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Singularity Project
Busby, in the classic mode of Robert A. Heinlein (who was a friend and fan of Busby's work), tells a rich, fast-paced and cleverly plotted tale of the day after tomorrow in The Singularity Project. Mitch Banning is a free-lance engineer in Seattle, who hires onto a secret high-tech project financed by industrialist George Detweiler that will change the world...if it works. And Mitch doesn't believe it will, since the people creating the hush-hush demonstration of the world's first matter transmitter include an elderly con-man, an addict-physicist, and a tough South American Indian with a knife. But Mitch doesn't care. He'll do his job, keep his nose clean, get paid, and have the satisfaction of seeing Detweiler, a bully since he and Mitch were school kids, delude himself with power fantasies. Then things get complicated. There are threats, someone is murdered. And perhaps the matter transmitter is real, a stolen invention, not a fake. It's hard to tell the businessmen from the con men, the scientists from the industrial spies...even for the killer in their midst. The Singularity Project is F M. Busby at his finest; complex, witty, sophisticated science fiction. It's vivid, plausible and intense and it's Busby's best novel yet.
- GenresScience Fiction
349 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1993
38 people want to read
About the author
F.M. Busby
69 books27 followersFrancis Marion Busby
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._M._B...
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._M._B...
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 28, 2012
Book 1 in my re-reading odyssey.
This was one of a small number of paperback novels I had kept after selling off a good portion of my fiction library. I remember having fond memories of it, and figured I might enjoy reading it again in the future.
Well, the future arrived, and I decided to re-read this book, and was very surprised, for I did not remember any of it at all. None of it was familiar: not the story, not the characters, not the writing style. I know I had read the book many years ago, but nothing of it was retained in my mind---and I can appreciate why that may be.
The story tries to play a bit at being a hard-boiled detective story, only with a sci-fi bent, and without the hard-boiled detective. It is readable, but there are numerous parts during the front 3/4 that drag, and add little to the progression of the story. But still, it had its charms.
And then I reached the last 1/4 of the book, and everything went belly-up.
The last quarter is jarringly different from the preceeding 3/4, and has a very rushed feel---as if it were meant to be a whole other story. There are a variety of new characters introduced; the veiled techno-wizardry goes into overdrive; and for its length, it felt as if the plot had stopped---that the ending was just hanging out of reach, and I was being tortured for some misdeed, and would only reach the end if I paid my penance.
Well, I paid it, and was underwhelmed.
Overall, this strikes me as a contract book: one written to fulfill a contractual obligation, and that was hammered out over the course of a weekend, and a bottle of whiskey.
This was one of a small number of paperback novels I had kept after selling off a good portion of my fiction library. I remember having fond memories of it, and figured I might enjoy reading it again in the future.
Well, the future arrived, and I decided to re-read this book, and was very surprised, for I did not remember any of it at all. None of it was familiar: not the story, not the characters, not the writing style. I know I had read the book many years ago, but nothing of it was retained in my mind---and I can appreciate why that may be.
The story tries to play a bit at being a hard-boiled detective story, only with a sci-fi bent, and without the hard-boiled detective. It is readable, but there are numerous parts during the front 3/4 that drag, and add little to the progression of the story. But still, it had its charms.
And then I reached the last 1/4 of the book, and everything went belly-up.
The last quarter is jarringly different from the preceeding 3/4, and has a very rushed feel---as if it were meant to be a whole other story. There are a variety of new characters introduced; the veiled techno-wizardry goes into overdrive; and for its length, it felt as if the plot had stopped---that the ending was just hanging out of reach, and I was being tortured for some misdeed, and would only reach the end if I paid my penance.
Well, I paid it, and was underwhelmed.
Overall, this strikes me as a contract book: one written to fulfill a contractual obligation, and that was hammered out over the course of a weekend, and a bottle of whiskey.
February 13, 2013
There wasn't really that much of the promised tech or sci-fi. Mostly it seemed to involve following the main characters menu (way to many words about preparing meals!) as he and all the "good" guys were all too thick to figure out who the bad guy was. The plot was senseless and unrealistic with any actual good ideas or story lines quickly dropped in favor of nonsense.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews