Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America

by Damien Lincoln Ober

“Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America is as original as they come – an audacious, exuberantly imaginative novel about freedom and technology and the sacrifices each take from the other. Damien Ober is a writer to be reckoned with.” Scott O’Connor, author of Half World and Untouchable

1777. Colonial America. A year after uploading the Declaration of Independence, a mysterious internet plague has broken loose in the cloud, killing any user who accesses a networked device. Seven in ten Americans are dead. The internet is abandoned. The entire continental militia has vanished. Seizing the moment, the British take control of New York and Philadelphia, scattering what little remains of the rebellion.

Just when all seems lost, George Washington reappears from off-the-grid to pin the remnants of the British army at Yorktown. Independence is won, but with the countryside in ruins and internet commerce impossible, the former colonies teeter on the brink of collapse. Meeting in secret, a faction of the Signers of the Declaration code a new error-proof operating system, designed to stabilize the cloud and ensure ever-lasting American prosperity.

Believing the draconian regulations of the new OS a betrayal of the hard-fought revolution, Thomas Jefferson organizes a feisty, small-government opposition to fight the overreach of Washington’s Federalist administration. Their most valuable weapon in the struggle to “save the ideals of the Revolution” is Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America, a new open-source social networking portal which will revolutionize representative government, return power to the people, and make Congress and the Presidency irrelevant…

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

250 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2014

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

To say that Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America is an inventive work of fiction is like calling the ocean a tad salty.

Damien Lincoln Ober's debut novel, published by Equus Press, takes the shape of a series of 56 vignettes about every single one of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, at the moment of his death.

That in and of itself would be an impressive level of literary gimmickry for a work of historical fiction. However, the last words of the men who for all intents and purposes invented America is just the beginning.

It seems that a swift and terrible plague known as "The Death" is sweeping through the colonies and killing two out of every three people. Though no one knows for certain how the disease is spreading, the doctors racing from signer to signer to stop the devastation suspect the Internet is to blame. Yes, that Internet.

"When panicked reports started circulating that The Death was being spread by the Internet, Americans everywhere rushed out of the Cloud never to return."

In Ober's America, John Morton is the man responsible for uploading the Articles of Confederation, tapping them out on his laptop minutes before The Death gets him, but not before updating his status. This "epigraph" from Thomas Jefferson indicates the tone of the novel:

"th@ all r cre8d =; th@ they r endowed by their cre8or with certn inalienable rights; th@ among these r life, librty and the purst of happiness."

The easiest way to pigeonhole Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America is to call it a work of counterfactual fiction—a story that takes the facts as we know them (the names of the signers) and mixes up a few things (Internet plague). In other words, Ober has written a "What if?" story for the ages.

Yes, people still ride on horseback and sail on sailing ships in this version of America, but, like us, they never leave home without their smart phones, and Ober offers all kinds of clever commentary regarding the way we live now.

Consider Caesar Rodney's sister who cannot imagine love without the Internet and is willing to risk The Death for a chance at romance the moment after her brother expires. "And she presses the laptop's power button and waits. Swears, then, that she can feel something unraveling in the air. As if the layers of this and a separate, untapped reality have started to mix. She flexes her fingers over the keys, watches the screen come to life."

Usually, speculative tales of this nature change one of two things (What if Hitler escaped Nazi Germany in a U-boat?) and explore the permutations, but Ober keeps introducing new wrinkles.

For instance, when the Internet is abandoned, a new Internet (called "Newnet") is created. This gives rise to a social-media platform called "Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America," which is subsequently shortened to "Franklin's Dream" and then simply "The Dream." The Dream becomes so popular that many Americans spend all their time there, altogether abandoning the real. Thanks to online gaming, this is something a portion of the population already does, and as more and more of our lives migrate online (TV, music, work), a not insignificant portion of our lives is spent looking at screens.

For all of the technological advances Ober's given his patriots, they still spend a lot of time waiting for uploads, battling ad bots and being harassed by search drones—a mixture of old-world inconveniences and the specter of threats to come. Take this "conversation" Thomas Stone has with a search drone:

"Stone's never seen a search drone sneak in the last word. But this one does. 'Next time you come, I won't be here anymore. Humans don't have access to something, does it still exist?" And then the search drone is gone, dissipated into code. Fucking old Internet."

Ober has much more than snarky search drones up his sleeve. As the last of the signers expire, the doctors expose a global conspiracy that would throw all of human history into the trash heap and should make some readers very nervous about a potential Ebola pandemic.

Ober's mix of heady ideas and gorgeous prose make this a uniquely compelling debut. Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America is nothing less than an alternate history of the birth of the United States that hints at our coming demise.

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK you probably won't like this book as much as I did unless you are also a dork for american history and a weirdo. i cop to being too much of the target audience for this sort of thing (if this is even a sort of thing and not a solitary bolt of weirdness). the premise is as follows: 56 men signed the declaration of independence. this novel consists of their death scenes, 56 of them. but it's not just old people dying. there's a weird fantasy woven through the death scenes. america is visited by something called the death, that kills 80 pct of the population. it travels via the internet. george washington goes off the grid and saves us. the death comes back. new internets are formed. virtual selves gain market share in the human consciousness. more new internets. weird conspiracies and action movie violence. the society of the cincinnati is recast as a shadowy power cabal. murders. crazy lawnmower-man alternate realities. a giant octopus with 719 legs kills thousands. andrew jackson kills it. aliens. all of this is told gracefully, legibly over the course of 56 death scenes. it's not just absurd sci-fi history -- it's touching and weird and mostly very well-written. i loved this book/this book is crazy and weird. this is the kind of book i want to write. also just really fun if you like US history and are also slightly weird. contains actual truth.

peters out a little bit toward the end, just because there's no way to loop all the strings back together here.

flavor profiles I caught in this book: something of the ceaseless death of The Iliad, the lyrical and tidal recurrence of dudes biting the dust.

i feel like i'm not doing the book full justice in describing it as a kind of prose comic book about history -- it's not merely a fizzy treat, although people who read chester brown's Louis Riel would probably flip for this. there is real substance about human nature, the arc of history, american destiny, etc. this book!

also s/o to Jim Ruland for mentioning this book in my internet sphere of awareness and putting me on to it

[Ben Loory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hopkinson wants to know, "How much am I going to forget?"
The twins perk up. "Only everything you've ever learned about coding and programming."
"So, I'll never be able to program again?"
"Afraid not."
"Not even an app?"
"Unlikely."
"But I could learn it again?"
Twin heads are shaking "no" in different viewers. "What good is wiping your brain if you can learn it all again?"
"You'll lose the aptitude."
"The aptitude for the skill set."
"It'll be like waking up and the Revolution is done and the Constitution is in place, Franklin's Dream uploaded and gone live, and you can just sit back and enjoy it like every other American."
Hopkinson takes a deep breath.
"There's still music," the other twin says.
"Poetry."
"Chess."
"These are the real things, Mr. Hopkinson."
"Liberty is just a platform for enjoying them."
Hopkinson looks away from the screen now, at his old scientific instruments, all lined up on the shelf, all covered in dust. He hasn't used them since he was part of the committee to investigate The Death. It's supposed to be a glimpse into a set of higher laws, science is, a way to see past the touch of man, past all his barbaric efforts, his temporary laws of conquest and suppression. Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America is my greatest song, Hopkinson thinks, my best poem.
"Go ahead," he tells the twins.
"OK," and they each leave the frame of their viewer. A voice comes now and it's impossible to tell which one is saying it. "Set one of the viewers to fullscreen, Mr. Hopkinson."
Hopkinson rests his fingers on the keys. One last beat of hesitation but no second thoughts. Franklin's Dream, he thinks. Thumb and pointer. Control F.

