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MOM
MOM is the mall operations manager — the greatest intelligence in history, a machine awakened to self-awareness at a time when the last few human survivors have withdrawn to the last two remaining refuges on Earth. Quarantined from the global nanobot superorganism outside the malls and from each other inside, the mallsters are utterly dependent on MOM for everything — including the only, evermore suspect information they have about the world Outside. Now the malls are crumbling.Praise for MOM, Book 1 in the Magic Circles
"The extra-sensorial journey, the unspooling of the central mystery, and the story's moving climax are byyond mind-blowing"
- Paul Dorsey, The Nation (Bangkok)
"[MOM] is a page-turner that contains all the right components for a smach movie... The Bard of Bangkok has really outdone himself this time. My strong hunch is that MOM is destined to attain classic status."
- Bradley K. Martin, author of Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader
"MOM is a big bang of a novel with many big ideas... Old Asia hands, sci-fi fans, and readers of quality fiction who enjoy complex and entertaining yarns should enjoy MOM."
- Kevin Cummings, Thailand Footprint
"This book will take you on the craziest trip you've ever been on. And it will make you question everything."
- Siobhan, reviewer at Novelties
"If you are looking for a book that will make you question everything - life, humanity, and Earth as we know it today - definitely pick up MOM by Collin Piprell."
- Ellen, reviewer at Scribbles, Quibbles & Scrawlings
"The extra-sensorial journey, the unspooling of the central mystery, and the story's moving climax are byyond mind-blowing"
- Paul Dorsey, The Nation (Bangkok)
"[MOM] is a page-turner that contains all the right components for a smach movie... The Bard of Bangkok has really outdone himself this time. My strong hunch is that MOM is destined to attain classic status."
- Bradley K. Martin, author of Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader
"MOM is a big bang of a novel with many big ideas... Old Asia hands, sci-fi fans, and readers of quality fiction who enjoy complex and entertaining yarns should enjoy MOM."
- Kevin Cummings, Thailand Footprint
"This book will take you on the craziest trip you've ever been on. And it will make you question everything."
- Siobhan, reviewer at Novelties
"If you are looking for a book that will make you question everything - life, humanity, and Earth as we know it today - definitely pick up MOM by Collin Piprell."
- Ellen, reviewer at Scribbles, Quibbles & Scrawlings
261 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 30, 2009
4 people are currently reading
6 people want to read
About the author
Collin Piprell
12 books5 followersCollin Piprell is a Canadian writer and editor living in Thailand. He has also lived in England, where he did graduate work as a Canada Council Doctoral Fellow (later, a Social Sciences and Humanities Fellow) in politics and philosophy at Pembroke College, Oxford; and in Kuwait, where he learned to sail, waterski, and make a credible red wine in plastic garbage bins.
In earlier years, he worked at a wide variety of occupations, including four jobs as a driller and stope leader in mines and tunnels in Ontario and Quebec. In later years he taught writing courses at Thammasat University, Bangkok, freelanced as a writer and editor, and published hundreds of articles on a wide variety of topics (most of these pieces are pre-digital, hence effectively written on the wind). He is also the author of short stories that appeared in Asian anthologies and magazines, as well as five novels (a sixth forthcoming in 2018), a collection of short stories, a collection of occasional pieces, a diving guide to Thailand, another book on diving, and a book on Thailand’s coral reefs. He has also co-authored a book on Thailand’s national parks.
Common Deer Press is publishing the first three novels in his futuristic Magic Circles series.
Collin has another short novel nearly ready to go, something he only reluctantly describes as magic realism. Less nearly ready to go are novels he describes as a series of metaphysical thrillers. Not to mention several Jack Shackaway thrillers, follow-ups to Kicking Dogs. (He also has a half-finished letter to his grandmother, dated 10 October 1991, saying thanks for the birthday gift.)
