardboiled noir and crime thriller elements were done very well. This is a story about a man destroyed by tragedy and the events that ultimately pulled him out of his funk and allowed him to move on, but it is for the most part a very stark, very depressing and sometimes disturbing book. I don’t regret reading it and I would recommend this to cyberpunk fans, but consider holding off if you’re in the mood for something lighter.
April 17, 2022
Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic, noir, mystery/thriller with a protagonist who is addicted to drugs and grief. There is a lot, probably too much, going on in this book. In this first person narration, John Dominic Blaxton (Dominic) is an investigator who is adept at navigating an interactive digital Archive of a disaster that turned Pittsburgh into a pile of ash, and killed most of its inhabitants, ten years before the start of the book. Dominic's wife and unborn daughter were among the victims, and Dominic has definitely not moved on. He is obsessed with using the Archive to relive moments of his life with his wife and uses stimulants to self medicate his grief. He also becomes obsessed with the current subject of his investigations, the apparent murder of a young woman who was believed to have been killed in the disaster.
In addition to the multiple genres and story lines in play here, the atmosphere in the book is very noisy. Between the hallucinogenic drugs and the adware feed directly into Dominic's brain that constantly bombards him with information and advertising, reading this book is an experience of sensory overload. It was often exhausting trying to separate the layers of reality from virtual reality, dreams and hallucinations. It also has some scenes of really extreme violence and cruelty.
I'm afraid that I may have made it sound like I didn't like this book, but that is not the case. If I'd hated it, I would have stopped reading. While cyberpunk is certainly not my favorite genre, I thought the book was extremely well written and inventive, with detailed world building of both the Archive and society in the near future. However, I found it a lot of work to read and I can't even tell you whether or not I enjoyed the trip. I gave it four stars because it was quite an experience, and it's always good to expand one's horizons, but I'm not sure I'd like to repeat it.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
In addition to the multiple genres and story lines in play here, the atmosphere in the book is very noisy. Between the hallucinogenic drugs and the adware feed directly into Dominic's brain that constantly bombards him with information and advertising, reading this book is an experience of sensory overload. It was often exhausting trying to separate the layers of reality from virtual reality, dreams and hallucinations. It also has some scenes of really extreme violence and cruelty.
I'm afraid that I may have made it sound like I didn't like this book, but that is not the case. If I'd hated it, I would have stopped reading. While cyberpunk is certainly not my favorite genre, I thought the book was extremely well written and inventive, with detailed world building of both the Archive and society in the near future. However, I found it a lot of work to read and I can't even tell you whether or not I enjoyed the trip. I gave it four stars because it was quite an experience, and it's always good to expand one's horizons, but I'm not sure I'd like to repeat it.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
February 27, 2022
1 star. DNFed at around 45%.
The blurb is awesome, but the execution leaves sooooo much to be desired.
"Tomorrow & Tomorrow" (The Gone World) is superficial, hugely sexist (without that being used for political commentary) and opaque in plot and direction of the story even after 200 pages. Yes, the tech is interesting and has a lot of potential, but it is never really explained well enough for us to enjoy the sci-fi vs reality details. The dialogue is bad and the character names even worse.
Two things are abundantly clear, however. 1. The author lives in Pittsburgh and has a resumé (CV) that reads surprisingly close to that of the main character (cheating!). 2. He's a horndog for blondes. (*slobber, slobber, slurp*)
I'm abandoning this one because it's just too hollow and uneven of a world, too "hometown pride" (why on earth would a terrorist choose to nuke Pittsburgh of all places? Oh yeah,'cause the author lives there, duh), too much of a lack of vision for good sci-fi, and too many superficial characters (read: women) with nothing more going for them than getting themselves to (or into) the next fashion show to be exploited by the men who...well, can't wait to exploit them for a mass masturbating cyber -- we assume male -- populace. (Are there any male models mentioned anywhere? Perish the thought! Girls! Girls! Girls!)
Not for me. DNF.
The blurb is awesome, but the execution leaves sooooo much to be desired.
"Tomorrow & Tomorrow" (The Gone World) is superficial, hugely sexist (without that being used for political commentary) and opaque in plot and direction of the story even after 200 pages. Yes, the tech is interesting and has a lot of potential, but it is never really explained well enough for us to enjoy the sci-fi vs reality details. The dialogue is bad and the character names even worse.
Two things are abundantly clear, however. 1. The author lives in Pittsburgh and has a resumé (CV) that reads surprisingly close to that of the main character (cheating!). 2. He's a horndog for blondes. (*slobber, slobber, slurp*)
I'm abandoning this one because it's just too hollow and uneven of a world, too "hometown pride" (why on earth would a terrorist choose to nuke Pittsburgh of all places? Oh yeah,'cause the author lives there, duh), too much of a lack of vision for good sci-fi, and too many superficial characters (read: women) with nothing more going for them than getting themselves to (or into) the next fashion show to be exploited by the men who...well, can't wait to exploit them for a mass masturbating cyber -- we assume male -- populace. (Are there any male models mentioned anywhere? Perish the thought! Girls! Girls! Girls!)
Not for me. DNF.
January 5, 2015
I received a copy of this from NetGalley for free in exchange for an honest review.
I was intrigued by the description of this book, a post-apocalyptic world where the main character works in an archive? Sounded interesting. In the end, I feel like the author tries to do too much at once - post-apocalypse plus crime plus grief plus a John Brunner media-saturated landscape. It reminded me of Stand on Zanzibar in the way everyone is assaulted by advertising and an abundance of information about every person they encounter, with the added twist of advertising that changes in reaction to a person's response. Porn and graphic violence in the media was also prevalent.
The trouble is, I'm not really sure what this has to do with the core story. I thought it was somehow linked to the destruction of Pittsburgh, but instead it just seems to be the attempt to represent the future and serve as a convenient way to link most of the important clues to solving the crime. And while the survivors of Pittsburgh seem to be greatly effected by its destruction, the rest of the world seems somewhat zombie-like. I never really figured out, is this the world or is this a result to tragedy?
More real to John Dominic Blaxton (who rarely is just referred to as John) is his dead wife, who he is able to spend time with in a recreated virtual space. The virtual reality has been built from actual recorded data (the vast network of surveillance) and added to based on memories, recalled info, and so on. He spends a lot of his waking hours reliving moments with her and trying to feel close to her.
He also is investigating a woman's dead body who seems to be disappearing from the archive, and ends up wrapped up in a crime family of sorts that threatens his most important memory. He's hired as an outside researcher after having to leave his archival job (drugs), one of those situations where the police are no use (necessary for him to be necessary, of course.)
"...The police don't have the resources. Besides, they don't prioritize this as a missing persons case or anything of the sort but rather a data mismanagement claim or at worst cybervandalism or a hacking charge. Digital graffiti, that sort of thing... I've searched on my own, but she's vanishing. I have photographs - I know she exists. Existed-"
The author has created some challenges for himself. In order to make a greater dramatic arc for John Dominic Blaxton, the reveals have to be absurdly violent and gruesome for them even to register for the reader after being exposed to the stream of porn and blood and gossip that the average person in his world encounters every day. To me, that event was not that startling. To me, the most sorrowful moment happened earlier in the story, when his wife suddenly isn't available to him. The poignancy of that story gets covered up by the crime romp.
There's not a lot to live for in this world, but I couldn't help but think the archive was not doing much to allow John Dominic Blaxton to move on. There didn't seem to be a lot to live for otherwise. Early on he even admits this - "I can't fathom what happiness might mean anymore - it seems like luxury to someone whose life feels like a lead-lined discomfort... I don't seek out happiness, just pockets of alleviation - a drowning man sipping at bubbles of air."
I really enjoyed the world-building part of this novel, and the use of existing technology in a more saturated way (adaware, augmented reality, virtual reality). It's just the crime element that I didn't connect to. I wonder what it would have been like as a short story, because I was yearning for a tighter reading experience.
I was intrigued by the description of this book, a post-apocalyptic world where the main character works in an archive? Sounded interesting. In the end, I feel like the author tries to do too much at once - post-apocalypse plus crime plus grief plus a John Brunner media-saturated landscape. It reminded me of Stand on Zanzibar in the way everyone is assaulted by advertising and an abundance of information about every person they encounter, with the added twist of advertising that changes in reaction to a person's response. Porn and graphic violence in the media was also prevalent.
The trouble is, I'm not really sure what this has to do with the core story. I thought it was somehow linked to the destruction of Pittsburgh, but instead it just seems to be the attempt to represent the future and serve as a convenient way to link most of the important clues to solving the crime. And while the survivors of Pittsburgh seem to be greatly effected by its destruction, the rest of the world seems somewhat zombie-like. I never really figured out, is this the world or is this a result to tragedy?
More real to John Dominic Blaxton (who rarely is just referred to as John) is his dead wife, who he is able to spend time with in a recreated virtual space. The virtual reality has been built from actual recorded data (the vast network of surveillance) and added to based on memories, recalled info, and so on. He spends a lot of his waking hours reliving moments with her and trying to feel close to her.
He also is investigating a woman's dead body who seems to be disappearing from the archive, and ends up wrapped up in a crime family of sorts that threatens his most important memory. He's hired as an outside researcher after having to leave his archival job (drugs), one of those situations where the police are no use (necessary for him to be necessary, of course.)
"...The police don't have the resources. Besides, they don't prioritize this as a missing persons case or anything of the sort but rather a data mismanagement claim or at worst cybervandalism or a hacking charge. Digital graffiti, that sort of thing... I've searched on my own, but she's vanishing. I have photographs - I know she exists. Existed-"
The author has created some challenges for himself. In order to make a greater dramatic arc for John Dominic Blaxton, the reveals have to be absurdly violent and gruesome for them even to register for the reader after being exposed to the stream of porn and blood and gossip that the average person in his world encounters every day. To me, that event was not that startling. To me, the most sorrowful moment happened earlier in the story, when his wife suddenly isn't available to him. The poignancy of that story gets covered up by the crime romp.
There's not a lot to live for in this world, but I couldn't help but think the archive was not doing much to allow John Dominic Blaxton to move on. There didn't seem to be a lot to live for otherwise. Early on he even admits this - "I can't fathom what happiness might mean anymore - it seems like luxury to someone whose life feels like a lead-lined discomfort... I don't seek out happiness, just pockets of alleviation - a drowning man sipping at bubbles of air."
I really enjoyed the world-building part of this novel, and the use of existing technology in a more saturated way (adaware, augmented reality, virtual reality). It's just the crime element that I didn't connect to. I wonder what it would have been like as a short story, because I was yearning for a tighter reading experience.
February 4, 2015
I rarely DNF books, especially at the beginning, but I just could not get through this one. And it's sad, because I do believe the author is talented and has some really great things going on this book...
...it just wasn't for me.
First off, the positives.
The world-building in this novel was excellent. From the very first page, you're immersed in a futuristic cyberpunk world where people have computers in their brains and the internet is simply a blink away. On top of that, the author doesn't waste any time before revealing exactly how these technological developments have influenced daily life. People completely ignoring the world around them, the mainstream media showing uncensored porn on the morning news, graphic depictions of virtual violence...
Excellent world-building. No contest there.
I found the descriptions of the technology fascinating and the society around the protagonist to be both incredibly disturbing and frighteningly realistic.
My real problem with this book was the writing style.
The author tries to pull off "futuristic cyberpunk crime noir thriller written like a journal." And it's just...too much for me. WAY too much. Because the story is written journal style, there are a ton of tangents in every scene, and the overall narrative is very hard to keep track of from passage to passage. Combine that with the incredibly complex world-building and plot elements, and, well...I couldn't read this book.
I struggled to keep track of the plot threads, and I thought there was too much introspection in what was supposed to be a crime thriller, and at the end of the day, I had to put this down for good very early on. And it makes me sad -- because I definitely SAW what the author was getting at, SAW the underlying talent, SAW the skill and planning that went into this book.
It just wasn't for me. I couldn't follow it well enough to really enjoy it. So I had to put it down.
Other readers may find that the writing style suits them perfectly, and if this book interests you, definitely check it out. But it was a no go for me -- the style just didn't fit with the way I read. And it's such a pity because I found the world really interesting. But the structure of book just wasn't my thing.
An unfortunate DNF for me.
_____
Rating
2/5
_____
// Disclosure
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Library Thing in exchange for an honest review.
...it just wasn't for me.
First off, the positives.
The world-building in this novel was excellent. From the very first page, you're immersed in a futuristic cyberpunk world where people have computers in their brains and the internet is simply a blink away. On top of that, the author doesn't waste any time before revealing exactly how these technological developments have influenced daily life. People completely ignoring the world around them, the mainstream media showing uncensored porn on the morning news, graphic depictions of virtual violence...
Excellent world-building. No contest there.
I found the descriptions of the technology fascinating and the society around the protagonist to be both incredibly disturbing and frighteningly realistic.
My real problem with this book was the writing style.
The author tries to pull off "futuristic cyberpunk crime noir thriller written like a journal." And it's just...too much for me. WAY too much. Because the story is written journal style, there are a ton of tangents in every scene, and the overall narrative is very hard to keep track of from passage to passage. Combine that with the incredibly complex world-building and plot elements, and, well...I couldn't read this book.
I struggled to keep track of the plot threads, and I thought there was too much introspection in what was supposed to be a crime thriller, and at the end of the day, I had to put this down for good very early on. And it makes me sad -- because I definitely SAW what the author was getting at, SAW the underlying talent, SAW the skill and planning that went into this book.
It just wasn't for me. I couldn't follow it well enough to really enjoy it. So I had to put it down.
Other readers may find that the writing style suits them perfectly, and if this book interests you, definitely check it out. But it was a no go for me -- the style just didn't fit with the way I read. And it's such a pity because I found the world really interesting. But the structure of book just wasn't my thing.
An unfortunate DNF for me.
_____
Rating
2/5
_____
// Disclosure
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Library Thing in exchange for an honest review.
January 12, 2019
I love mysteries in a science fiction setting (Lock In, Six Wakes, The City & the City, etc), and I really dig near future sci-fi, so I was really looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, it just did not work.
I see a lot of reviews raving about the world-building, but I honestly think that the book really fell down on this. The premise is that the Pittsburgh was vaporized by a bomb, and the main character is a survivor of the blast who works in an immersive digital archived version of the city to resolve insurance claims filed for the dead. Throughout the rest of the country, people are connected to the internet through neuro implants and live on a steady diet of violent and pornographic content. The political situation seems to have deteriorated enough that the president convinced everyone to install her for life, and she holds yearly televised executions of criminals.
The lack of world-building means that there really isn't any explanation for how we got there or how everything is connected. Did Pittsburgh lead to the president becoming a dictator? Did it happen before that? Did the bomb result in everyone's desire for more explicit and brutal entertainment to keep them distracted from real life (although people seem to otherwise go about life normally with their families and friends and jobs and art and gardening and community events)? The bomb happened 10 years prior to when the book takes place, and no other events are referred to happening in the interim. It isn't clear if other changes were made to the political system other than the ones I mentioned above. These pieces of this world are three separate things presented without any connections made between them, and it felt confusing and downright lazy.
Also lazy: how the author treats women. The main character is utterly fixated on multiple deceased women. His life revolves all of these dead women who are fridged to give him his motivation, and the author does nothing interesting with this tired, awful trope. To make matters worse, the bad guys responsible for most of these women's deaths are so unbelievably, cartoonishly evil and no reason at all is given for why they are the way they are. The author doesn't even try to come up with even the flimsiest of excuses, they are just presented as going about their evil business. All of the women in the book have nicknames given to them by men who abuse and kill them, and the main character only ever calls them by these nicknames instead of their real names, despite knowing their real names. It all just feels so ick.
There seems to be hints and wisps of themes the author is trying to develop, but he just didn't bring it all together. If there is supposed to be some sort of commentary or critique of how women are treated in media (maybe?), the author just tossed all the pieces onto the table without putting them together.
For an example of a book about a man's abusive fixation on a woman that brings something new to the table and is handled very cleverly, check out R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries, I think about this one a lot and wish I had re-read it before sending it back to the library.
I see a lot of reviews raving about the world-building, but I honestly think that the book really fell down on this. The premise is that the Pittsburgh was vaporized by a bomb, and the main character is a survivor of the blast who works in an immersive digital archived version of the city to resolve insurance claims filed for the dead. Throughout the rest of the country, people are connected to the internet through neuro implants and live on a steady diet of violent and pornographic content. The political situation seems to have deteriorated enough that the president convinced everyone to install her for life, and she holds yearly televised executions of criminals.
The lack of world-building means that there really isn't any explanation for how we got there or how everything is connected. Did Pittsburgh lead to the president becoming a dictator? Did it happen before that? Did the bomb result in everyone's desire for more explicit and brutal entertainment to keep them distracted from real life (although people seem to otherwise go about life normally with their families and friends and jobs and art and gardening and community events)? The bomb happened 10 years prior to when the book takes place, and no other events are referred to happening in the interim. It isn't clear if other changes were made to the political system other than the ones I mentioned above. These pieces of this world are three separate things presented without any connections made between them, and it felt confusing and downright lazy.
Also lazy: how the author treats women. The main character is utterly fixated on multiple deceased women. His life revolves all of these dead women who are fridged to give him his motivation, and the author does nothing interesting with this tired, awful trope. To make matters worse, the bad guys responsible for most of these women's deaths are so unbelievably, cartoonishly evil and no reason at all is given for why they are the way they are. The author doesn't even try to come up with even the flimsiest of excuses, they are just presented as going about their evil business. All of the women in the book have nicknames given to them by men who abuse and kill them, and the main character only ever calls them by these nicknames instead of their real names, despite knowing their real names. It all just feels so ick.
There seems to be hints and wisps of themes the author is trying to develop, but he just didn't bring it all together. If there is supposed to be some sort of commentary or critique of how women are treated in media (maybe?), the author just tossed all the pieces onto the table without putting them together.
For an example of a book about a man's abusive fixation on a woman that brings something new to the table and is handled very cleverly, check out R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries, I think about this one a lot and wish I had re-read it before sending it back to the library.
January 29, 2015
Ok so I was reading this book with the succinct recommendation that it was a "mind-f***" for the first 50 pages I felt more like the book was a just a drag, and the author couldn't get his head together to write a coherent story. After about page 75 and definitely after page 100 the book really started to take off. Every started to make sense, the tension build brilliantly on the premise and setting had me really cringing at the narrators plight.
So if you've ever wondered what would happen if you crossed The Matrix, Memento and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (there is some weird stuff in there) then this is the book.
So if you've ever wondered what would happen if you crossed The Matrix, Memento and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (there is some weird stuff in there) then this is the book.
December 30, 2019
First I read the author’s second book, The Gone World, last year. It is a very good hard sci-fi book, and I knew I want to read his other books in the future.
I bought the Hungarian edition, Angyalok pokla (original title: Tomorrow and Tomorrow) a few weeks ago, and I started reading it right away. In my opinion, this book is a little bit chaotic. There are too many things in it - post apocalyptic atmosphere, serious grief, crime, murder, sci-fi elements... They are good ideas, every one of them, but the result is… sometimes awesome, sometimes weird. It’s not a bad book, but I enjoyed The Gone World way more. 3 stars! ⭐⭐⭐
I bought the Hungarian edition, Angyalok pokla (original title: Tomorrow and Tomorrow) a few weeks ago, and I started reading it right away. In my opinion, this book is a little bit chaotic. There are too many things in it - post apocalyptic atmosphere, serious grief, crime, murder, sci-fi elements... They are good ideas, every one of them, but the result is… sometimes awesome, sometimes weird. It’s not a bad book, but I enjoyed The Gone World way more. 3 stars! ⭐⭐⭐
May 31, 2019
Ahoy there me mateys! It be no secret that Sarah @ brainfluff likes to increase me ports for plunder list by exponentially high amounts. And thank goodness because her awesome review led me to this amazing read. She said:
In this book, the city of Pittsburgh was pulverized a decade before. But people can still visit the old city in the form of the Archive, a digital version of the city made up from the camera footage and saved memories of the doomed residents.
Dominic was out of town when he lost his wife and unborn child. He continuously spends time in the Archive reliving the past with his wife in 3-D. He works for an insurance company trying to confirm causes of death for claims by using the Archive. But when he discovers a dead body that someone was trying to hide, he is drawn into a large conspiracy.
One of thehellish highlights of this book is the world building. It felt so real and yet so alarmingly scary. I would not want anyone to be able to access me own memories and follow me every move. I know surveillance is a current thing but the idea of people being able to interact with dead me is unsavoury. The data is not me. Creepy!
In this world sex and gratuitous violence to sell everything is the norm. It is disheartening to say the least. As Mogsy @ the bibliosanctum puts it:
Right on.
Also how the author chooses to tell the story is hardly glamorous. Dominic is no dashing hero. The resolution of this tale surprised with how realistic it felt. The author stayed very true to his own world-building and it was both depressing and somehow glorious. The book is stark and left me feeling both unsettled by a reality I don't want to live in and also engrossed by how well the author plotted the story. But above all I was very sympathetic to Dominic and truly wished him well. An odd book that is hard to recommend but that I am so glad I read. Arrrr!
This is the overarching theme of this book – what happens to the griefstricken when they can revisit events from their past, still have conversations with their dead partners and interact with them? The answer Sweterlitsch gives, is that there are some who are unable to move on – who spend all their time and resources stuck in the past. And Dominic is one of these lost souls…
In this book, the city of Pittsburgh was pulverized a decade before. But people can still visit the old city in the form of the Archive, a digital version of the city made up from the camera footage and saved memories of the doomed residents.
Dominic was out of town when he lost his wife and unborn child. He continuously spends time in the Archive reliving the past with his wife in 3-D. He works for an insurance company trying to confirm causes of death for claims by using the Archive. But when he discovers a dead body that someone was trying to hide, he is drawn into a large conspiracy.
One of the
In this world sex and gratuitous violence to sell everything is the norm. It is disheartening to say the least. As Mogsy @ the bibliosanctum puts it:
Thomas Sweterlitsch has created a future where technology runs rampant. Everyone has an adware implant in their head and access to information is near ubiquitous. People have become wholly dependent on the computer chips in their brains, and the result is a dehumanized society with a strong sense of disenchantment and nihilism. Feeds run continuously in an endless stream, with up-to-the-second news updates. Grisly details of accidents or crime scenes are made public at the speed of an eye blink, along with the darker secrets of the victims’ lives. The society eats up their sex tapes as voraciously as they revel in the graphic violence.
Right on.
Also how the author chooses to tell the story is hardly glamorous. Dominic is no dashing hero. The resolution of this tale surprised with how realistic it felt. The author stayed very true to his own world-building and it was both depressing and somehow glorious. The book is stark and left me feeling both unsettled by a reality I don't want to live in and also engrossed by how well the author plotted the story. But above all I was very sympathetic to Dominic and truly wished him well. An odd book that is hard to recommend but that I am so glad I read. Arrrr!
July 28, 2021
I don't know how to feel about this one. On one hand I truly like Sweterlitsch's writing style. I'm also not bored for a moment, not am I irritated at style over content, or cheesy sentimentalism, or unrealistic dialog or any manipulatory writing device. He doesn't use any of it. On the other hand, the plot, a man grieving the loss of his wife and unborn child 10 years prior in some kind of nuclear bomb attack and who keeps obsessively reliving memories of her in a sort of virtual reality, while substance abusing and trying to solve a case of a murdered woman in the artsy porn industry was... odd. I don't actually like his characters. None of them. There were several things I disliked about the story, even. But I didn't like his main character in The Gone World either and yet it didn't take away from my fascination with that novel. It doesn't really do that here, either, though most everyone is deeply unsympathetic. I guess as a writer he fascinates me, though I can't for the life of me figure out why. I'll continue to explore his work, so that I may one day solve this mystery!
Read
December 11, 2014I have no interest in finishing this book. This is a DNF for me. I haven't read enough to tell you anything about the book, I can't properly judge it, so all I'm going to say is: this just isn't a book for me. I couldn't focus on the plot at all. The writing was elusive and all over the place in a very exhausting way.
I am a bit sad, because I love a good sci if, and this one really sounds good in many ways, but because getting through the first few chapters felt like a torture, I don't really see the point in trying to force myself to finish it.
I am a bit sad, because I love a good sci if, and this one really sounds good in many ways, but because getting through the first few chapters felt like a torture, I don't really see the point in trying to force myself to finish it.
August 11, 2017
One of the first things that will strike you about Pittsburgh if you visit is the Downtown skyline. Every time you cross a bridge or travel through a tunnel and you see the skyline, it's pretty spectacular. It almost sneaks up on you, in a way. I've lived here since 2003 and it is still impressive when I come upon the city.
This is a dystopia that starts in Pittsburgh. The city is decimated by a single bomb that one person detonates. There are some survivors - mostly people from Pittsburgh who happened to be out of town when this event occurred, but also a few people who were trapped in one of the tunnels at the time, who clawed their way out.
As much as I love the look of Pittsburgh, it's not so far-fetched to imagine it a dystopic wasteland. It's not hard to find photographs of the way Pittsburgh used to be, when it was primarily steel factories and there was some much pollution in the air that the buildings were coated in it, and it would look like dusk in the middle of the day. This is the reality that a lot of people (still alive today) experienced when they were growing up. When you look at photographs like those, it's not such a removal to imagine a dystopia where very little remains and there's no one around.
But that's not even the real crux of the story here. The story begins with a murder, and the narrator, John Dominic Blaxton, is hell-bent on discovering the truth. He was one of the "lucky" ones that wasn't in Pittsburgh at the time of its destruction; his wife, however, 8 months pregnant, was. At the time the story begins, he is still grieving the loss of his family, and compensates for the pain by self-medicating with drugs.
It's a bit of a whirlwind of a story, actually. There are a lot of characters who help Blaxton along the way to understanding the murder mystery and help him with his grief. Each time there's an understanding as to what exactly happened, we're taken down another branch that may or may not take us to the root of the issue.
Upon starting and through about halfway through the book, I felt this was derivative of so many other science fiction writers/concepts. Off the top of my head the initial connections were concepts from Black Mirror and pretty much anything ever posited by Philip K. Dick. When discussing this book with my partner and reading to him the description from the dust jacket, he pounced on connections to Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov as well. I was annoyed by these connections because they were all things that had been said and done before, and in a tighter and more cohesive way.
Eventually this feeling changed and I just went with the story, though I think by that point where I was fine with it was really when Sweterlitsch stopped world-building as much. Once he got over all of that, he could focus solely on the story and it was much improved in my opinion.
One of the biggest complaints I've seen and heard from other people is the amount of name-dropping the characters do - brand names and location names, primarily. This is particularly difficult for people who live in Pittsburgh because it seems so obvious that he is going for the biggest, most recognizable names. The same occurs when the characters are in DC, and then San Francisco, etc. The first line of the book begins "Her body's down in Nine Mile Run, half buried in river mud."
We know Nine Mile Run, very well.
But here's my theory that I've mentioned to a few people that I was forming while I was reading.
There's the Archive, right, an interactive digital record of Pittsburgh and its people. This is a science fiction novel in which everyone is connected to the Archive - you can relive your past experiences (as Dominic does frequently in his grief), follow someone else's past experiences (which Dominic does to better understand his wife's last moments before the explosion), etc. Interactive digital record. I imagine that such a thing would be filled with tags.
I can't post to many applications without Google Maps trying to put its stamp on where I am at the time of my post. I live in Regent Square, and that's an option on a lot of applications. When I go to the movies with my friend, I can check us in so all of our other friends online can see exactly which theater we're visiting that evening. Same with where we go for dinner. Same with if we visit the zoo and aquarium.
It's 2017.
We don't know what year it is in Sweterlitsch's novel, but my theory is that the reason these names and places are so important in the descriptions (which is, after all, told from Dominic's perspective) is because that's how their society is - not that unlike how our society is today. "You know the Starbucks on the corner of Forbes and Craig? Turn right there."
We do it every single day.
And in Pittsburgh especially people like to do that "Remember where the Burger King used to be? Go past that a couple blocks and then turn left."
There's this idea that everyone knows where the Burger King used to be because most full-time, born-and-raised Pittsburghers know exactly what that means. The rest of us who just moved here in 2003 after the Burger King was already shut down? We have to struggle along to try to figure out what people mean.
My point is that tags are important to people. We tag our friends in pictures, we tag our locations every time we check in somewhere. Why is it so unlikely that characters in a book would do it too? It is this that makes me think Sweterlitsch was making a social commentary on technological advances. When he wrote this book in 2014, the whole "tagging" thing was not nearly as advanced as it is just three years later.
Maybe I'm reading more into it than it deserves, but that's the way I read it. Sweterlitsch wasn't name-dropping just to show off. He was showing just how pathetic we all are these days, how important product names are to just about really any conversation. We see ourselves in relation to these brands.
Could this have been more effective? Sure. I didn't say Sweterlitsch did it particularly well. It's just my theory based on the story. These characters are surrounded by AdWare which pushes ads into the forefront of their vision based on their likes and whatnot. How often can you get through Facebook without an ad popping up based on something that you had looked up on Amazon a couple of days ago? It's an algorithm. Big Brother really is watching, and it's called Technology.
All of that said, I found myself really enjoying this book in spite of my annoyances in that it didn't feel 100% original. I didn't mind the science-fiction-mystery mash-up. There's nothing saying a book can't have more than one genre within it. It was, overall, an interesting concept. And, as a debut novel, I have to say I was more than impressed. This may not have been as tight as I would like it to have been, but it's a lot tighter than a lot of first novels are.
Yesterday since I had the day off from work, my partner and I went to Shadyside to do some shopping and have some breakfast. I'm not in Shadyside to do either of those things very often, and I really actually hate the area because it's all too something. The people that live there and shop there are the ones who get exceptionally dressed up and made up just to go down the street to look at shoes, and that's a foreign concept to me. We couldn't afford much in any of the shops, so we didn't go to too many, and where we went for breakfast overcharged us for it because their menus were outdated with old prices on them. (We fought that one, actually, because you don't just make up whatever you want if there are prices in the menu. Either get new, updated menus, or what is in the menu is what you charge.)
We passed Cappy's, a bar that is mentioned in the book as the place where Dominic and his wife used to frequent before the destruction of Pittsburgh. We went to Kards Unlimited, the shop Dominic's wife was visiting at the time the bomb exploded. I thought about that as I passed through the narrow aisles of the shop. This is where it all could end. I didn't search these places out, necessarily. It's just we were there and I realized these were the spaces Sweterlitsch wrote about it and it was like, "Huh. Neat."
So, yeah, maybe it's annoying to have all the names dropped throughout an entire story, but because of my theory, it didn't bother me. And instead I could roll with it and then find myself looking for some of these places when I'm out and about anyway. Therein the story becomes interactive which may or may not have been Sweterlitsch's point, but it's not that unlike the Archive which he details.
Battle of the Books Tournament Note: So far this is my favorite book that I have read for this purpose. YES, I SAID IT.
This is a dystopia that starts in Pittsburgh. The city is decimated by a single bomb that one person detonates. There are some survivors - mostly people from Pittsburgh who happened to be out of town when this event occurred, but also a few people who were trapped in one of the tunnels at the time, who clawed their way out.
As much as I love the look of Pittsburgh, it's not so far-fetched to imagine it a dystopic wasteland. It's not hard to find photographs of the way Pittsburgh used to be, when it was primarily steel factories and there was some much pollution in the air that the buildings were coated in it, and it would look like dusk in the middle of the day. This is the reality that a lot of people (still alive today) experienced when they were growing up. When you look at photographs like those, it's not such a removal to imagine a dystopia where very little remains and there's no one around.
But that's not even the real crux of the story here. The story begins with a murder, and the narrator, John Dominic Blaxton, is hell-bent on discovering the truth. He was one of the "lucky" ones that wasn't in Pittsburgh at the time of its destruction; his wife, however, 8 months pregnant, was. At the time the story begins, he is still grieving the loss of his family, and compensates for the pain by self-medicating with drugs.
It's a bit of a whirlwind of a story, actually. There are a lot of characters who help Blaxton along the way to understanding the murder mystery and help him with his grief. Each time there's an understanding as to what exactly happened, we're taken down another branch that may or may not take us to the root of the issue.
Upon starting and through about halfway through the book, I felt this was derivative of so many other science fiction writers/concepts. Off the top of my head the initial connections were concepts from Black Mirror and pretty much anything ever posited by Philip K. Dick. When discussing this book with my partner and reading to him the description from the dust jacket, he pounced on connections to Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov as well. I was annoyed by these connections because they were all things that had been said and done before, and in a tighter and more cohesive way.
Eventually this feeling changed and I just went with the story, though I think by that point where I was fine with it was really when Sweterlitsch stopped world-building as much. Once he got over all of that, he could focus solely on the story and it was much improved in my opinion.
One of the biggest complaints I've seen and heard from other people is the amount of name-dropping the characters do - brand names and location names, primarily. This is particularly difficult for people who live in Pittsburgh because it seems so obvious that he is going for the biggest, most recognizable names. The same occurs when the characters are in DC, and then San Francisco, etc. The first line of the book begins "Her body's down in Nine Mile Run, half buried in river mud."
We know Nine Mile Run, very well.
But here's my theory that I've mentioned to a few people that I was forming while I was reading.
There's the Archive, right, an interactive digital record of Pittsburgh and its people. This is a science fiction novel in which everyone is connected to the Archive - you can relive your past experiences (as Dominic does frequently in his grief), follow someone else's past experiences (which Dominic does to better understand his wife's last moments before the explosion), etc. Interactive digital record. I imagine that such a thing would be filled with tags.
I can't post to many applications without Google Maps trying to put its stamp on where I am at the time of my post. I live in Regent Square, and that's an option on a lot of applications. When I go to the movies with my friend, I can check us in so all of our other friends online can see exactly which theater we're visiting that evening. Same with where we go for dinner. Same with if we visit the zoo and aquarium.
It's 2017.
We don't know what year it is in Sweterlitsch's novel, but my theory is that the reason these names and places are so important in the descriptions (which is, after all, told from Dominic's perspective) is because that's how their society is - not that unlike how our society is today. "You know the Starbucks on the corner of Forbes and Craig? Turn right there."
We do it every single day.
And in Pittsburgh especially people like to do that "Remember where the Burger King used to be? Go past that a couple blocks and then turn left."
There's this idea that everyone knows where the Burger King used to be because most full-time, born-and-raised Pittsburghers know exactly what that means. The rest of us who just moved here in 2003 after the Burger King was already shut down? We have to struggle along to try to figure out what people mean.
My point is that tags are important to people. We tag our friends in pictures, we tag our locations every time we check in somewhere. Why is it so unlikely that characters in a book would do it too? It is this that makes me think Sweterlitsch was making a social commentary on technological advances. When he wrote this book in 2014, the whole "tagging" thing was not nearly as advanced as it is just three years later.
Maybe I'm reading more into it than it deserves, but that's the way I read it. Sweterlitsch wasn't name-dropping just to show off. He was showing just how pathetic we all are these days, how important product names are to just about really any conversation. We see ourselves in relation to these brands.
Could this have been more effective? Sure. I didn't say Sweterlitsch did it particularly well. It's just my theory based on the story. These characters are surrounded by AdWare which pushes ads into the forefront of their vision based on their likes and whatnot. How often can you get through Facebook without an ad popping up based on something that you had looked up on Amazon a couple of days ago? It's an algorithm. Big Brother really is watching, and it's called Technology.
All of that said, I found myself really enjoying this book in spite of my annoyances in that it didn't feel 100% original. I didn't mind the science-fiction-mystery mash-up. There's nothing saying a book can't have more than one genre within it. It was, overall, an interesting concept. And, as a debut novel, I have to say I was more than impressed. This may not have been as tight as I would like it to have been, but it's a lot tighter than a lot of first novels are.
Yesterday since I had the day off from work, my partner and I went to Shadyside to do some shopping and have some breakfast. I'm not in Shadyside to do either of those things very often, and I really actually hate the area because it's all too something. The people that live there and shop there are the ones who get exceptionally dressed up and made up just to go down the street to look at shoes, and that's a foreign concept to me. We couldn't afford much in any of the shops, so we didn't go to too many, and where we went for breakfast overcharged us for it because their menus were outdated with old prices on them. (We fought that one, actually, because you don't just make up whatever you want if there are prices in the menu. Either get new, updated menus, or what is in the menu is what you charge.)
We passed Cappy's, a bar that is mentioned in the book as the place where Dominic and his wife used to frequent before the destruction of Pittsburgh. We went to Kards Unlimited, the shop Dominic's wife was visiting at the time the bomb exploded. I thought about that as I passed through the narrow aisles of the shop. This is where it all could end. I didn't search these places out, necessarily. It's just we were there and I realized these were the spaces Sweterlitsch wrote about it and it was like, "Huh. Neat."
So, yeah, maybe it's annoying to have all the names dropped throughout an entire story, but because of my theory, it didn't bother me. And instead I could roll with it and then find myself looking for some of these places when I'm out and about anyway. Therein the story becomes interactive which may or may not have been Sweterlitsch's point, but it's not that unlike the Archive which he details.
Battle of the Books Tournament Note: So far this is my favorite book that I have read for this purpose. YES, I SAID IT.
November 16, 2019
3.5 stars
I loved the premise of this book and the frighteningly too close to reality futuristic world this takes place in. The mystery pulled me in and it was a page turner. I give the first ~2/3 of this book 4 stars. Unfortunately the last part of the book gradually lost my interest and it ended closer to 2 stars. Still, overall I enjoyed this one, but I was expecting a bit more excitement in the last part of the book.
I loved the premise of this book and the frighteningly too close to reality futuristic world this takes place in. The mystery pulled me in and it was a page turner. I give the first ~2/3 of this book 4 stars. Unfortunately the last part of the book gradually lost my interest and it ended closer to 2 stars. Still, overall I enjoyed this one, but I was expecting a bit more excitement in the last part of the book.
July 14, 2014
http://www.mybookishways.com/2014/07/...
Tomorrow and Tomorrow is an odd novel (this isn’t a bad thing), but if you like your murder mystery with an SF, future twist, with a very strong shot of noir, then you really can’t go wrong here. Tomorrow and Tomorrow takes place 10 years after a blast that decimated Pittsburgh, and just about everywhere you go, there are memorials of Pittsburgh survivors ranging from the glossy to the makeshift, gatherings of the dead in pen and ink or etched in stone. We’re in the mid to late-ish 2000s at this point, so there’s quite a bit of future tech on display, including the AdWare that people have wired directly into their brains, providing a constant stream of information, which, being a child of the 80s, I would find crazymaking, but in this narrative, it’s the norm. Retinal cameras, VR beyond your wildest imagination, you name it-it’s what makes up the basis of this book.
John Dominic Blaxton is a Pittsburgh survivor, out of town during the blast, a cruel twist of fate that left him unscathed and his pregnant wife dead. He hasn’t gotten over Theresa, and he’s obsessed with spending time with her in the Archive, a virtual reality reconstruction of Pittsburgh before the blast. Theresa is only a construct, but it’s all he has, and he’ll do anything to hold on to it. For now, he’s working for a firm that investigates deaths for insurance companies, and by using the Archive, they can glean facts about these cold cases, hopefully providing closure, or a payout, for the victims’ families. Dominic is good at his job, but he’s also an addict, and after a particularly bad round of the drug brown sugar, he’s forcibly detoxed and fired from his job. He also finds out that his psychiatric care has been transferred to another therapist, who goes by the name of Timothy, and as it happens, he has a job offer for Dominic. Waverly, a very rich, very powerful man wants Dominic to find his daughter , and ethereal beauty named Albion, for him. She was killed in the Pittsburgh blast, but she’s being systematically erased from the Archive and Waverly wants to know who’s behind it. Soon Dominic is immersed in the Archive, using everything in his arsenal to track down even a small trace of Albion, but as he searches, he starts to make other connections that lead him back to the murder of a woman named Hannah, the last case he worked for his former firm, that he never wrapped up. He’s also being warned off the search for Albion within the Archive, but why? VR and reality soon start to blur for Dominic as pressure mounts to find Albion and prevent a tragedy that might hit him very close to home. But soon, more people start dying by a sadistic killer’s hand, and it seems to all lead back to his investigation.
Have you been feeling like you’re stagnating a bit in your reading? Tomorrow and Tomorrow will yank you out of that reading rut. This is such a weird book, and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s an exceedingly clever mashup of murder mystery and future noir with an intensely sympathetic hero at its core. Suicide is never explicitly mentioned, but I always felt that Dominic was thisclose to it, if he wasn’t so mired in the day to day of just existing without his wife. He has people that care for him, though. In fact, his cousin Gav, so flamboyant in his work and life of girls and parties, is rock solid and loyal in his support of Dominic, even as he urges him to find a way to move on from Theresa’s death. Dominic is extremely empathetic when it comes to the deaths of the people he researches, perhaps because he couldn’t save his wife and this is a way that he can “save” others, and tends to wear his melancholy like a hair shirt.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow takes place in a future that terrifies me, honestly: constant bombardment of sex and violence (there’s a show called Crime Scene Superstar), and people are encouraged to rate a victim’s fuckability based on crime scene photographs. Yuck. Also, public executions (with a game show flavor) by the super charming (no sarcasm there at all) President Meecham, who, frankly comes off as a dragon lady in couture. So, some not so subtle commentary on the more base instincts of the human race, consumerism, and tech overload (with near constant surveillance), but this all just serves to highlight Dominic’s humanity, and compassion. The staccato style of Sweterlitsch’s prose enhances the immediacy of the story and really does enhance that noir feel that I mentioned earlier. When I started the book, I was looking for something unique and different, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow more than fit the bill. So many times, I thought I knew where this story was going, and every time, I was wrong, but was more than satisfied with the resolution. This is like True Crime, Philip K Dick, and Silence of the Lambs wrapped up in the author’s very own, unique package. When’s the next book?
Tomorrow and Tomorrow is an odd novel (this isn’t a bad thing), but if you like your murder mystery with an SF, future twist, with a very strong shot of noir, then you really can’t go wrong here. Tomorrow and Tomorrow takes place 10 years after a blast that decimated Pittsburgh, and just about everywhere you go, there are memorials of Pittsburgh survivors ranging from the glossy to the makeshift, gatherings of the dead in pen and ink or etched in stone. We’re in the mid to late-ish 2000s at this point, so there’s quite a bit of future tech on display, including the AdWare that people have wired directly into their brains, providing a constant stream of information, which, being a child of the 80s, I would find crazymaking, but in this narrative, it’s the norm. Retinal cameras, VR beyond your wildest imagination, you name it-it’s what makes up the basis of this book.
John Dominic Blaxton is a Pittsburgh survivor, out of town during the blast, a cruel twist of fate that left him unscathed and his pregnant wife dead. He hasn’t gotten over Theresa, and he’s obsessed with spending time with her in the Archive, a virtual reality reconstruction of Pittsburgh before the blast. Theresa is only a construct, but it’s all he has, and he’ll do anything to hold on to it. For now, he’s working for a firm that investigates deaths for insurance companies, and by using the Archive, they can glean facts about these cold cases, hopefully providing closure, or a payout, for the victims’ families. Dominic is good at his job, but he’s also an addict, and after a particularly bad round of the drug brown sugar, he’s forcibly detoxed and fired from his job. He also finds out that his psychiatric care has been transferred to another therapist, who goes by the name of Timothy, and as it happens, he has a job offer for Dominic. Waverly, a very rich, very powerful man wants Dominic to find his daughter , and ethereal beauty named Albion, for him. She was killed in the Pittsburgh blast, but she’s being systematically erased from the Archive and Waverly wants to know who’s behind it. Soon Dominic is immersed in the Archive, using everything in his arsenal to track down even a small trace of Albion, but as he searches, he starts to make other connections that lead him back to the murder of a woman named Hannah, the last case he worked for his former firm, that he never wrapped up. He’s also being warned off the search for Albion within the Archive, but why? VR and reality soon start to blur for Dominic as pressure mounts to find Albion and prevent a tragedy that might hit him very close to home. But soon, more people start dying by a sadistic killer’s hand, and it seems to all lead back to his investigation.
Have you been feeling like you’re stagnating a bit in your reading? Tomorrow and Tomorrow will yank you out of that reading rut. This is such a weird book, and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s an exceedingly clever mashup of murder mystery and future noir with an intensely sympathetic hero at its core. Suicide is never explicitly mentioned, but I always felt that Dominic was thisclose to it, if he wasn’t so mired in the day to day of just existing without his wife. He has people that care for him, though. In fact, his cousin Gav, so flamboyant in his work and life of girls and parties, is rock solid and loyal in his support of Dominic, even as he urges him to find a way to move on from Theresa’s death. Dominic is extremely empathetic when it comes to the deaths of the people he researches, perhaps because he couldn’t save his wife and this is a way that he can “save” others, and tends to wear his melancholy like a hair shirt.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow takes place in a future that terrifies me, honestly: constant bombardment of sex and violence (there’s a show called Crime Scene Superstar), and people are encouraged to rate a victim’s fuckability based on crime scene photographs. Yuck. Also, public executions (with a game show flavor) by the super charming (no sarcasm there at all) President Meecham, who, frankly comes off as a dragon lady in couture. So, some not so subtle commentary on the more base instincts of the human race, consumerism, and tech overload (with near constant surveillance), but this all just serves to highlight Dominic’s humanity, and compassion. The staccato style of Sweterlitsch’s prose enhances the immediacy of the story and really does enhance that noir feel that I mentioned earlier. When I started the book, I was looking for something unique and different, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow more than fit the bill. So many times, I thought I knew where this story was going, and every time, I was wrong, but was more than satisfied with the resolution. This is like True Crime, Philip K Dick, and Silence of the Lambs wrapped up in the author’s very own, unique package. When’s the next book?
December 12, 2014
Well.... today is a sad day ladies and gentleman! Since starting this site all the books in my 'read' shelf have all indeed be read and completed, fully, no parts skipped! Admittedly some were a challenge and I have not wanted to carry on but today I just had to give in, the white flag has been raised as I present my first... DNF!
You know what I miss, paragraphs, yeah nothing much to ask is it, but reading this book I came to really appreciate paragraphs, reading pages in this book was just such hard work because there are just no breaks, Evie (hope you don't mind me mentioning you aha) who I am friends with here on goodreads had literally put that she didn't finish the book the day I started so naturally I was a little hesitant and she had touched upon it being so messy and found herself switching off almost when reading, and I can only reiterate what she had said, I had trouble knowing who was who, what was happening, where it was happening, the plot sounds so good in a blurb but maybe there was just too much information for my little brain to handle, maybe if you REALLY concentrate and follow it, this is a great story, I am starting to doubt my patience, but as this is my first DNF I like to think my concentration and patience levels are top notch, but something didn't click with this book.
I am not going to bash Mr Sweterlitsch I am sure he is a very talented and gifted writer and he has come up with an interesting conecpt enough for me to pick it up at least especially with my backlog of books! But it just didn't happen, it just felt messy and unorganised and I didn't feel like I was reading it, rather just... skimming over the pages picking up on certain conversations and little descriptions here and there...
Sorry Mr Sweterlitsch but this wasn't for me :(
You know what I miss, paragraphs, yeah nothing much to ask is it, but reading this book I came to really appreciate paragraphs, reading pages in this book was just such hard work because there are just no breaks, Evie (hope you don't mind me mentioning you aha) who I am friends with here on goodreads had literally put that she didn't finish the book the day I started so naturally I was a little hesitant and she had touched upon it being so messy and found herself switching off almost when reading, and I can only reiterate what she had said, I had trouble knowing who was who, what was happening, where it was happening, the plot sounds so good in a blurb but maybe there was just too much information for my little brain to handle, maybe if you REALLY concentrate and follow it, this is a great story, I am starting to doubt my patience, but as this is my first DNF I like to think my concentration and patience levels are top notch, but something didn't click with this book.
I am not going to bash Mr Sweterlitsch I am sure he is a very talented and gifted writer and he has come up with an interesting conecpt enough for me to pick it up at least especially with my backlog of books! But it just didn't happen, it just felt messy and unorganised and I didn't feel like I was reading it, rather just... skimming over the pages picking up on certain conversations and little descriptions here and there...
Sorry Mr Sweterlitsch but this wasn't for me :(
October 16, 2024
Sweterlitsch's other novel, The Gone World, is one of the best sci-fi novels I've ever read, so it was an impossible task for this book to live up to the expectations I had for it. What struck me about this was how totally different it was from The Gone World, which is billed (accurately) as 'True Detective meets Inception.' This book is drastically different and is more like "A.I. meets Enemy of the State." The best part of this for me was Sweterlitsch's 24/7 artificial sensory world, which many authors have tried to create and few have succeeded in doing very well.
December 6, 2017
General TWs for those interested in the book: gratuitous physical and sexual violence
Really enjoyed his world building and technological integration. Really disappointed by the heavy male gaze and overly detailed (frequent) sexual violence
Really enjoyed his world building and technological integration. Really disappointed by the heavy male gaze and overly detailed (frequent) sexual violence
October 22, 2019
I just couldn't get into this book, after two chapters I quit.
May 7, 2021
Demain et le jour d’après est un très bon thriller cyberpunk qui propose une intrigue sous haute tension et de puissantes réflexions sur notre monde moderne. Attention, cependant, c’est du Tom Sweterlitsch et donc c’est passablement déprimant. Je vous conseille donc de choisir un moment serein pour attaquer cette lecture et d’avoir le coeur bien accroché.
Critique complète sur yuyine.be!
Critique complète sur yuyine.be!
December 22, 2019
Olyan érzésem volt olvasás közben, hogy a történet vázán túl nem áll másból a regény, mint felsorolásokból: reklámok, események, utcanevek egymás utánja jövő-menő emberekkel, kávézókkal, éttermekkel, ahol a pincérek felszolgálnak, újságok, hírek, cikkek, áldozatok, rokonok, kapcsolatok, megint reklámok, amik mindenáron el akarnak adni valamit, és ezek így váltakoznak egymás után.
Ami szép, hogy ez azonnal homloklebenyi inger, hiszen netre vannak kötve az emberek. Hogy mikor történt mindez, nem tudni, az biztos, hogy Pittsburgh-ben robbantottak - valószínűleg atomot, vagy valami ahhoz hasonló hatású bombát, gyakorlatilag letarolták a várost, és az éppen ott tartózkodókat. Természetesen valami arab kinézetű csóka robbantott, ki más. Nem akarom én ezt a témát lekicsinyelni, de már kezd elcsépelt lenni, ami baromi veszélyes.
Ezután jött a fejbe épített Adware, a retinára csatlakoztatott rögzítőberendezés, egy rakat új testület, és a virtuális emlékmegőrzési mód, amivel rekonstruálni tudják a múltat, egy újfajta viselkedésszimuláló MI. Nem elég az emberiségnek az alkohol és a drog, most még ott az interaktív múltban élés is, mint önpusztító eszköz. Szuper.
**És csak úgy mellékesen megjegyzem, feltűnt, mintha az irodalom direkt építené a lépcsőt (lefelé, a pokolba) az emberiség jövőjének. Az előzőleg olvasott Halálaktákban ugyanis pont egy adatbányász szoftver kifejlesztése miatt volt az öldöklés. Érdekes egymásra épülése ez a technikának, és a felhasználhatóságának, mintha már direkt előre készítenének minket, mi várhat ránk. Feltételezem, nem is olyan sokára, de még remélem, hogy a vérvonalam kihalása után. Nyugtalanít a gondolat, hogy bármelyik leszármazottamnak ilyen világban kelljen élnie. Ez volt az érzésem a Matchedet olvasva is, ami abban van, annak egy kis része már majdnem legális. Hátborzongató. Nekem. Aki ebben nő fel, annak persze ez természetes lesz.**
Főhősünk adatbányász, aki halmozottan pusztítva magát, bedrogozva éli át a múltja minden percét, elfogad egy jól fizető melót. Alapból is halottakat keresgél, jól is csinálja, úgy gondolja, nem lesz ebből gond. Lejön a drogokról is (kap egy programot agyba, ami olyan, mint egy vírusirtás. gondolhatnánk, így könnyű, de ez inkább csak segítség annak, aki valóban le akar szokni.), mert a melóhoz tisztának kell lennie, csak aztán falakba ütközik. A nőt ugyanis, akit meg kell keresnie, kiírták a memóriákból. Borzasztóan bonyolult lehetett, nem is sikerült tökéletesen, így Dominic nyomra is akad, csak aztán megjelenik valaki a fenyegetéseivel, és igyekszik elijeszteni Domot a keresgéléstől.
Úgy vagyok ezzel a könyvvel, hogy egyszerre taszít és vonz ez a világ, ami akár a nem túl távoli jövőben már a miénk is lehet. A történet baromi jó: biztosítási csalások, gyilkosságok után nyomozni egy olyan adatbankban, ami több ezer ember szemén átfutó információkból épül fel, olyan adatokból, képekből, amire soha senki nem emlékezne vissza, viszont a retinaszkennernek hála, mégiscsak rögzült egy szerveren.
A kivitelezés már elég felemás. Az elején említett rengeteg, random felbukkanó felsorolást indokolja a különleges környezet, ezen keresztül érzékelhetjük, miknek lesz majd kitéve az agyunk, ha egyszer betör ez a technológia a világba, de ettől még unalmas, és mindenki számára semmitmondó, aki még soha nem járt azon a környéken. Gyanítom, ez az olvasók nagy többségét jelenti.
Fárasztó, hogy Dominic állandóan felhozza a feleségét, folyton visszatér hozzá, és bár engem jobban érdekeltek volna a gyilkosságok, kénytelen voltam a fele időt a feleségével tölteni én is. Inkább a világépítéshez sorolnám a jelenlétét, egyébként teljesen lényegtelen a léte is, meg az is, mikor mit csináltak a halála előtt. De nagyon sóhajtva tudomásul vettem kábé kétoldalanként, hogy igen, Dom gyászol. Még mindig. És még mindig.
Lényegesebb hibának tartom, hogy azzal, hogy ennyiszer elővette a feleségét, megbillent a regény egyensúlya is, mert az ügy helyett vele kellett foglalkozni. Valószínűleg ez feltűnt időnként Sweterlitsch-nek is, mert olyankor elég érthetetlen átmenettel újra az ügyre kapcsolódott Dom a virtuális sétái alatt. Mint amikor az ember átvág az autók előtt, 'egy életem, egy halálom' felkiáltással. De nem baj, ilyenkor örültem, hogy végre, visszatérünk a lényegre.
Hiányoltam még a személyiségeket is. Szereplők vannak, kontúrozott papírmasé figurák, de csak alapzajnak, funkciójuk semmi. Talán Gavril az egyetlen, akire azt mondanám, hogy karakteres alak, kár, hogy ő is csak egy mellékszereplő.
A könyv viszont a hibái ellenére is olvastatja magát, nagyon kíváncsi voltam, hova fut ki a nyomozás.
Ami mindenképpen pozitívum, hogy nincsenek az ölünkbe pottyant infók, semmiből előkerülő gyanús alakok, mindenki ott van, csak kérdés, kit mikor vesznek észre.
A lezárás is remek lett, pont olyan végkifejlet, amit megkíván a történet, és szépen elvarrja a szálakat is. Csóri főszereplőt sajnáltam kicsit, eléggé kijutott neki, de őszintén szólva ez a netre kötött agyi interfész számomra roppant ijesztő, úgyhogy szerintem úgy járt jobban, ahogy járt. Szeretem Sweterlitsch-t, még ha kiejthetetlen és leírhatatlan is a neve; a két regénye fényévekre van egymástól, de fel tudja kelteni az ember érdeklődését, és fenn tudja tartani, még úgy is, hogy érezhetően első könyv.
Ami szép, hogy ez azonnal homloklebenyi inger, hiszen netre vannak kötve az emberek. Hogy mikor történt mindez, nem tudni, az biztos, hogy Pittsburgh-ben robbantottak - valószínűleg atomot, vagy valami ahhoz hasonló hatású bombát, gyakorlatilag letarolták a várost, és az éppen ott tartózkodókat. Természetesen valami arab kinézetű csóka robbantott, ki más. Nem akarom én ezt a témát lekicsinyelni, de már kezd elcsépelt lenni, ami baromi veszélyes.
Ezután jött a fejbe épített Adware, a retinára csatlakoztatott rögzítőberendezés, egy rakat új testület, és a virtuális emlékmegőrzési mód, amivel rekonstruálni tudják a múltat, egy újfajta viselkedésszimuláló MI. Nem elég az emberiségnek az alkohol és a drog, most még ott az interaktív múltban élés is, mint önpusztító eszköz. Szuper.
**És csak úgy mellékesen megjegyzem, feltűnt, mintha az irodalom direkt építené a lépcsőt (lefelé, a pokolba) az emberiség jövőjének. Az előzőleg olvasott Halálaktákban ugyanis pont egy adatbányász szoftver kifejlesztése miatt volt az öldöklés. Érdekes egymásra épülése ez a technikának, és a felhasználhatóságának, mintha már direkt előre készítenének minket, mi várhat ránk. Feltételezem, nem is olyan sokára, de még remélem, hogy a vérvonalam kihalása után. Nyugtalanít a gondolat, hogy bármelyik leszármazottamnak ilyen világban kelljen élnie. Ez volt az érzésem a Matchedet olvasva is, ami abban van, annak egy kis része már majdnem legális. Hátborzongató. Nekem. Aki ebben nő fel, annak persze ez természetes lesz.**
Főhősünk adatbányász, aki halmozottan pusztítva magát, bedrogozva éli át a múltja minden percét, elfogad egy jól fizető melót. Alapból is halottakat keresgél, jól is csinálja, úgy gondolja, nem lesz ebből gond. Lejön a drogokról is (kap egy programot agyba, ami olyan, mint egy vírusirtás. gondolhatnánk, így könnyű, de ez inkább csak segítség annak, aki valóban le akar szokni.), mert a melóhoz tisztának kell lennie, csak aztán falakba ütközik. A nőt ugyanis, akit meg kell keresnie, kiírták a memóriákból. Borzasztóan bonyolult lehetett, nem is sikerült tökéletesen, így Dominic nyomra is akad, csak aztán megjelenik valaki a fenyegetéseivel, és igyekszik elijeszteni Domot a keresgéléstől.
Úgy vagyok ezzel a könyvvel, hogy egyszerre taszít és vonz ez a világ, ami akár a nem túl távoli jövőben már a miénk is lehet. A történet baromi jó: biztosítási csalások, gyilkosságok után nyomozni egy olyan adatbankban, ami több ezer ember szemén átfutó információkból épül fel, olyan adatokból, képekből, amire soha senki nem emlékezne vissza, viszont a retinaszkennernek hála, mégiscsak rögzült egy szerveren.
A kivitelezés már elég felemás. Az elején említett rengeteg, random felbukkanó felsorolást indokolja a különleges környezet, ezen keresztül érzékelhetjük, miknek lesz majd kitéve az agyunk, ha egyszer betör ez a technológia a világba, de ettől még unalmas, és mindenki számára semmitmondó, aki még soha nem járt azon a környéken. Gyanítom, ez az olvasók nagy többségét jelenti.
Fárasztó, hogy Dominic állandóan felhozza a feleségét, folyton visszatér hozzá, és bár engem jobban érdekeltek volna a gyilkosságok, kénytelen voltam a fele időt a feleségével tölteni én is. Inkább a világépítéshez sorolnám a jelenlétét, egyébként teljesen lényegtelen a léte is, meg az is, mikor mit csináltak a halála előtt. De nagyon sóhajtva tudomásul vettem kábé kétoldalanként, hogy igen, Dom gyászol. Még mindig. És még mindig.
Lényegesebb hibának tartom, hogy azzal, hogy ennyiszer elővette a feleségét, megbillent a regény egyensúlya is, mert az ügy helyett vele kellett foglalkozni. Valószínűleg ez feltűnt időnként Sweterlitsch-nek is, mert olyankor elég érthetetlen átmenettel újra az ügyre kapcsolódott Dom a virtuális sétái alatt. Mint amikor az ember átvág az autók előtt, 'egy életem, egy halálom' felkiáltással. De nem baj, ilyenkor örültem, hogy végre, visszatérünk a lényegre.
Hiányoltam még a személyiségeket is. Szereplők vannak, kontúrozott papírmasé figurák, de csak alapzajnak, funkciójuk semmi. Talán Gavril az egyetlen, akire azt mondanám, hogy karakteres alak, kár, hogy ő is csak egy mellékszereplő.
A könyv viszont a hibái ellenére is olvastatja magát, nagyon kíváncsi voltam, hova fut ki a nyomozás.
Ami mindenképpen pozitívum, hogy nincsenek az ölünkbe pottyant infók, semmiből előkerülő gyanús alakok, mindenki ott van, csak kérdés, kit mikor vesznek észre.
A lezárás is remek lett, pont olyan végkifejlet, amit megkíván a történet, és szépen elvarrja a szálakat is. Csóri főszereplőt sajnáltam kicsit, eléggé kijutott neki, de őszintén szólva ez a netre kötött agyi interfész számomra roppant ijesztő, úgyhogy szerintem úgy járt jobban, ahogy járt. Szeretem Sweterlitsch-t, még ha kiejthetetlen és leírhatatlan is a neve; a két regénye fényévekre van egymástól, de fel tudja kelteni az ember érdeklődését, és fenn tudja tartani, még úgy is, hogy érezhetően első könyv.
August 11, 2014
Highly enjoyable and very different (for me) tale here, a wonderful eclectic mixture of mystery, thriller and science fiction, with a healthy dose of irony and some very emotional content. Despite me needing to get my head around the style of writing (the characters in this world all have implanted adware which fills their vision with never ending updates and advertising which constantly interrupt the narrative as much as Dominic’s thought processes!) once I had it boy was I right there. A future world that is not at all unlikely (google glass anyone?) but which I’m not sure I would want to live in it was intriguing and fascinating.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow apparently is “Cyberpunk” which is a sub genre I’ve never really been able to get my head around the meaning of (who makes up these things anyway?) but for me it was at its heart a tale of loss and grief. Our main protagonist John “Dominic” Blaxton lost his wife to a bomb that reduced the city of Pittsburgh to ashes. The technology of the day has created an “archive” which allows him, and other survivors, to immerse themselves in a virtual reality and relive moments with their loved ones. Dominic practically lives there while working on the side for a company investigating insurance claims – when he discovers a body, a possible murder – he ends up caught up in a web of deceit and a dangerous cover up. Threatened with the loss of his memories, he finds himself in all kinds of trouble and off we go…
So we have an adventure to be sure, the world building is stunningly good, the mythology behind the bombing is a mystery and its kind of very much in the background. One city gone, the rest of the world moves on pretty much, works around it, which in a way made the whole thing quite horrific. There are many weird and wonderful characters to meet along the way, all well drawn. There is also a subtle complexity to the writing that absorbs you completely into their lives, a clever and thoughtful prose that allows the world to come alive. Then bang at the centre is a murder mystery and a villain just waiting to be uncovered..
There is an interesting theme throughout, and one that captured my imagination, about letting go, working through loss, coming out the other side. In a way the archive prevents Dominic from doing this – how DO you accept the death of a loved one if you can constantly see them in your peripheral vision, can always visit with them in an old memory. On the surface this seems like a magical ability to have but a broader viewpoint would suggest otherwise. That is one thing I’m going to have to think about…
Overall I thought this was brilliant. If this is Cyberpunk I want to read more of it – a lot more. Preferably from this author.
Highly Recommended.
Happy Reading Folks!
Tomorrow and Tomorrow apparently is “Cyberpunk” which is a sub genre I’ve never really been able to get my head around the meaning of (who makes up these things anyway?) but for me it was at its heart a tale of loss and grief. Our main protagonist John “Dominic” Blaxton lost his wife to a bomb that reduced the city of Pittsburgh to ashes. The technology of the day has created an “archive” which allows him, and other survivors, to immerse themselves in a virtual reality and relive moments with their loved ones. Dominic practically lives there while working on the side for a company investigating insurance claims – when he discovers a body, a possible murder – he ends up caught up in a web of deceit and a dangerous cover up. Threatened with the loss of his memories, he finds himself in all kinds of trouble and off we go…
So we have an adventure to be sure, the world building is stunningly good, the mythology behind the bombing is a mystery and its kind of very much in the background. One city gone, the rest of the world moves on pretty much, works around it, which in a way made the whole thing quite horrific. There are many weird and wonderful characters to meet along the way, all well drawn. There is also a subtle complexity to the writing that absorbs you completely into their lives, a clever and thoughtful prose that allows the world to come alive. Then bang at the centre is a murder mystery and a villain just waiting to be uncovered..
There is an interesting theme throughout, and one that captured my imagination, about letting go, working through loss, coming out the other side. In a way the archive prevents Dominic from doing this – how DO you accept the death of a loved one if you can constantly see them in your peripheral vision, can always visit with them in an old memory. On the surface this seems like a magical ability to have but a broader viewpoint would suggest otherwise. That is one thing I’m going to have to think about…
Overall I thought this was brilliant. If this is Cyberpunk I want to read more of it – a lot more. Preferably from this author.
Highly Recommended.
Happy Reading Folks!
July 7, 2014
I received an advanced copy of this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow has been getting considerable buzz, complete with a film option. It's a book classified as both cyberpunk and literary science fiction, and the latter was my immediate impression... but not necessarily in a good way. This book is very dense at the start, and it comes across in a pretentious, literary kind of way that reminded me of China Mieville in Embassytown. I imagine a lot of readers will give up in those first fifty pages. I stuck with it, though, and found the world-building evened out and the story pulled me in.
The whole concept of it is quite compelling: Pittsburgh was annihilated by a nuclear attack ten years before. John lost his wife and unborn baby in the attack (a cliche that makes me grimace), and is still caught in grief, drug-abuse, and severe depression. His day job is as an insurance investigator of deaths in the City, a massive virtual reality project that uses public and private footage of Pittsburgh to recreate the city as it was in the days leading up to and through the attack. Through it, he relives his best days with his wife, visits his old home, and pretends to be who he was once. That changes when a claim at work leads him to a young woman's body in a muddy river, and it seems she may not have died in the attack.
The book evolves into a serial killer murder mystery set against a cyberpunk world and post-apocalypse. The nature of the bad guys bugged me. I've read slush for a magazine, and Scheterlitsch sculpts his baddies as the extremist sort that is way, way, too common. One of the villains does offer a small surprise at the end, but otherwise they felt terribly cliche. There are also very graphic depictions of rape and assault.
The best villain in the book is John himself. His psychological battle, his need to truly live again. The science fiction elements are well-realized. The creation of the City and the brain's hard-wired access to the internet, feeds, and enhanced life reminded me of other books I've read recently (Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh, Soda Pop Soldier by Nick Cole) and likewise delve into gratuitous perversions of all sorts. The sad thing is... it has a ring of truth to it. The descriptions of Pittsburgh's demise also felt fully realized and accurate.
It's an uneven book that I ended up admiring because of its ambitiousness. If only the antagonists hadn't come across as cliches straight out of Law & Order SVU...!
Tomorrow and Tomorrow has been getting considerable buzz, complete with a film option. It's a book classified as both cyberpunk and literary science fiction, and the latter was my immediate impression... but not necessarily in a good way. This book is very dense at the start, and it comes across in a pretentious, literary kind of way that reminded me of China Mieville in Embassytown. I imagine a lot of readers will give up in those first fifty pages. I stuck with it, though, and found the world-building evened out and the story pulled me in.
The whole concept of it is quite compelling: Pittsburgh was annihilated by a nuclear attack ten years before. John lost his wife and unborn baby in the attack (a cliche that makes me grimace), and is still caught in grief, drug-abuse, and severe depression. His day job is as an insurance investigator of deaths in the City, a massive virtual reality project that uses public and private footage of Pittsburgh to recreate the city as it was in the days leading up to and through the attack. Through it, he relives his best days with his wife, visits his old home, and pretends to be who he was once. That changes when a claim at work leads him to a young woman's body in a muddy river, and it seems she may not have died in the attack.
The book evolves into a serial killer murder mystery set against a cyberpunk world and post-apocalypse. The nature of the bad guys bugged me. I've read slush for a magazine, and Scheterlitsch sculpts his baddies as the extremist sort that is way, way, too common. One of the villains does offer a small surprise at the end, but otherwise they felt terribly cliche. There are also very graphic depictions of rape and assault.
The best villain in the book is John himself. His psychological battle, his need to truly live again. The science fiction elements are well-realized. The creation of the City and the brain's hard-wired access to the internet, feeds, and enhanced life reminded me of other books I've read recently (Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh, Soda Pop Soldier by Nick Cole) and likewise delve into gratuitous perversions of all sorts. The sad thing is... it has a ring of truth to it. The descriptions of Pittsburgh's demise also felt fully realized and accurate.
It's an uneven book that I ended up admiring because of its ambitiousness. If only the antagonists hadn't come across as cliches straight out of Law & Order SVU...!
January 5, 2022
1.5 out of 5.
This is another book from my "want to read" shelf, which I added in 2018.* I had read Black Crouch's "Dark Matter" (I gave that 4 out of 5 stars) and "Tomorrow and tomorrow" was often compared favorably to "Dark Matter" - it's not.
This cyberpunk mystery (really not much of a mystery - it was pretty obvious what was going on around 30%) set in a near dystopian future where media is king is written in a sort stream of consciousness style where the MC rambles through journal entries narrating the story. The MC is neither clever (although, he's supposedly aces at archival research) nor likable; and suffers from chronic depression and drug addition - so his thoughts as conveyed through the journal entries are disordered, meandering and unreliable. All that makes Tomorrow and tomorrow an utter slog to read.
Additionally, this book suffers from severe male gaze. Women are objectified and fetishized. Fridging abounds. The book is full of sex, pornography and violence against women. Male characters are not subjected to the same debasement as female characters. While this might (?) have passed in 2014 when this book was first published, it's completely unpalatable now.
Content warning: depression and suicidal ideation; drug abuse; police abuse and brutality; violence against women; sexual violence against women including rape; graphic descriptions of violence and bodily harm; terrorism.
*This year's reading goal is to work through the books on my "want to read shelf."
This is another book from my "want to read" shelf, which I added in 2018.* I had read Black Crouch's "Dark Matter" (I gave that 4 out of 5 stars) and "Tomorrow and tomorrow" was often compared favorably to "Dark Matter" - it's not.
This cyberpunk mystery (really not much of a mystery - it was pretty obvious what was going on around 30%) set in a near dystopian future where media is king is written in a sort stream of consciousness style where the MC rambles through journal entries narrating the story. The MC is neither clever (although, he's supposedly aces at archival research) nor likable; and suffers from chronic depression and drug addition - so his thoughts as conveyed through the journal entries are disordered, meandering and unreliable. All that makes Tomorrow and tomorrow an utter slog to read.
Additionally, this book suffers from severe male gaze. Women are objectified and fetishized. Fridging abounds. The book is full of sex, pornography and violence against women. Male characters are not subjected to the same debasement as female characters. While this might (?) have passed in 2014 when this book was first published, it's completely unpalatable now.
Content warning: depression and suicidal ideation; drug abuse; police abuse and brutality; violence against women; sexual violence against women including rape; graphic descriptions of violence and bodily harm; terrorism.
*This year's reading goal is to work through the books on my "want to read shelf."
August 5, 2020
What the incel heck did I just read?!
So, I chose this book because The Gone World was actually pretty great. Actually went as far as getting the audio book for a long drive with my wife, who will no longer be allowing me to choose long-drive books after this.
How do I describe this epic s__t sandwich of a novel? Well, remember that pimply weird roommate you had in college, that couldn't talk to girls and smelled like feet? Remember how you always stood up for him, until you learned his horrifying views on women and politics and then avoided him from then on? This guy grew up and wrote this unbelievable turkey.
All the women are fashion models in the book, for no particular reason I could figure out. They exist only to be tortured, avenged, and mourned for by our neckbeard protagonist, who moans throughout the book about his dead wife without giving her almost any dialogue or depth other than to be moaned about. Think like, every woman in a Mel Gibson movie. The author seems to be living out his fantasies of scoring a model without having any looks, money, or social skills.
A couple of neat sci-fi-ish ideas, but nothing very plausible or well thought out. You spend a lot of time going, 'but wait, how the f__k would that even WORK?!'
Avoid this colonoscopy of a book and skip to The Gone World. Heck, I even googled the dude to make sure it was actually the same guy. Jesus, 10 hours of my life I'll never get back.
So, I chose this book because The Gone World was actually pretty great. Actually went as far as getting the audio book for a long drive with my wife, who will no longer be allowing me to choose long-drive books after this.
How do I describe this epic s__t sandwich of a novel? Well, remember that pimply weird roommate you had in college, that couldn't talk to girls and smelled like feet? Remember how you always stood up for him, until you learned his horrifying views on women and politics and then avoided him from then on? This guy grew up and wrote this unbelievable turkey.
All the women are fashion models in the book, for no particular reason I could figure out. They exist only to be tortured, avenged, and mourned for by our neckbeard protagonist, who moans throughout the book about his dead wife without giving her almost any dialogue or depth other than to be moaned about. Think like, every woman in a Mel Gibson movie. The author seems to be living out his fantasies of scoring a model without having any looks, money, or social skills.
A couple of neat sci-fi-ish ideas, but nothing very plausible or well thought out. You spend a lot of time going, 'but wait, how the f__k would that even WORK?!'
Avoid this colonoscopy of a book and skip to The Gone World. Heck, I even googled the dude to make sure it was actually the same guy. Jesus, 10 hours of my life I'll never get back.
November 12, 2022
Une question me tarabuste : pourquoi, de toutes les villes, choisirait-on d'atomiser Pittsburgh ? (outre le fait que ce soit là que vit l'auteur).
Je trouve également dommage qu'on ne parvienne jamais à mettre une fin positive (tout du moins à laisser une idée positive) à tout ce qui est technologie "cyberpunk". L'auteur est obnubilé par les spams et le porno, ses personnages féminins ne sont que de belles femmes qui n'attendent qu'un nouveau cachet de mannequinat et... bah euh, c'est tout.
Très sincèrement, le plot est intéressant - des gens qui peuvent enquêter sur des meurtres en VR grâce aux archives vidéos recoupées - mais ç'aurait pu tenir en une 12aine de pages, 15 en comptant tout le ouinouin du protagoniste sur sa femme (qui a autant de profondeur que ma pelle à raclette) et son enfant à naître qui étaient à Pittsburgh le jour de l'explosion.
Je trouve également dommage qu'on ne parvienne jamais à mettre une fin positive (tout du moins à laisser une idée positive) à tout ce qui est technologie "cyberpunk". L'auteur est obnubilé par les spams et le porno, ses personnages féminins ne sont que de belles femmes qui n'attendent qu'un nouveau cachet de mannequinat et... bah euh, c'est tout.
Très sincèrement, le plot est intéressant - des gens qui peuvent enquêter sur des meurtres en VR grâce aux archives vidéos recoupées - mais ç'aurait pu tenir en une 12aine de pages, 15 en comptant tout le ouinouin du protagoniste sur sa femme (qui a autant de profondeur que ma pelle à raclette) et son enfant à naître qui étaient à Pittsburgh le jour de l'explosion.
January 19, 2021
3.5 stars. Interesting and original. The pieces came together, but not to complete the puzzle picture I was expecting - which, having also read his second (and imo better) book The Gone World, I’m now thinking is typical of his work.
November 30, 2025
dnf, which is honestly a huge letdown as I was obsessed with The Gone World.
Read
March 30, 2018DNF @40%
I loved The Gone World, but I couldn't finish this book. I'm sorry.
I loved The Gone World, but I couldn't finish this book. I'm sorry.
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