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Mindplayers
Caught experimenting with technologically induced psychosis, Alexandra Victoria Haas is given a choice between prison or becoming a pathosfinder
288 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1987
19 people are currently reading
1449 people want to read
About the author
Pat Cadigan
263 books437 followersPat Cadigan is an American-born science fiction author, who broke through as a major writer as part of the cyberpunk movement. Her early novels and stories all shared a common theme, exploring the relationship between the human mind and technology.
Her first novel, Mindplayers, introduced what became a common theme to all her works. Her stories blurred the line between reality and perception by making the human mind a real and explorable place. Her second novel, Synners, expanded upon the same theme, and featured a future where direct access to the mind via technology was in fact possible.
She has won a number of awards, including the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award twice,in 1992, and 1995 for her novels Synners and Fools.
She currently lives in London, England with her family.
Her first novel, Mindplayers, introduced what became a common theme to all her works. Her stories blurred the line between reality and perception by making the human mind a real and explorable place. Her second novel, Synners, expanded upon the same theme, and featured a future where direct access to the mind via technology was in fact possible.
She has won a number of awards, including the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award twice,in 1992, and 1995 for her novels Synners and Fools.
She currently lives in London, England with her family.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
September 8, 2008
Ok, I'll start by saying that it's not the best book in the world or anything. But I love it. Taking place in a slightly futuristic Earth where people have learned to control and manipulate their minds for fun and profit (mostly for fun), the main character is a Mind Player, sort of like a psychiatrist who actually walks though your mind with you to resolve whatever your issue is. In the meantime, she's got her own problems.
This book always makes me think about Self, the big questions: what is Self? Is reaching out the same as reaching in, and does either one make any difference? What about one's appearance - how far will a person go to control their appearance (tattoos, piercings, super conservative dress, etc), and can one really change who they are inside by changing who they look like on the outside? What about questions of collective consciousness?
I know, I speak awfully passionately about a book that's only 275 pages long, and I know that not everyone loves it as much as I do. On the other hand, it's a quick, diverting read so why not give it a try? As Evie said in The Mummy, "No harm ever came from reading a book."
This book always makes me think about Self, the big questions: what is Self? Is reaching out the same as reaching in, and does either one make any difference? What about one's appearance - how far will a person go to control their appearance (tattoos, piercings, super conservative dress, etc), and can one really change who they are inside by changing who they look like on the outside? What about questions of collective consciousness?
I know, I speak awfully passionately about a book that's only 275 pages long, and I know that not everyone loves it as much as I do. On the other hand, it's a quick, diverting read so why not give it a try? As Evie said in The Mummy, "No harm ever came from reading a book."
September 9, 2012
One of my "top 10." I read it yearly, if not more frequently. Science fiction: Future society where people can connect mind-to-mind and a woman who becomes a counselor in a time when people can share their innermost lives and then need help dealing with the consequences. The main character seems initially shallow and immature, but she grows on you, and grows into herself. The world which can seem confusing, having so many new constructs to assimilate, is rich and has surprising detail for so short a read.
August 14, 2011
"Come fa una mente a non sapere di esser morta?"
"Come fa la sua a sapere di esser viva? In realtà, è la stessa domanda."
Quella di Pat Cadigan è una voce rara e preziosa, l'unica voce femminile in un genere duro come la fantascienza cyberpunk. Sulla scia del più celebre Neuromante, di qualche anno antecedente, Mindplayers riesce a valicare i confini della narrativa di genere, smascherando definitivamente il cyberpunk come vero e proprio movimento d'avanguardia, fosse solo, in questo caso, per l'anticipatoria visionarietà di questo romanzo.
E se fosse possibile entrare nella mente di una persona, organizzarla, attaccarla, metterla alla rinfusa, hackerarla, copiarla ed alterarla, esattamente come se fosse un file? Cosa resterebbe allora dell'identità, dell'autocoscienza? Questo l'interrogativo fondamentale del romanzo, che piuttosto che rispondere preferisce porre domande, domande anticipatorie che tutt'ora sono lungi dal trovare una risposta. In un mondo dalle coscienze volubili come la moda, in cui è possibile modificare, copiare, vendere la propria identità a piacere, non è solo l'individualità a finire destrutturata, ma la stessa realtà. E' soprattutto questo il conflitto che vive la protagonista, il conflitto tra quella che chiama "vita lucida", la vita quotidiana, materiale, fisica, e la più complessa "vita mentale". Ma come muoversi in una realtà mentale, quando viene a mancare proprio l'unico punto di riferimento, ovvero l'autocoscienza?
"Come fa la sua a sapere di esser viva? In realtà, è la stessa domanda."
Quella di Pat Cadigan è una voce rara e preziosa, l'unica voce femminile in un genere duro come la fantascienza cyberpunk. Sulla scia del più celebre Neuromante, di qualche anno antecedente, Mindplayers riesce a valicare i confini della narrativa di genere, smascherando definitivamente il cyberpunk come vero e proprio movimento d'avanguardia, fosse solo, in questo caso, per l'anticipatoria visionarietà di questo romanzo.
E se fosse possibile entrare nella mente di una persona, organizzarla, attaccarla, metterla alla rinfusa, hackerarla, copiarla ed alterarla, esattamente come se fosse un file? Cosa resterebbe allora dell'identità, dell'autocoscienza? Questo l'interrogativo fondamentale del romanzo, che piuttosto che rispondere preferisce porre domande, domande anticipatorie che tutt'ora sono lungi dal trovare una risposta. In un mondo dalle coscienze volubili come la moda, in cui è possibile modificare, copiare, vendere la propria identità a piacere, non è solo l'individualità a finire destrutturata, ma la stessa realtà. E' soprattutto questo il conflitto che vive la protagonista, il conflitto tra quella che chiama "vita lucida", la vita quotidiana, materiale, fisica, e la più complessa "vita mentale". Ma come muoversi in una realtà mentale, quando viene a mancare proprio l'unico punto di riferimento, ovvero l'autocoscienza?
June 3, 2016
Alexandra Haas (henceforth known as Allie) has gotten in trouble with the law for the first time. Her buddy Jerry Wirerammer hooked her up with an illegal "madcap" and the thing didn't have a proper shutdown mode, so she was stuck in a psychosis and Jerry had to take her to the dry cleaners' to have it removed from her brain. The Brain Police's sentencing requires her to pay off her public debt by going to J. Walter Tech for training in mindplay, and then taking on a job as a mindplayer until she's paid the debt off.
Before her arrest, Allie preferred solitary means of attaining alternate states of consciousness*, even so far as never having mindplayed. In the end, she becomes a pathosfinder, helping her clients overcome blocks to their creativity.
*the Alerted Snakes of Consequence don't show up until later.
Mindplay's central idea is manipulation of the chemical processes in the brain. Two (or more) people's brains are connected in a shared hallucination via wires connected directly to the optic nerve of each person, with a machine or computer as an intermediary. Your memories can be copied or erased, you can gain a fetish or neurosis, you can work your way through grief or trauma, any number of things. These activities are heavily regulated, perfectly reasonable when dealing with a tech where one's entire consciousness can be copied or taken from their own brain and sold to the highest bidder. Mindrape and mindsuck are things to be feared.
Allie goes about her various pathosfinding assignments in an episodic format, each assignment illuminating both the workings of mindplay and moving her own personal arc forward. While I'd like to describe some of the people she comes across in her assignments, I feel that it would spoil a lot of the better parts of this story to talk about them in too much detail.
Allie's initial reluctance to mindplay; her meeting the mindsuck victim McFloy during her training tenure at J. Walter and learning the "eye trick"; her ongoing (and not terribly healthy) friendship with Jerry Wirerammer, and her on-again off-again affair with Jascha; her "Deadpan Allie" handle at her job with Nelson Nelson Industries; all of these carry forward throughout the book and build on each other and with her work assignments. I thought it was masterfully done.
Allie is described as leading a mental life early on, and along with being told in first person, a good portion of the story takes place in the confines of her head in a literal way. In keeping with her "Deadpan Allie" work alias, Allie has a dry sense of humor which I enjoyed a lot. There's a pun or two to groan at, as well. Someone who's looking for space operatic large scale conflict in their SF isn't likely to find a congenial fit here. It suited me perfectly, though. Allie's major setback is personal in nature, and its resolution has everything to do with self-realization and nothing to do with physical conflict. The climax was moving and reminded me a lot of the last sequence of the anime , down to . Mindplayers came out a few years earlier, and I think the spoilered part was handled better, so it wins. The more conceptual arc--the snakes and the message in the sand--wasn't quite as easily parsed and therefore not as involving, for me. I had to read through its conclusion a number of times and I still don't think I really got it. Maybe next time.
Mindplayers was published nearly 30 years ago, and there are ways in which it shows, but that's a lot of the charm of reading older SF. While not expressed in these terms, things very similar to the Internet and debit cards exist in Allie's world, and if the street holograms and the fashion being very glam have a late '80s vibe to them, that vibe only adds to the fun. Too bad we never got the flying party buses and aircabs. And we haven't gotten anywhere close to understanding the human mind well enough to be able to manipulate it in the fine-tuned and permanent way seen here. That's just as well if there were even the slightest chance of greedy corporate interests having control of our brains. Power People, the celebrity franchise, is troubling enough as it is. The setting the mindplayers move about in isn't a corporatized dystopia, and it's better off for it.
Nothing to do with the story...
(1) I'd like to point out a couple of the covers. The cover of the edition I used for this review has the rainbow-colored Trapper Keeper aesthetic I associate with the late '80s/early '90s and the snake is well chosen as a central image. While this cover's art isn't quite as slick, in my opinion, it represents one of the book's most important scenes, and is very similar to how I pictured that scene's mindscape. Very cool, both of them.
(2) The edition I read was the "SF Gateway" e-book. While it's a credit to the quality of the novel that I didn't think the OCR issues were that much of a detriment, still, there were way too many of them and I question how well this was proofread after scanning. Missing commas, periods and apostrophes all over the place! Ugh.
Back on track...
Mindplayers's central, eponymous tech is fascinating and its ramifications in the larger culture, and for Allie in particular, pervade the whole book. It's full of immersive, trippy imagery, and it has a nice emotional payoff. A fun and thought-provoking read and one that I recommend.
Before her arrest, Allie preferred solitary means of attaining alternate states of consciousness*, even so far as never having mindplayed. In the end, she becomes a pathosfinder, helping her clients overcome blocks to their creativity.
*the Alerted Snakes of Consequence don't show up until later.
Mindplay's central idea is manipulation of the chemical processes in the brain. Two (or more) people's brains are connected in a shared hallucination via wires connected directly to the optic nerve of each person, with a machine or computer as an intermediary. Your memories can be copied or erased, you can gain a fetish or neurosis, you can work your way through grief or trauma, any number of things. These activities are heavily regulated, perfectly reasonable when dealing with a tech where one's entire consciousness can be copied or taken from their own brain and sold to the highest bidder. Mindrape and mindsuck are things to be feared.
Allie goes about her various pathosfinding assignments in an episodic format, each assignment illuminating both the workings of mindplay and moving her own personal arc forward. While I'd like to describe some of the people she comes across in her assignments, I feel that it would spoil a lot of the better parts of this story to talk about them in too much detail.
Allie's initial reluctance to mindplay; her meeting the mindsuck victim McFloy during her training tenure at J. Walter and learning the "eye trick"; her ongoing (and not terribly healthy) friendship with Jerry Wirerammer, and her on-again off-again affair with Jascha; her "Deadpan Allie" handle at her job with Nelson Nelson Industries; all of these carry forward throughout the book and build on each other and with her work assignments. I thought it was masterfully done.
Allie is described as leading a mental life early on, and along with being told in first person, a good portion of the story takes place in the confines of her head in a literal way. In keeping with her "Deadpan Allie" work alias, Allie has a dry sense of humor which I enjoyed a lot. There's a pun or two to groan at, as well. Someone who's looking for space operatic large scale conflict in their SF isn't likely to find a congenial fit here. It suited me perfectly, though. Allie's major setback is personal in nature, and its resolution has everything to do with self-realization and nothing to do with physical conflict. The climax was moving and reminded me a lot of the last sequence of the anime , down to . Mindplayers came out a few years earlier, and I think the spoilered part was handled better, so it wins. The more conceptual arc--the snakes and the message in the sand--wasn't quite as easily parsed and therefore not as involving, for me. I had to read through its conclusion a number of times and I still don't think I really got it. Maybe next time.
Mindplayers was published nearly 30 years ago, and there are ways in which it shows, but that's a lot of the charm of reading older SF. While not expressed in these terms, things very similar to the Internet and debit cards exist in Allie's world, and if the street holograms and the fashion being very glam have a late '80s vibe to them, that vibe only adds to the fun. Too bad we never got the flying party buses and aircabs. And we haven't gotten anywhere close to understanding the human mind well enough to be able to manipulate it in the fine-tuned and permanent way seen here. That's just as well if there were even the slightest chance of greedy corporate interests having control of our brains. Power People, the celebrity franchise, is troubling enough as it is. The setting the mindplayers move about in isn't a corporatized dystopia, and it's better off for it.
Nothing to do with the story...
(1) I'd like to point out a couple of the covers. The cover of the edition I used for this review has the rainbow-colored Trapper Keeper aesthetic I associate with the late '80s/early '90s and the snake is well chosen as a central image. While this cover's art isn't quite as slick, in my opinion, it represents one of the book's most important scenes, and is very similar to how I pictured that scene's mindscape. Very cool, both of them.
(2) The edition I read was the "SF Gateway" e-book. While it's a credit to the quality of the novel that I didn't think the OCR issues were that much of a detriment, still, there were way too many of them and I question how well this was proofread after scanning. Missing commas, periods and apostrophes all over the place! Ugh.
Back on track...
Mindplayers's central, eponymous tech is fascinating and its ramifications in the larger culture, and for Allie in particular, pervade the whole book. It's full of immersive, trippy imagery, and it has a nice emotional payoff. A fun and thought-provoking read and one that I recommend.
May 23, 2019
Als schaue man durch eine mit Scheuklappen versehene Brille: Umwelt, Personen, Städte werden nur sehr spärlich beschrieben (Im Gegensatz zu z. B. Neuromancer); dafür umsomehr die Erlebnisse unserer Heldin und ihrer "Spaziergänge" durch andere Gehirne. Interessant die Weiterentwicklung der Protagonistin innerhalb des Romans. Viele klassische Cyberpunk-Elemente - Stammt ja auch aus dieser Zeit (1987)
September 30, 2020
Cyberpunk noir classic in which new forms of mental manipulation have changed every aspect of society, from celebrity to marriage and from criminal punishment to art. Our hard-shelled, soft-hearted heroine is a delight, Cadigan is funny and insightful, and the descriptions capture both kaleidoscopic human weirdness and sublime human longings. A perfect fossilized impress of its time and genre, and yet also a real pleasure to revisit even now when the mirrorshades are gathering dust.
The puns are a bit much but if you wanted subtlety or good taste I don't know why you're reading a book from the '90s.
The puns are a bit much but if you wanted subtlety or good taste I don't know why you're reading a book from the '90s.
April 16, 2025
A very different cyberpunk take. The high-tech low-life trope is definitely present in spades. But the story itself is more concerned with the human mind and consciousness.
July 2, 2019
“You’ve got to look while it’s happening…Otherwise you miss seeing it the way it should be seen.”
With first wave cyberpunk in full swing in 1987, Pat Cadigan's Mindplayers represents somewhat of an anomaly. While cyberspace was the predominate playground for most cyberpunk at that time, there are no runners traversing digital lines into some corporations' information vaults lined with protective ICE. Instead, a kind of cyberspace exists only to facilitate mind-to-mind contact, lucid dreaming, and mind-altering substances.
Allie is a mind criminal who uses a number of banned substances and illegal devices before she's actually busted by the mind police. When a friend named Jerry steals a mindcap and convinces her to use it, her mind is left with lasting damage. He dumps her off to get help but they both get snatched, starting their very separate journeys.
“Does all of this really mean that much to you? It’s just stuff. Jerry. It’s just expensive stuff. You’re risking your - your self for a goddamn nouveau couch?”
Turns out instead of serving time, you can become a mindplayer—encompassing several disciplines that people use to alter their state of consciousness. Roughly, these services are kind of forms of therapy, though there are also neurosis peddlers too, so who knows. Rather than go to jail, Allie decides to become a mindplayer. After all, if you mess yourself up enough then they can just scrub your mind, at least, ostensibly you can. No big deal, right?
Mindplayers is at its absolute best when its exploring ideas around psychosis and how the people who meet and interact with one another, mold and shape each other; with or without their knowledge. This is taken to extremes when people meet mind-to-mind, navigating the contours of one another's consciousness. Opening the flood gates and exposing this contact for all sorts of allegories.
Thankfully, with subject matter like this there is no poverty tourism or fetishization, or even hyper-sexualism that is often present in this wave of cyberpunk books. Instead, the judiciary system decides Allie is a criminal and her best option as presented to her, is to assimilate into the system that labels her a threat, or else suffer extreme repercussions. While she may have been on a dangerous trajectory, as it's implied that she had been using a lot of other mind-altering illegal substances, but not mindcaps, to be in a continual altered state, it's interesting to me that in this story, the omnipresence is actually something systemic. There is no "evil" corporation. It's just the state. It analyzes her, determines she has value due to her brain chemistry, and immediately commodifies her.
“Anyone’s capable of developing delusions under the right conditions.”
The majority of the story is Allie undergoing this training and the obstacles she faces, which change her mind in unexpected ways. And the situations she's put in with her clients in order to work off this debt are inherently dangerous and each of them leaves an "after taste" on the mind. People's fetishes, violent desires, and neurosis become weaponized, physical forces in a medium like mind-to-mind contact. So in an effort to commodify her she is also dehumanized and risks losing her sense of self. With the alternative being jail. It’s compelling and different. To connect mind-to-mind you use technology that attaches to the optic nerve (typically, though there are exceptions), which means peoples’ eyes are removed. They sometimes need to purchase new ones when the old ones wear out, and they can become status symbols when people buy cats eyes or ones associated with different gemstones. Though a bit on the nose, it leads to both of these kinds of people not being able to see things for what they truly are, whether oppressed by the system or apart of it.
The only downside to a narrative exploring this kind of subject matter is that it necessarily feels quite loose, and dreamy, which is not indicative of a genre generally known for frenetic pacing. I could see it being off-putting to people reading the sub-genre frequently. While most of the subversions of masculine cyberpunk are welcome, this did make it hard to get invested in. I wanted to get to the next exploration of the waking or subconscious mind. While the story came to a satisfying conclusion, and the format for which it's presented in makes sense, the pacing was hindered by it.
“Do you know there are no longer any actors alive today who still have their own eyes?…It seems strange. Drawing on life and looking at it through artificial eyes.”
On another positive note, though, another welcome subversion indicative of Cadigan's work is how she writes her protagonists. I mentioned that there is no hyper-sexualization, but it's more so that sexuality doesn't play much of a role in the story at all. While Allie has relationships with others, the story rarely if ever focuses on the physicality of anything. It’s on point for the story being told and contributes to its uniqueness.
Additionally, masculine cyberpunk and feminine cyberpunk tend to be most different with how embodiment is handled. Masculine leans toward mind over body; feminine gives far more weight to a persons' body comprising their overall identity. Mindplayers falls somewhere in the middle. Later, in Synners, Cadigan has made up her mind about this. But here mind-to-mind contact is more of extrapolation between people's interactions in real life. In that way, embodiment matters. But it always feels like a medium, with not much weight really being attributed to it beyond that. Allie is simply not a physical person, she continually reiterates that she has always had an active mind and been in her head, rather than a busy social life. The minor details of her life, from her perspective, truly fall away in the story. For good and, sometimes, at the expense of a more thematically tight narrative. It’s compelling to see the starting of a throughline that would ultimately lead to Synners, which feels like it benefited greatly from this against the grain tale.
“Not a single thing that’s passed between us has been real and yet you’ve been hunting me like the hound of heaven.”
With first wave cyberpunk in full swing in 1987, Pat Cadigan's Mindplayers represents somewhat of an anomaly. While cyberspace was the predominate playground for most cyberpunk at that time, there are no runners traversing digital lines into some corporations' information vaults lined with protective ICE. Instead, a kind of cyberspace exists only to facilitate mind-to-mind contact, lucid dreaming, and mind-altering substances.
Allie is a mind criminal who uses a number of banned substances and illegal devices before she's actually busted by the mind police. When a friend named Jerry steals a mindcap and convinces her to use it, her mind is left with lasting damage. He dumps her off to get help but they both get snatched, starting their very separate journeys.
“Does all of this really mean that much to you? It’s just stuff. Jerry. It’s just expensive stuff. You’re risking your - your self for a goddamn nouveau couch?”
Turns out instead of serving time, you can become a mindplayer—encompassing several disciplines that people use to alter their state of consciousness. Roughly, these services are kind of forms of therapy, though there are also neurosis peddlers too, so who knows. Rather than go to jail, Allie decides to become a mindplayer. After all, if you mess yourself up enough then they can just scrub your mind, at least, ostensibly you can. No big deal, right?
Mindplayers is at its absolute best when its exploring ideas around psychosis and how the people who meet and interact with one another, mold and shape each other; with or without their knowledge. This is taken to extremes when people meet mind-to-mind, navigating the contours of one another's consciousness. Opening the flood gates and exposing this contact for all sorts of allegories.
Thankfully, with subject matter like this there is no poverty tourism or fetishization, or even hyper-sexualism that is often present in this wave of cyberpunk books. Instead, the judiciary system decides Allie is a criminal and her best option as presented to her, is to assimilate into the system that labels her a threat, or else suffer extreme repercussions. While she may have been on a dangerous trajectory, as it's implied that she had been using a lot of other mind-altering illegal substances, but not mindcaps, to be in a continual altered state, it's interesting to me that in this story, the omnipresence is actually something systemic. There is no "evil" corporation. It's just the state. It analyzes her, determines she has value due to her brain chemistry, and immediately commodifies her.
“Anyone’s capable of developing delusions under the right conditions.”
The majority of the story is Allie undergoing this training and the obstacles she faces, which change her mind in unexpected ways. And the situations she's put in with her clients in order to work off this debt are inherently dangerous and each of them leaves an "after taste" on the mind. People's fetishes, violent desires, and neurosis become weaponized, physical forces in a medium like mind-to-mind contact. So in an effort to commodify her she is also dehumanized and risks losing her sense of self. With the alternative being jail. It’s compelling and different. To connect mind-to-mind you use technology that attaches to the optic nerve (typically, though there are exceptions), which means peoples’ eyes are removed. They sometimes need to purchase new ones when the old ones wear out, and they can become status symbols when people buy cats eyes or ones associated with different gemstones. Though a bit on the nose, it leads to both of these kinds of people not being able to see things for what they truly are, whether oppressed by the system or apart of it.
The only downside to a narrative exploring this kind of subject matter is that it necessarily feels quite loose, and dreamy, which is not indicative of a genre generally known for frenetic pacing. I could see it being off-putting to people reading the sub-genre frequently. While most of the subversions of masculine cyberpunk are welcome, this did make it hard to get invested in. I wanted to get to the next exploration of the waking or subconscious mind. While the story came to a satisfying conclusion, and the format for which it's presented in makes sense, the pacing was hindered by it.
“Do you know there are no longer any actors alive today who still have their own eyes?…It seems strange. Drawing on life and looking at it through artificial eyes.”
On another positive note, though, another welcome subversion indicative of Cadigan's work is how she writes her protagonists. I mentioned that there is no hyper-sexualization, but it's more so that sexuality doesn't play much of a role in the story at all. While Allie has relationships with others, the story rarely if ever focuses on the physicality of anything. It’s on point for the story being told and contributes to its uniqueness.
Additionally, masculine cyberpunk and feminine cyberpunk tend to be most different with how embodiment is handled. Masculine leans toward mind over body; feminine gives far more weight to a persons' body comprising their overall identity. Mindplayers falls somewhere in the middle. Later, in Synners, Cadigan has made up her mind about this. But here mind-to-mind contact is more of extrapolation between people's interactions in real life. In that way, embodiment matters. But it always feels like a medium, with not much weight really being attributed to it beyond that. Allie is simply not a physical person, she continually reiterates that she has always had an active mind and been in her head, rather than a busy social life. The minor details of her life, from her perspective, truly fall away in the story. For good and, sometimes, at the expense of a more thematically tight narrative. It’s compelling to see the starting of a throughline that would ultimately lead to Synners, which feels like it benefited greatly from this against the grain tale.
“Not a single thing that’s passed between us has been real and yet you’ve been hunting me like the hound of heaven.”
December 8, 2022
Un libro totally mind fuck!!
Davvero complesso, uno psycho-cyberpunk unico e visionario..
L autrice con una prosa lirica e uno stile onirico, fonde filosofia e dissertazioni psicologiche in un romanzo di "formazione" mentale..
Alla fine non ha una vera trama, (unica cosa che non mi ha fatto impazzire), ma fa riflettere su cosa siamo e soprattutto perché lo siamo.. Quanto ciò che subiamo e soprattutto chi incontriamo nella vita determina la nostra personalità!!
Recupererò tutto il tradotto di questa superba autrice!
Davvero complesso, uno psycho-cyberpunk unico e visionario..
L autrice con una prosa lirica e uno stile onirico, fonde filosofia e dissertazioni psicologiche in un romanzo di "formazione" mentale..
Alla fine non ha una vera trama, (unica cosa che non mi ha fatto impazzire), ma fa riflettere su cosa siamo e soprattutto perché lo siamo.. Quanto ciò che subiamo e soprattutto chi incontriamo nella vita determina la nostra personalità!!
Recupererò tutto il tradotto di questa superba autrice!
February 15, 2019
Got it as part of a Cadigan omnibus on sale!
Learned from an interview with her that it's a fix-up novel from a bunch of short stories—which makes sense. Starts out great, winds up pretty confusing? I was almost completely lost by the last quarter.
But the ideas and bits of it that were great were very good indeed. Looking forward to the other novels in the ombinus which aren't her first novel/mashed together from a bunch of vaguely connected stories :P
Learned from an interview with her that it's a fix-up novel from a bunch of short stories—which makes sense. Starts out great, winds up pretty confusing? I was almost completely lost by the last quarter.
But the ideas and bits of it that were great were very good indeed. Looking forward to the other novels in the ombinus which aren't her first novel/mashed together from a bunch of vaguely connected stories :P
April 28, 2021
It's strange. On one level this is engaging, eventful, and well-written. On another it isn't. The many events make it episodic, but more crucially there is a confusion about both the story and the concepts that I found irritating. For instance, I am still not entirely clear what the different classes of mindplayer actually do. Is a pathosfinder simply a glorified psychoanalyst? Or is it simply the case each class constitutes a part of the psychoanalyst's job? I suspect the answers are a lot simpler than the novel wants us to think. Indeed I think my problem is that what the novel was putting forward as great insights were just things I took for granted. I was expecting a higher level of sophistication than what was obliquely suggested. Each story too seemed to be a lot less than the sum of its parts. However, there's no doubting the energy, the creativity, and the readability of the work. Good, but not the head-wrecker I was expecting.
books-i-own-to-read
April 5, 2016This has been siting on my bookshelf for 10 plus year. Thinking I should give it a try.
From the author's blog which you can follow by following her author's page here at Good Reads.
https://patcadigan.wordpress.com/2016...
From the author's blog which you can follow by following her author's page here at Good Reads.
https://patcadigan.wordpress.com/2016...
June 17, 2017
It's an incredibly uneven book. Very unpolished in places, confusing, brilliant, sharp, edgy, laugh out funny, frightening, insensitive, haunting, mocking and loving.
I suspect this is a book that will change with each re-read.
I suspect this is a book that will change with each re-read.
August 8, 2019
Hmm, I think I have been a "Mind criminal" for a very long time...
try-again-later
May 9, 2021There's a lot to respect here, but for some reason I just can't synchronise with the story - or at least summon the level of concentration required to enjoy it properly. One to return to later.....
December 9, 2022
An essential Cyberpunk work that interrogates the psychology of existence between mind and machine.
Warning: spoiler alert!!
Set in the near future where an entire ecosystem of businesses, careers and government bodies has developed around manipulating people’s minds, Mindplayers centres on a category of people know as ‘mindplayers’, trained in and particularly adept at accessing, interacting with and manipulating other people’s minds via neural interface devices. Pat Cadigan is one of only a very few, but definitely most important, first wave Cyberpunk female writers. She was involved in the movement from its very beginning, contributing for example to Bruce Sterling’ fanzine Cheap Truth (1983), and her status had already been cemented a year before her debut novel Mindplayers came out with her inclusion in Bruce Sterling’s seminal anthology, Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986). Mindplayers was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award (1988), came second place for the Locus Best First Novel Award (1988). Bruce Sterling identifies it as essential to the Cyberpunk canon.
When Alice Hass borrows a bootleg neural interface known as a madcap from her friend Jerry Wirerammer, she expects just another recreational trip. Next thing, she wakes up at the ‘dry cleaner’, jerry having left her there to have her brain ‘cleaned’, only to be arrested by the Brain Police. A mug-holo of her brain reveals unusual brain patterns, so she is placed in the criminal justice program and given a choice: rehabilitate as a mindplayer or face partial mind erasure. Choosing the former, Alice enrols in a mindplayer program at the J. Walter Tech Institute where she learns to create and implant false memories in people, find and manipulate the pathos in people, read somebody else’s Emotional Index, an to dream lucidly. The program gives her direction in life end she continues to pursue a successful career at a top mindplayer agency. Of the different kinds of jobs – thrillseeker, belljarrer, dreamfeeder, pathosfinder, neurosis peddler, reality affixer – Alice eventually chooses to become a pathosfinder helping clients better to connect with the core of their souls.
While the neural interface technology has serious applications in areas such as medicine and crime prevention – the technology was originally developed in the medical field – it has long since been subsumed by the entertainment industry, the urban landscape cramped with shops selling everything from enhanced dreaming, memory wipes, to famous persona constructs. Power People is the biggest franchise in town, specialising in licensing and commoditising the experiences, memories and talents of famous people. Jerry for example has licensed his mind to Power People, but as he has since resorted to bootlegging himself in order to make more money, he constantly has to erase his memory lest Power People will find out during one of his routine template renewals.
Mindplayers does not follow a traditional narrative structure, and while Alice’s many encounters as a mindplayer keep the reader guessing as to where the narrative is headed, the real topic of the story is Alice’s inner psychological drama. As encounters with other minds leave traces in Alice’s own mind, change her core and idea of self, she is always at risk of unravelling. Alice for example does a job on a murdered artist, Kitta Wren, whose brain is now suspended in liquid and wired up, awaiting the brain police to scour it for relevant information pertaining to their investigation. It is not unusual for artists to sign post-mortem permissions, allowing mindplayers to scour through their dead brains, the idea being that dead people’s brains, artists’ in particular, still retain valuable information that can be commoditised. In Kitta’s case, Alice is looking for any poetry left in her brain. In life Kitta had striven for constant craziness – induced psychosis – as an artistic strategy, and now that Alice has to mindplay with Kitta’s dead brain, part of Kitta’s psychotic mind spills over to Alice’s.
Mindplayers falls within the frontier-of-the-mind sf tradition, recalling Rudy Rucker’s Ware tetralogy (1982-2000) and Michael Swanwick’s Vacuum Flowers (1987). It is works with similar tropes to Philip K. Dick’s false memory implants in the short story We Can Remember it for you Wholesale (1966), better known as Paul Verhoeven’s film Total Recall (1990), and Roger Zelazny’s neuroparticipant therapists in The Dream Master (1966).
Warning: spoiler alert!!
Set in the near future where an entire ecosystem of businesses, careers and government bodies has developed around manipulating people’s minds, Mindplayers centres on a category of people know as ‘mindplayers’, trained in and particularly adept at accessing, interacting with and manipulating other people’s minds via neural interface devices. Pat Cadigan is one of only a very few, but definitely most important, first wave Cyberpunk female writers. She was involved in the movement from its very beginning, contributing for example to Bruce Sterling’ fanzine Cheap Truth (1983), and her status had already been cemented a year before her debut novel Mindplayers came out with her inclusion in Bruce Sterling’s seminal anthology, Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986). Mindplayers was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award (1988), came second place for the Locus Best First Novel Award (1988). Bruce Sterling identifies it as essential to the Cyberpunk canon.
When Alice Hass borrows a bootleg neural interface known as a madcap from her friend Jerry Wirerammer, she expects just another recreational trip. Next thing, she wakes up at the ‘dry cleaner’, jerry having left her there to have her brain ‘cleaned’, only to be arrested by the Brain Police. A mug-holo of her brain reveals unusual brain patterns, so she is placed in the criminal justice program and given a choice: rehabilitate as a mindplayer or face partial mind erasure. Choosing the former, Alice enrols in a mindplayer program at the J. Walter Tech Institute where she learns to create and implant false memories in people, find and manipulate the pathos in people, read somebody else’s Emotional Index, an to dream lucidly. The program gives her direction in life end she continues to pursue a successful career at a top mindplayer agency. Of the different kinds of jobs – thrillseeker, belljarrer, dreamfeeder, pathosfinder, neurosis peddler, reality affixer – Alice eventually chooses to become a pathosfinder helping clients better to connect with the core of their souls.
While the neural interface technology has serious applications in areas such as medicine and crime prevention – the technology was originally developed in the medical field – it has long since been subsumed by the entertainment industry, the urban landscape cramped with shops selling everything from enhanced dreaming, memory wipes, to famous persona constructs. Power People is the biggest franchise in town, specialising in licensing and commoditising the experiences, memories and talents of famous people. Jerry for example has licensed his mind to Power People, but as he has since resorted to bootlegging himself in order to make more money, he constantly has to erase his memory lest Power People will find out during one of his routine template renewals.
Mindplayers does not follow a traditional narrative structure, and while Alice’s many encounters as a mindplayer keep the reader guessing as to where the narrative is headed, the real topic of the story is Alice’s inner psychological drama. As encounters with other minds leave traces in Alice’s own mind, change her core and idea of self, she is always at risk of unravelling. Alice for example does a job on a murdered artist, Kitta Wren, whose brain is now suspended in liquid and wired up, awaiting the brain police to scour it for relevant information pertaining to their investigation. It is not unusual for artists to sign post-mortem permissions, allowing mindplayers to scour through their dead brains, the idea being that dead people’s brains, artists’ in particular, still retain valuable information that can be commoditised. In Kitta’s case, Alice is looking for any poetry left in her brain. In life Kitta had striven for constant craziness – induced psychosis – as an artistic strategy, and now that Alice has to mindplay with Kitta’s dead brain, part of Kitta’s psychotic mind spills over to Alice’s.
Mindplayers falls within the frontier-of-the-mind sf tradition, recalling Rudy Rucker’s Ware tetralogy (1982-2000) and Michael Swanwick’s Vacuum Flowers (1987). It is works with similar tropes to Philip K. Dick’s false memory implants in the short story We Can Remember it for you Wholesale (1966), better known as Paul Verhoeven’s film Total Recall (1990), and Roger Zelazny’s neuroparticipant therapists in The Dream Master (1966).
May 18, 2023
📚 Book 7 of 2023 🧠
Mindplayers - Pat Cadigan
Considering this book is under 300 pages, that took way longer to finish than I intended. The joys of editing and writing your own work, putting leisure reading on hold. Plus beta reading some awesome indie books that are coming soon...
Anyway, Mindplayers. Classic cyberpunk straight from the 80s, it was hard not to like it right from the outset. The premise is just awesome. Our protagonist, Deadpan Allie, is trained up as a Mindplayer. Someone who is hired to delve into a paying client's mind, for all kinds of reasons which I won't spoil. The prose conjures incredibly complex and phenomenal visuals throughout the story.
There's a lot of great characters (like Jerry Wirerammer - what a cool name) and moments in this book that really stick with you. One such quote, "the idea of living lucidly, living in the moment," is something that strikes particularly true today. Most of us spend far too much time on social media, scrolling endlessly, absorbed in all the distractions that has to offer. I realise the irony of typing this post, but the message is clear in this novel. I wonder if Pat knew just how much this would resonate a few decades later in our age of information.
Slight negative, I felt my attention begin to drift at times, but then I'd be pulled back in, desperate to see what happened next as Deadpan Allie rooted around someone's brain.
So, I give this a 4 out of a 5, but on occasion, it could have been a 3 or 3.5. It's a complex book, but it's just so damn cool. Despite sometimes seeming to lack in direction, the characters, the mindplay, it's all so rich in detail that you can just forgive most shortcomings and enjoy the ride. If you've read this, be sure to read Synners as well, which is also excellent.
Mindplayers - Pat Cadigan
Considering this book is under 300 pages, that took way longer to finish than I intended. The joys of editing and writing your own work, putting leisure reading on hold. Plus beta reading some awesome indie books that are coming soon...
Anyway, Mindplayers. Classic cyberpunk straight from the 80s, it was hard not to like it right from the outset. The premise is just awesome. Our protagonist, Deadpan Allie, is trained up as a Mindplayer. Someone who is hired to delve into a paying client's mind, for all kinds of reasons which I won't spoil. The prose conjures incredibly complex and phenomenal visuals throughout the story.
There's a lot of great characters (like Jerry Wirerammer - what a cool name) and moments in this book that really stick with you. One such quote, "the idea of living lucidly, living in the moment," is something that strikes particularly true today. Most of us spend far too much time on social media, scrolling endlessly, absorbed in all the distractions that has to offer. I realise the irony of typing this post, but the message is clear in this novel. I wonder if Pat knew just how much this would resonate a few decades later in our age of information.
Slight negative, I felt my attention begin to drift at times, but then I'd be pulled back in, desperate to see what happened next as Deadpan Allie rooted around someone's brain.
So, I give this a 4 out of a 5, but on occasion, it could have been a 3 or 3.5. It's a complex book, but it's just so damn cool. Despite sometimes seeming to lack in direction, the characters, the mindplay, it's all so rich in detail that you can just forgive most shortcomings and enjoy the ride. If you've read this, be sure to read Synners as well, which is also excellent.
July 16, 2025
This one was disappointing. The premise seemed interesting, and the first half, perhaps even a bit more were ok, even fun (despite a few issues I will mention later on). However, from that point onward the novel started getting tedious - and fast. Another case for Deadpan Allie. Case solved, with some doubts that had me anticipating the ending from very early in the novel.
Of course we can say that it's a cerebral book, but does it really reveal anything new? The people we meet influence us. We change throughout life. Truth is not information. All of this seems trite. One could say that our understanding has evolved since when the novel was written. But then again James Tiptree, Jr. and Octavia Butler seem to have become even more relevant with time.
And then we get the bad word play. The "land of silk and funny" and other "alerted snakes of consequence" (I can't shake the feeling that the wordplay came first and was shoehorned in later as "symbolism"). Silly wordplay is a bit of a staple of cyberpunk, but in the case of Mindplayers it seems to miss its mark - at least for me. With Gibson, it seems to point to a certain ridiculousness (like his names, which seem to be in the same vain as in Pynchon's novels) of the world. It just didn't work for me. I found the style unengaging, tedious, and overwrought. Allie saying some permutation of "They don't call me deadpan for nothing" had me rolling my eyes at one point. But it did have me questioning whether anybody apart from her actually believes that.
I wouldn't say that its a bad book inherently, but it certainly was not for me.
Of course we can say that it's a cerebral book, but does it really reveal anything new? The people we meet influence us. We change throughout life. Truth is not information. All of this seems trite. One could say that our understanding has evolved since when the novel was written. But then again James Tiptree, Jr. and Octavia Butler seem to have become even more relevant with time.
And then we get the bad word play. The "land of silk and funny" and other "alerted snakes of consequence" (I can't shake the feeling that the wordplay came first and was shoehorned in later as "symbolism"). Silly wordplay is a bit of a staple of cyberpunk, but in the case of Mindplayers it seems to miss its mark - at least for me. With Gibson, it seems to point to a certain ridiculousness (like his names, which seem to be in the same vain as in Pynchon's novels) of the world. It just didn't work for me. I found the style unengaging, tedious, and overwrought. Allie saying some permutation of "They don't call me deadpan for nothing" had me rolling my eyes at one point. But it did have me questioning whether anybody apart from her actually believes that.
I wouldn't say that its a bad book inherently, but it certainly was not for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 14, 2023
En ole cyberpunkin erityinen ystävä. En kyllä kovin montaa tämän alagenren kirjaa ole edes lukenut. Tämä kirja oli ihan kohtuullinen, mutta ei minään erityisesti houkutellut lukemaan lisää saman tyylisiä teoksia. Kirja kertoo Alliesta, joka kaverinsa houkuttelemana kokeilee kahjohattua, joka tekee hulluksi. Hulluuden piti kadota, mutta toisin käy, ja Allie joutuu hakeutumaan hoitoon, jääden samalla kiinni laittoman laitteen käytöstä. Allie joutuu valinnan eteen, hän joko joutuu vankilaan, tai hänen on kouluttauduttava mielenhallinnan ammattilaiseksi. Valinta ei kovin vaikea ole. Kirja on varsin hajanainen, eikä siinä ole kovin selkeää juonta. Paikoitellen kirjan teksti on liian kikkailevaa, ja juoni viettää aivan liian pitkiä aikoja milloin kenenkin henkilön mielen sisällä, jolloin tarinankerronta on varsin sekavaa ja rasittavaa. Vähän johdonmukaisempi juoni, ja vähemmän erikoisilla, huonosti kuvatuilla termeillä kikkailua, olisi ollut paremmin minun makuuni. Käännös oli muuten kohtalainen, mutta Allien ”työnimi”, Salamieli Allie ei mielestäni ollut kovin onnistunut tulkinta alkuperäisestä Deadpan Alliesta. Vasta kuin sain tietää alkuperäisen nimen, tajusin kunnolla kirjassa esiintyneet kuittailut Allien nimestä. Muutenkin ammatti- ja muut termit tuntuivat enemmän kuin hiukan vaikeasti ymmärrettäviltä, mutta en tiedä olisinko niitä paremmin englanniksi ymmärtänyt (no, ainakin pathosfinder on selvästi tajuttavampi termi kuin ”lauhduttaja”). Ihan kohtalainen, keskitasoinen, ”kolmen tähden” kirja kyseessä oli.
December 2, 2021
This is for me near perfection. It's crazy how this was her debut novel. I see a lot of later stories have their inspiration on this one. Pat really has that talent to incorporate humor in her stories. Her mind-bending stories. I think you can say that this is kind of a love letter to Philip K Dick. Which leads us why I love this story so much.
Reality affixers, Brain Police, pathosfinders, franchised personalities... this is a journey through the mind like no other. Deeply surrealistic, and yet so so readable for a book that's already some decades old. I cannot recommend this book enough for PKD-fans.
The story let's us think about ourselves, our thoughts, our lives, our memories... How we (like everything else) try to control, classify, manipulate it. It teaches us that although, we think we know ourselves, know our mind, we realize that we know nothing. Maybe Philip was right all along: "Nothing is real."
Reality affixers, Brain Police, pathosfinders, franchised personalities... this is a journey through the mind like no other. Deeply surrealistic, and yet so so readable for a book that's already some decades old. I cannot recommend this book enough for PKD-fans.
The story let's us think about ourselves, our thoughts, our lives, our memories... How we (like everything else) try to control, classify, manipulate it. It teaches us that although, we think we know ourselves, know our mind, we realize that we know nothing. Maybe Philip was right all along: "Nothing is real."
Read
September 4, 2022DNF. I guess cyberpunk just isn't my jam. I hated to give up on it, since it is way more body-positive than a ton of books I've read: the heroine describes herself as "well-padded". Her first mentor is an unapologetically fat man who when she ribs him about his eating habit counters by saying something to the effect of "If I wanted to change myself I would have." (This is a future where people routinely trade their bodies and personalities for trademarked alternatives).
I can handle trippy dream sequences, which the book has lot of (the heroine exploring her own mind etc.) but these ones were just boring to me after a while, to be honest. The book and the concepts it explored just didn't grab me. It's not a bad book by any means, but it just wasn't for me.
I can handle trippy dream sequences, which the book has lot of (the heroine exploring her own mind etc.) but these ones were just boring to me after a while, to be honest. The book and the concepts it explored just didn't grab me. It's not a bad book by any means, but it just wasn't for me.
October 7, 2023
I found Allie's growth through the story to be very captivating, especially the way Cadigan structured that process. It seemed to me that Cadigan put a relevant and important piece of Allie's own inner conflict into each experience she has with her clients. The resolution to her arc was beautiful and very human, yet pushed the limits of imagination via the use of technology in the story. Nobody does cyberpunk quite like Cadigan. I thoroughly enjoy how the book explores the idea of self in such a relational way using the cyberpunk setting. I think the phrase "alerted snakes of consequences" will stick with me for the rest of my life, perhaps locked away in my mental cathedral. Will be rereading this one at some point.
August 2, 2020
I have to reread Mindplayers every few years, because I was there for the events that triggered it. I won't go into great detail, but it is a fictionalized version of actual events. Of the people involved, some are gone and some remain, but the one who deserves the most thanks has been gone since 2000. To the best of my knowledge, he never read Mindplayers, even though I told him quite forcefully that he should. I think that he thought that Pat hated him.
I can't imagine what the book is like for people who weren't there, but it probably is interesting. I hope so. I couldn't write a spoiler, because it was a personal narrative, and it hasn't ended, yet.
I can't imagine what the book is like for people who weren't there, but it probably is interesting. I hope so. I couldn't write a spoiler, because it was a personal narrative, and it hasn't ended, yet.
December 29, 2019
4.5 stars ✨
I really loved this novel. Cadigan's first published work, and boy am I impressed. The vibrancy of the interior worlds, the sleek mental architecture- it was all so deep and dazzling.
I want to be a mind player so bad. I definitely have the "awfully mental life" qualification covered. And I could use a pathosfinder to help me elevate my lucid living.
Didn't quite reach 5 stars because the narrative flow dragged at points, but each excavation of a new mind brought me right back in.
"Well, for some of us it's just this episode and that episode, one thing after another, and not too much relates to anything else."
I really loved this novel. Cadigan's first published work, and boy am I impressed. The vibrancy of the interior worlds, the sleek mental architecture- it was all so deep and dazzling.
I want to be a mind player so bad. I definitely have the "awfully mental life" qualification covered. And I could use a pathosfinder to help me elevate my lucid living.
Didn't quite reach 5 stars because the narrative flow dragged at points, but each excavation of a new mind brought me right back in.
"Well, for some of us it's just this episode and that episode, one thing after another, and not too much relates to anything else."
August 19, 2017
Viihdyttävä ja hauskalla tavalla monipuolinen. Loppuluvun alleviivaava ratkaisu latistaa hyvää kerrontaa.
Kirja tuntuu ristiriitaiselta. Se vaikuttaa alusta puoleenväliin viiden tähden ilottelulta, mutta kangistuu loppua kohden. Hyvä kirja kaiken kaikkiaan.
Kirja tuntuu ristiriitaiselta. Se vaikuttaa alusta puoleenväliin viiden tähden ilottelulta, mutta kangistuu loppua kohden. Hyvä kirja kaiken kaikkiaan.
April 3, 2020
There is basically no story, no plot, no conflict, just page after page of some girl exploring her mind. Oh, she goes to school. And then gets a job. Halfway through and would like my money back. Don't plan on forcing myself to finish a book that's less interesting than a math textbook.
June 10, 2020
Cyberpunk with a female main character that dives into technology, lucid dreaming, insanity, recreation, sense of self, and gets a little Philip K Dick-y. Very cool!
August 29, 2023
Love the world building but felt like I never knew enough about Allie. Left me wanting more.
March 22, 2024
1st read in the late 80's.
Just dive in.
Just dive in.
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