[Viking Jam · Rating 1 out of 5]

https://koeur.wordpress.com/2017/08/1...

Publisher: Skyhorse

Publishing Date: January 2018

ISBN:9781597809191

Genre: SciFi

Rating: DNF

Publishers Description: It is 1777, in a colonial America where the internet, social media, and ubiquitous electronic communications are fully woven into the fabric of society. Hours after a top-secret Congressional sub-committee uploads the Articles of Confederation, a mysterious internet plague breaks loose in the cloud, killing any user who accesses a networked device. Seven in ten Americans are dead, the internet is abandoned. Seizing the moment, the British take control of New York and Philadelphia, scattering what little remains of the rebellion.

Review: I just could not get into this novel. The idea that our forefathers had technology of a high order but still live in an era of mostly non-tech, is a big stretch. Besides the gaping plot hole this was really boring. Boring characterization coupled with a real lack of movement made Jack a Dull Boy.

[Jeronym · Rating 5 out of 5]

Following a weird e-shorthand transcription (with @’s all over the place, “cre8d” for “created,” or “=” for “equal”) of the Jeffersonian all-are-created-equal maxim, is a list of all the signatories of The Declaration of Independence, each name accompanied by a date, and underneath that: “Fifty-six men signed The Declaration of Independence. This is the story of their deaths.” Immediately after the so-called “immortal declaration” comes the 56-fold death of its declarers that forms the backbone of the narrative of Damien Ober’s Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America, hot off the press with Equus (2014).


To base a book-length narrative solely on fifty-six death scenes, spanning over half a century, has the obvious advantage of keeping up a fast-paced pull: their protagonists keep changing, their action-oriented narrative can do without lengthy descriptive passages or the baggage of deep psychology, their “death-drive” provides them with both natural suspense and a clear, attractive denouement.

All this, however, provided one can solve the inherent difficulty of this structuring: how does one write fifty-six times about “the same,” without repeating oneself, without giving free rein to cozy shorthand or comfy formula, producing yet another Oulipian tema-con-variazioni exercise, whose algorithm might wind up being more interesting than the results? Damien Ober’s Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America keeps the best and forgets about the rest, managing to take full stock of the advantages of its procedural narrative while steering clear of its formidable risks. How does Ober manage that?

Firstly, by sheer gift of storytelling, fashioning each of the signatories (and their deaths) with some unique signature. Let’s take just the first few. John Morton dies lyrically, at his computer:

The glow of the laptop touches only the ceiling directly above, and only slightly, the most vague hint of a soft spot in the shell of this realm – a path out, maybe. (5)

Button Gwinnett dies mock-heroically, after losing a duel to Lachlan McIntosh, shouting out loud the name of his vanquisher: “One last memory of Button Gwinnett,” he mumbles. “The sound of his name in my voice… echoing forever” (8). The only tangible effect of this being, that he startles the nurse into dropping and smashing his porcelain chamber pot. Philip Livingston, so frail he’s wheeled around in a cart, simply vanishes into thin air (or into wi-fi signal?):

M’Kean turns back to the cart containing Philip Livingston, but there is no Philip Livingston. Instead of a man filled with wa- ter, there is only the water vacated, a dark pool spread out in blob around the cart, reflects Rush and M’Kean’s faces back at them looking down. (14)

John Hart dies in the midst of his gathered family, “a pain in his lower chest like having the wind knocked out […,] a taste like sand in his mouth”:

He manages to whisper, “Stick to the plan.” But he’s not sure who’s still there to hear him. The men who survive this, he thinks, they will be gods. And I’ll be one of the ones who died in the very first days. (17)

And so on. Still, Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America also succeeds as a novel in that it’s more than the sum of its 56 charming vignettes. The first unifying component is Ober’s style. Throughout, Ober serves a tasty cocktail blending original poetic lyricism (as when the mortal throes throw George Ross “into fits of abstract breakdancing on the floor” [21]) with absurd dialogue (“’Blind?’ Hopkins considers. ‘How’s that working out for him?’ A twin shrugs. Then the other. ‘Well, he can’t see.’” [37]), the occasional off-beat metaphor (“King George can slice through the colonies… like a red-hot lance up a well-worn whore.” [6]) with some hilarious profanity (“His wife smiled. ‘But, Thomas, do you know what sucked the biggest dick ever?’He looked at her blankly. ‘Martha Washington.’ [106]) and trivial, yet irresistible, punning, as in: “Most sites haven’t changed since the outbreak broke out. Pictures of the first dead ghost every abandoned splash page, breaking news left there breaking” (18). This style makes for a highly enjoyable, constantly surprising and, for lack of a less mindless label, thought-provoking read.

Also, Ober cleverly runs a few overarching or underlying narratives than run across and through the death-scenes. The customary review-genre reduction of the book to plot-level could look as follows.

Before John Morton becomes the first signatory to sign off, he uploads the Articles of the Confederation onto the Cloud, a pan-American computer network, becoming “the first man to type the new nation’s name into the Internet” (12). Make no mistake. The date still is April 1, 1777, and the setting is true to fact: people ride on horseback, live in mansions and when ailing, subject themselves to the cutting-edge medical treatment: bloodletting and leeches. And yet, at the same time, the Internet is not only America’s daily bread (the Revolution has its official fan page, “scoring 1,256 likes in the first hour alone”), it is already getting stale, worm-infested, and spawning a virus, some autonomous replicating selfware: The Death, “that faint tightening in the lower gut, something [George Ross] would have dismissed as gas before the outbreak” (18).

This faint tightening is caused by crystals growing in the stomach, somehow induced by exposure to Internet waves, and is 100% deadly: “Maybe the wi-fi signal or the refresh rate,” muses Doc Barlett, the crystal-discoverer, “is just a trigger for something that’s been waiting eons to happen” (43). This Death epidemic ends up wiping out sixty-five percent of the population (and claiming the lives of the first dozen or so signatories) before a panacea is finally discovered, and the entire nation goes offline. Joseph Hewes, its sixth victim, thinks of The Death as “something living [...] a nightmare beast loose in the Cloud, reaching down to snatch up users, suck their souls right off the planet” (24), and he hits the nail on the head. The storm having blown over, the nation goes online again, this time into the “Newnet” – but only after contact with alien civilisation, the so-called “Off-Worlders,” whose flying saucers become steady part of the young nation’s landscape. In exchange for the continent’s supply of oil, the Off-Worlders offer the US gold and the cure for The Death (they also clear away all the crystals and clean up the infested corpses).

This contract smacks of the devil – and indeed, the Off-Worlders end up taking away way more than the contract stipulated. The increasingly pressing question becomes (asks Frank Lewis), “How long before Americans are the Off-Worlders, trolling the galaxy for the next littlest piece of room to expand into?” (164) Only much later, evidence suggests that, rather Matrix-like, all might be part of a diabolical plot:

the President… of the United States has been growing crystals inside cloned human stomachs and engaging in black market trade with alien invaders in order to secure technology to implant ten million computer programs into human bodies. (168)

And accordingly—mind you, we’re not in Soviet Russia—the initially liberating project of the Newnet turns into its very opposite: “Humans don’t run Newnet anymore. Newnet runs the humans” (197). Parallel with this mass-enslavement runs the project of liberation the eponymous Dream America, a social networking platform designed to fulfil the American dream of self-reliance and individual independence. After all, “Who needs a Congress, or a President for that matter, when each citizen can log on and represent himself?” (73)

The logic behind this is as impeccable as hilarious: If humans can die of computer viruses, why shouldn’t they live on as their online social profiles or avatars? Launched by Francis Hopkinson, The Dream becomes not only “the best chance to ensure the perpetual political involvement of the people” (84), but also a platform for the signatories—beginning with Hopkinson himself and his follower John Hancock—to exist posthumously, by way of their online avatars. From there, Hopkinson keeps the body- and liberty-snatching enterprise (led by Jefferson, M’Kean & Co.) in check, trying, and possibly managing, to “retake America, from the Dream side out” (221).

Ober spins this rather colourful yarn (also featuring the “Vampire Millipus,” assassin twins, thinking drones, an Indian Chief in contact with space aliens, and many other freakshows) beyond yet another what-if-dinosaurs-had-cellphones imagination exercise. As so often with the alternative-history genre, his story asks about the present more than the past: how far has America gone (or indeed strayed) from the times of its Founding Fathers, who still could wonder whether to speak of the States as a “them” or an “it” and could posit all men as being equal without some of them being more equal than others?

The Internet and electronic media serve as the vehicle of Ober’s underlying metaphor – just as with them, the American dream of personal freedom and social equality can easily turn into a nightmare of the opposite. Starting with the Cloud and the Dream where everyone can represent themselves, we end up in 3net, where everyone can be anyone else, “slip into other people’s lives” (243), where everyone can be represented by someone else. Sounds familiar?

One ends up wondering, together with Thomas Jefferson’s slave mistress Sally, whether perhaps the Off-Worlders (whom Jefferson heroically defeats in an epic battle of evermore) didn’t have to take over the Earth by force, for they may have already done so: “Millipus, The Death, the Cloud all falling in. Maybe those are its weapons and we down here just too stupid to see they giving us whipping after whipping” (255) – for “Off-Worlders” read corporate capitalism, war against terror, freedom fries, what have you.

Those are all relevant questions and it is to his credit that Ober manages to raise and address them while eschewing a political allegory through which to preachify his political views. The issues are dealt with in and through his stories – not fictionalised thought, but rather thinking through fiction. To be sure, Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America is no political tract or history lesson or moralist dystopia or media analysis; or, rather, it is all of these and more – it is fiction writing at its best.

And what remains with this particular reader most vividly, after the excitement of the storyline and the provocation of the thinking have subsided, is the simple poignancy of the fifty-six death-scenes, all the more moving for their simplicity and matter-of-factness. As when William Williams thinks, “It was good, to spend a little time in this world, I guess” (205). It’s so good, to spend a little time in the world of this book. I’m sure.

[Kerry Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An alternative history of the birth of the United States where the Internet exists and everyone is connected to the Cloud? This. Book. Is. Bonkers.

Witches. Curses. Aliens. Sea Monsters. Vampires. Thomas Jefferson.

And that’s just the gist. READ THIS.

[Kris Schnee · Rating 1 out of 5]

I knew the wacky premise: "What if they'd had computers in the American Revolution?" But almost immediately the revolution ends and the story goes on, with Internet stuff overlaid on early US history. That could still be interesting... but right away we get into the idea that there's a massive plague rumored to be linked to the Internet, so we're off in confusing surrealist territory that has little to do with the original premise. And suddenly there are space aliens who get mentioned and who might've caused the plague, but who don't continue to interact with Earthlings after collecting mysterious crystals and all Earth's oil. So... it's an alien contact story then, or something about a history without fossil fuels? No, the story shifts focus to an idea involving brain uploading. Is it a transhumanism story then? No, because the story starts to dwell on a mystical prophecy of doom. That's about where I stopped reading.

Part of the problem is that the framing device is the deaths of each signer of the Declaration. As a result, the POV is constantly changing, we can't grow attached even to important historical figures, and every scene ends in a death, sometimes by a random loony accident.

I'm reminded of the old SF story "The Machine Stops", where self-absorbed historians want to know "how the French Revolution would have happened, if it had happened in the Age of the Machine". That would have been entertaining to read about the American Revolution, but that's not what we get in this book. I'm sorry, but I can't really tell what this is about or what genre it wants to be, and the characters constantly die on me. So this book has been sitting unfinished on my shelf for a month or so and it's time to explain why.

[dead letter office · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can say with confidence that you have never read a book like this one.

[Sade · Rating 2 out of 5]

To those who say, you'll never read a book like this one, I can only say Thank Goodness. The plot was apparently put together by a vaguely historically-minded eight year old on a sugar jag: 'So the Founding Fathers all went on the internet, but then there was this plague that killed almost everybody - pow! - so they made a new internet but then there was a curse an' some witches and oh yeah, Thomas Jefferson cloned himself into twins I think, but then the aliens came and..' Sorry, should I have put a spoiler alert tag on that? Seriously.

Each individual chapter is readable, if a little - *out there*. But with every new chapter, I felt like there should have been three or four expository chapters between it and the previous one, to let you know What The Hell Is Going On. Major plot elements just never get explained, at all. And I don't mean things like, how do they have the internet but still ride horses and have seventeenth century medicine; heck, those are the easy questions.

It isn't a spoiler alert to say there's a witch (wasn't there a witch? I think there was at one point) and aliens and clones and a goddam VAMPIRE MILLIPUS, because that's all the explanation you'll ever get about any of those things. Was this book written on a coke jag? Did the publisher sign it up on an even bigger coke jag? Maybe with a side of hallucinogens?

A tale of how the American Revolution might have been influenced or gone differently had they had modern communications could be an interesting one, but the Saturday morning cartoon fever dream elements do not assist in telling it. If you must, roll up a fattie and treat yourself to a microdose before reading. Because that way you can look back later and tell yourself, Christ, what an imagination I've got..

[Benji's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5 Stars

In 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed by fifty-six men, in Colonial America, where the age of smartphones, internet and social media has already been woven into society.

There's a lot to like about this book and while there were things I disliked, the items I enjoyed outweighed the bad. Each chapter takes place right before the death of each of the 56 Signers. I admit I found it frustrating at first, but with each chapter, each death seemed to connect to something larger. While I did get used to the whole, new chapter, new death thing, I continuously found myself not getting attached to these characters before fate took them away. I felt like I needed to read all of their biographies before reading this. I didn't end up actually reading their bios, but the story was still enjoyable.

There were a bit of mystery, horror and scifi elements thrown into this alternate tale of history, but the horror and scifi parts fell short for me. The mystery was intriguing after discovering (not a spoiler) that most of the deaths were connected to the plot.

I think having known a little about these characters and events throughout history would cause me to have enjoyed the book a lot more, but I still really enjoyed this one overall.

[J.D. DeHart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes it is still hard to fathom that we have something called the Internet. I know, that makes me sound old. But I do remember a time when the Internet was not, and I remember a time when the Internet was too clunky to be helpful. Author Damien Lincoln Ober takes our present technologies and transports them into the past in Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America.

What struck me about this book was the insightful humor that this anachronism creates. This is really a different kind of book, something other than the usual science fiction. There is also a sense of self-awareness about the uniqueness of this concept. I appreciated this original approach.

Recommended for science fiction readers, as well as those who don't mind a clever read that turns history on its head. Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America is due to be published in the United States on January 2, 2018.

[Phillip · Rating 2 out of 5]

So this is an odd book. I saw this in at the Forbidden Planet Megastore in London, and figured I liked this period of history and scifi - so why not? It's certainly not a bad book, but it's quite disjointed. Since it's premise is to only tell of what happened on the day of the Signers' deaths, you can only get snapshots of the story, and sometimes there's a small jump in time or a large one, depending on the next death date. It's hard to feel that you ever get the full story since the major players don't reveal themselves (you don't get Jefferson in person until his death, and he seems to be running most of the plot). I thought the idea of modern and even future technology in the age of early America was interesting, but it did take some bit of imagining or even shrugging to understand the scifi tech that was being described. So I'm not sure I would recommend spending money on this, but if you find it at a library, give it a crack. It's a fast read, for the most part.

[Sean Morse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot. This book gave a new insight on how the american revolution, if the people of that time had modern day technology. For Example the people of that time had social media and ipads and what not. One reason i liked this book is that it weaved the past and the present using the revolution as a vessel to tell this story. Another reason I liked this book is because they had the aspect of the story where one group would undermine the other. The two groups in this story are Thomas Jefferson's rebelling group and George Washington's overbearing federalist administration. Another part I liked was the new social media platform that Benjamin Franklin made. This new platform is called "Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America". This platform was supposed to be Franklin's secret weapon to return America to its former state.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This is the first book by the author that I have read so I wasn't sure what to expect. What I found was a a mix of historical fiction and SciFi. This book is a standalone. There is some violence

The book blurb adequately describes the storyline so I'm not going to repeat that all of that info here. The book is set in chronological order by the date the Signers of the Declaration of Independence died. At first it was quite confusing to read because they had The Cloud, laptops, smart phones, and the internet. Yet they rode horses and didn’t have other modern technology. If you like history and SciFi, then you will probably like this book.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

After an interesting beginning, this turned into a well-written alternative history by numbers in which the signatories of the Declaration of Independence are eliminated one by one via computer-generated alterations in reality. I enjoyed the writing, but, almost by necessity, the plotting became predictable and mechanical. A strange book, with an interesting premise - the conflation of 21st century technologies with the American Revolution - but ultimately unsatisfying.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Damien Ober has in interesting take on presenting American history by proposing how it would have worked out if there was a network of connected devices like our present-day internet. All the famous folks were out on the net, espousing their views. The concept is interesting and entertaining for a while, but I found it lacking in staying power. The writing was fine, but I kept losing interest and putting the title down. I guess this rewrite of American history was not my cup of tea.

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was interesting, a book about the deaths of each of the signers of The Declaration of Independence. Well, I say that, and the names and some of their histories are familiar, but we are in an alternative universe where the Founding Fathers era was in the digital age.

This won't be for everyone, but I laughed a few times, nodded some other times and am glad that I read it.

[Tobias · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those places where the star-based rating system stumbles a little for me, as I'm not entirely sure that everything about this book worked for me. That said, the ambition and the implications of it are definitely worthy of acclaim, and the weird logic by which it functions became hugely compelling as it went.

[Kim Barbushev · Rating 3 out of 5]

One too many levels of weird for me to love it.
Had high hopes. And, I may not be smart enough to "get it".
Interesting premise, though.
Hear my review on the podcast: https://youtu.be/MtGnsGAlIk4?t=34m29s

[Whitney · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF.

Too weird/incoherent to keep with. Returned to the library unfinished.

[Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certainly the most insane book I've read. Founding Fathers, social media, aliens, sea monsters, witches. What's not to like?

[Alex Orr · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first the central conceit of the book might seem a bit forced - namely that the Founding Fathers (actually, all of Colonial America) had access to the internet and modern computing equipment, while otherwise living with Colonial-era technology. In other words, sort've like Colonial steampunk. However, the author thoroughly pulls off the conceit through a mixture of humor, captivating characters, strong knowledge of American history, and a series of increasingly wild and bizarre plot twists. The dark humor at play is consistently engaging and entertaining and quickly offsets any real frustration with trying to rationalize how colonial-era America manages to have super-computers, the internet, and a far more advanced virtual reality than anything yet invented. Such questions simply become superfluous in the face of the strong writing, engaging character vignettes, and wildly imaginative storytelling. Basically, this book is one hell of a fun ride that will appeal to anyone with a love for early American history, technology, and wildly original fiction.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

You might be tempted to stop reading to Google everything you're reading. Whereupon you'll be astounded by how grounded in historical fact this historical rewrite is. But don't. Just trust the writer and enjoy the ride.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Well, that was unexpected." But yeah, duh, this is one of the wildest books I've ever read.

Also, what's up with all the egg corns / homophones?!

[BBFlyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

lots of words for a totally pointless story.