In earlier years, he worked at a wide variety of occupations, including four jobs as a driller and stope leader in mines and tunnels in Ontario and Quebec. In later years he taught writing courses at Thammasat University, Bangkok, freelanced as a writer and editor, and published hundreds of articles on a wide variety of topics (most of these pieces are pre-digital, hence effectively written on the wind). He is also the author of short stories that appeared in Asian anthologies and magazines, as well as five novels (a sixth forthcoming in 2018), a collection of short stories, a collection of occasional pieces, a diving guide to Thailand, another book on diving, and a book on Thailand’s coral reefs. He has also co-authored a book on Thailand’s national parks.
Common Deer Press is publishing the first three novels in his futuristic Magic Circles series.
Collin has another short novel nearly ready to go, something he only reluctantly describes as magic realism. Less nearly ready to go are novels he describes as a series of metaphysical thrillers. Not to mention several Jack Shackaway thrillers, follow-ups to Kicking Dogs. (He also has a half-finished letter to his grandmother, dated 10 October 1991, saying thanks for the birthday gift.)
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 13, 2017
Worlds without end, amen!
By Bradley K. Martin
In MOM, a sci-fi novel that will be of particular interest to Asia hands, Collin Piprell takes an astonishing leap into the mid-21st century.
It could be argued that we have quite enough real, present-day dystopias – such as North Korea, my own specialty. And then there’s the ruined United States of America that many fear Trump is on his way to leaving in his wake. One may think that there’s no point in even trying to imagine worse. Piprell, a Canadian hard-rock miner-tunneler-turned-Oxford polymath, has imagined worse.
By 2050, wars, global warming and malicious viruses have reduced humanity to just a few “wet” (natural-born) but sterile people. To keep them safe from the “blurs” (disassembler nanobots) that wreak havoc on the world Outside, the human remnants are confined in two remaining enclaves – huge, shielded structures, the “malls,” on the sites of the former New York City and Bangkok.
The mysterious Mall Operations Manager, MOM, has provided “ebees” (electronic beings) to keep the humans company. In lieu of human servants and other workers, “dolls” (ProvidAlls), molecular assemblers, on vocal command provide food and drink and other consumer goods using technologies that perhaps the rest of us should have seen coming with the introduction of 3D printers.
Some readers may at times lose track of the futuristic terminology. I’ll let you in on a little secret: There’s a glossary at the end of the book. You can flip back there and learn, for example, the full definition of the era’s guiding belief system:
transzoominism (n.) from “transhumanism,” from “trans*itional humanism”; an ideologized belief that humanity was in a stage in an evolutionary emergence of much greater scope, and that technology could and should be used to overcome limitations and extend personal powers; cyborgs and, ultimately among the more radical transzoominists, machines were seen as legitimate and desirable heirs to the human enterprise.
With little work for them to do, the humans occupy themselves playing in themed, generated-reality “Worlds” – except during times MOM designates as Mondays, when they mope around their apartments, forbidden to venture into the Worlds. In one only partially finished World created with early technology, a highly authentic girlie bar district in 20th century Bangkok, we meet Brian the Evil Canadian, the last human to have held the position of MOM before the machines took over. Brian is an excellent candidate for recognition as the most loathsome character in all literature.
As the novel opens, Mondays have been getting longer and more frequent. Meanwhile attacks on the malls from the Outside seem to have become both more frequent and more effective. Is MOM losing it? People can’t help wondering. And it’s not long before their fears prove well founded.
The malls are breached. Only a handful of humans including Worlds test-pilot Cisco Smith of ESUSA (Eastern Seaboard USA) and the crusty 113-year-old Leary of ESSEA (Eastern Seaboard Southeast Asia) avoid death and escape their respective malls to face the dangers Outside.
“Look out there,” says Leary. “It’s like Hell has boiled over. And we’ve got a tsunami, it looks to be a mile high, making right at us. That’s in case the shock waves and radiation don’t finish the job first.”
Survival is not merely an individual question. “What if we fail?” Leary asks as he dictates his running observations into the Lode, the Internet’s descendant as central repository of knowledge. “No big deal. That’s only the end of humanity. And if we don’t try? That’s the end of humanity too. So let’s bring it on.”
Piprell’s writing is a poetic dream as Cisco and Leary set out on heroes’ journeys to the same destination. Led and coached by ancient 20th century robotic pets whose software has been upgraded, they roll their naked bodies (see Adam and Eve) in blur dust to gain immunity from disassembly.
Experiences and characters along the way echo such works of similarly grand imagination as The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. There’s a scene reminiscent of perhaps the saddest moment in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine when one character comes across a pile of rubble consisting of moldering books and shards of a mirror – “frozen pieces of a world long departed, mere glimpses of what we once had and what was once possible.”
And, yes, we’re seeing the birth of a new civilization that’s assembling the elements of a truly up-to-date belief system. Much of the problem with modern mankind, as Joseph Campbell maintained, is that the dominant mythologies – notably those attached to such great religions as Christianity and Islam – are out of date. They fit poorly with what science has discovered. Piprell addresses that problem, head on, in this first volume of his “Magic Circles” trilogy. He is on his way to filling out his (re)creation myth further in subsequent volumes. The second, Genesis 2.0, is being published being published hard on the heels of MOM.
I won’t ruin that replacement-mythology part for you by going into detail. Suffice it to say that MOM is an amazing adventure taking us into a harsh yet often pleasurable future that previously was not even remotely imagined. The fast pace, subtle thematics, memorable multi-dimensional characters, full plot, imaginative sex and violence; the suspense, mystery and surprises played out on colorful, spectacular landscapes – all these elements combine powerfully to imprint the narrative in the reader’s mind the way a red hot branding iron marks a steer’s flank.
This is a page-turner that contains all the right components for a smash movie. As a longtime fan of Piprell (my previous favorite having been his comic thriller Kicking Dogs) I have to say that the Bard of Bangkok has really outdone himself this time. My strong hunch is that MOM is destined to attain classic status.
###
By Bradley K. Martin
In MOM, a sci-fi novel that will be of particular interest to Asia hands, Collin Piprell takes an astonishing leap into the mid-21st century.
It could be argued that we have quite enough real, present-day dystopias – such as North Korea, my own specialty. And then there’s the ruined United States of America that many fear Trump is on his way to leaving in his wake. One may think that there’s no point in even trying to imagine worse. Piprell, a Canadian hard-rock miner-tunneler-turned-Oxford polymath, has imagined worse.
By 2050, wars, global warming and malicious viruses have reduced humanity to just a few “wet” (natural-born) but sterile people. To keep them safe from the “blurs” (disassembler nanobots) that wreak havoc on the world Outside, the human remnants are confined in two remaining enclaves – huge, shielded structures, the “malls,” on the sites of the former New York City and Bangkok.
The mysterious Mall Operations Manager, MOM, has provided “ebees” (electronic beings) to keep the humans company. In lieu of human servants and other workers, “dolls” (ProvidAlls), molecular assemblers, on vocal command provide food and drink and other consumer goods using technologies that perhaps the rest of us should have seen coming with the introduction of 3D printers.
Some readers may at times lose track of the futuristic terminology. I’ll let you in on a little secret: There’s a glossary at the end of the book. You can flip back there and learn, for example, the full definition of the era’s guiding belief system:
transzoominism (n.) from “transhumanism,” from “trans*itional humanism”; an ideologized belief that humanity was in a stage in an evolutionary emergence of much greater scope, and that technology could and should be used to overcome limitations and extend personal powers; cyborgs and, ultimately among the more radical transzoominists, machines were seen as legitimate and desirable heirs to the human enterprise.
With little work for them to do, the humans occupy themselves playing in themed, generated-reality “Worlds” – except during times MOM designates as Mondays, when they mope around their apartments, forbidden to venture into the Worlds. In one only partially finished World created with early technology, a highly authentic girlie bar district in 20th century Bangkok, we meet Brian the Evil Canadian, the last human to have held the position of MOM before the machines took over. Brian is an excellent candidate for recognition as the most loathsome character in all literature.
As the novel opens, Mondays have been getting longer and more frequent. Meanwhile attacks on the malls from the Outside seem to have become both more frequent and more effective. Is MOM losing it? People can’t help wondering. And it’s not long before their fears prove well founded.
The malls are breached. Only a handful of humans including Worlds test-pilot Cisco Smith of ESUSA (Eastern Seaboard USA) and the crusty 113-year-old Leary of ESSEA (Eastern Seaboard Southeast Asia) avoid death and escape their respective malls to face the dangers Outside.
“Look out there,” says Leary. “It’s like Hell has boiled over. And we’ve got a tsunami, it looks to be a mile high, making right at us. That’s in case the shock waves and radiation don’t finish the job first.”
Survival is not merely an individual question. “What if we fail?” Leary asks as he dictates his running observations into the Lode, the Internet’s descendant as central repository of knowledge. “No big deal. That’s only the end of humanity. And if we don’t try? That’s the end of humanity too. So let’s bring it on.”
Piprell’s writing is a poetic dream as Cisco and Leary set out on heroes’ journeys to the same destination. Led and coached by ancient 20th century robotic pets whose software has been upgraded, they roll their naked bodies (see Adam and Eve) in blur dust to gain immunity from disassembly.
Experiences and characters along the way echo such works of similarly grand imagination as The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. There’s a scene reminiscent of perhaps the saddest moment in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine when one character comes across a pile of rubble consisting of moldering books and shards of a mirror – “frozen pieces of a world long departed, mere glimpses of what we once had and what was once possible.”
And, yes, we’re seeing the birth of a new civilization that’s assembling the elements of a truly up-to-date belief system. Much of the problem with modern mankind, as Joseph Campbell maintained, is that the dominant mythologies – notably those attached to such great religions as Christianity and Islam – are out of date. They fit poorly with what science has discovered. Piprell addresses that problem, head on, in this first volume of his “Magic Circles” trilogy. He is on his way to filling out his (re)creation myth further in subsequent volumes. The second, Genesis 2.0, is being published being published hard on the heels of MOM.
I won’t ruin that replacement-mythology part for you by going into detail. Suffice it to say that MOM is an amazing adventure taking us into a harsh yet often pleasurable future that previously was not even remotely imagined. The fast pace, subtle thematics, memorable multi-dimensional characters, full plot, imaginative sex and violence; the suspense, mystery and surprises played out on colorful, spectacular landscapes – all these elements combine powerfully to imprint the narrative in the reader’s mind the way a red hot branding iron marks a steer’s flank.
This is a page-turner that contains all the right components for a smash movie. As a longtime fan of Piprell (my previous favorite having been his comic thriller Kicking Dogs) I have to say that the Bard of Bangkok has really outdone himself this time. My strong hunch is that MOM is destined to attain classic status.
###
May 17, 2017
If you’re looking for a typical guns-in-space kind of science fiction novel, you’re in the wrong place. If, however, you’re looking for a science fiction exploration into the human condition during a time in which humans are becoming extinct, you are in for a mind-blowing treat.
See more of my review on my book review blog Scribbles, Quibbles, and Scrawlings: http://sqsreviews.com/book-reviews/sc...
See more of my review on my book review blog Scribbles, Quibbles, and Scrawlings: http://sqsreviews.com/book-reviews/sc...
April 7, 2017
You can find this review and others at my blog, Novelties.
Stepping just an inch inside Collin's world is not only terrifying but also thrilling. I wondered what I have gotten myself into. I haven't dived in to sci-fi for a long while. But Collin creates a richly dark and gritty story that will keep any science fiction lover up at night.
Our society is dead. The last remaining humans retreat and find shelter in Malls, where MOM (mall operations manager) protects them from the outside post-apocalyptic world and the superorganisms that destroyed it long ago. Cisco the Kid, the protagonist, and other test pilots "world" in generated realities. Throughout the book he starts to lose himself, and he finds that something in these virtual worlds doesn't add up. Once Cisco and the others discover MOM may have misled them and may also have become a self-aware AI, which may be slipping into insanity, life as they know it will change forever.
Overall I enjoyed reading MOM. I discovered an intriguing side to futuristic sci-fi, which isn't always on my TBR list. You get a strong sense that Collin takes the time to flesh out his work. And he dedicates his efforts to create an entirely unique world. How many times have you heard the word "autonomous ebee" (electronic being)? For this fantasy lover, I'm lucky if I understand it (and thankfully I do).
Collin's world building is superb. It hooks you in and takes you on a sci-fi junkie's mind-altering adventure. His characters move the story along and keep your attention. I'm not a huge fan of multiple POVs in stories. Sometimes I find any more than three distracting. However don't let that issue waylay you from reading the book. From chapter one to the next, you aren't sure which POV you'll read next, but that change keeps the story stimulating. One big tip any readers need for MOM is to pay attention to every detail. Collin incorporates intricate information into his work.
I think my only negative for the book is the terms and the language characters use. Understanding what each new word means took me awhile. If you aren't accustomed to this type of writing, you may feel a bit lost. But, and I mean but, I am grateful for the glossary (yes, this book has one). You know you've stepped into a multi-faceted universe when you find one at the end of the book.
But if you're a sci-fi fanatic like some people I know, MOM should be your next book. This book will take you on the craziest trip you've ever been on. And it will make you question everything. So get ready and strap in. MOM has just arrived.
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Stepping just an inch inside Collin's world is not only terrifying but also thrilling. I wondered what I have gotten myself into. I haven't dived in to sci-fi for a long while. But Collin creates a richly dark and gritty story that will keep any science fiction lover up at night.
Our society is dead. The last remaining humans retreat and find shelter in Malls, where MOM (mall operations manager) protects them from the outside post-apocalyptic world and the superorganisms that destroyed it long ago. Cisco the Kid, the protagonist, and other test pilots "world" in generated realities. Throughout the book he starts to lose himself, and he finds that something in these virtual worlds doesn't add up. Once Cisco and the others discover MOM may have misled them and may also have become a self-aware AI, which may be slipping into insanity, life as they know it will change forever.
Overall I enjoyed reading MOM. I discovered an intriguing side to futuristic sci-fi, which isn't always on my TBR list. You get a strong sense that Collin takes the time to flesh out his work. And he dedicates his efforts to create an entirely unique world. How many times have you heard the word "autonomous ebee" (electronic being)? For this fantasy lover, I'm lucky if I understand it (and thankfully I do).
Collin's world building is superb. It hooks you in and takes you on a sci-fi junkie's mind-altering adventure. His characters move the story along and keep your attention. I'm not a huge fan of multiple POVs in stories. Sometimes I find any more than three distracting. However don't let that issue waylay you from reading the book. From chapter one to the next, you aren't sure which POV you'll read next, but that change keeps the story stimulating. One big tip any readers need for MOM is to pay attention to every detail. Collin incorporates intricate information into his work.
I think my only negative for the book is the terms and the language characters use. Understanding what each new word means took me awhile. If you aren't accustomed to this type of writing, you may feel a bit lost. But, and I mean but, I am grateful for the glossary (yes, this book has one). You know you've stepped into a multi-faceted universe when you find one at the end of the book.
But if you're a sci-fi fanatic like some people I know, MOM should be your next book. This book will take you on the craziest trip you've ever been on. And it will make you question everything. So get ready and strap in. MOM has just arrived.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews