Closed Horizon

by Peter Lantos

The year is 2032. Mark Chadwick is a brilliant psychiatrist who is on the verge of a major scientific breakthrough. By combining functional imaging of the brain with computer technology, he can not only predict intentions but also decode human thought processes. It is this discovery which immediately attracts the attention of Robert Dufresne, a senior officer in Home Security who is determined to use this novel technique in the fight against the enemies of the Surveillance State...

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 28, 2012

Reviews

[Michael Pearce · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading (the very different and very moving biography) Parallel Lines and because I enjoyed Lantos’ fluent style I was keen to read another of his books and picked on Closed Horizon. I was not disappointed by the style and found this an enjoyable book and found his style easy and, with AI currently on everyone’s lips, the storyline is both relevant and, it felt, potentially prescient. Set in the near future (2032) I was able to appreciate the future world in which his protagonist lives and see that it is but a short evolution from today. Closed Horizons was published in 2012 and there are some references to technology that have missed the mark (particularly the ubiquity of Cloud storage) but that is an observation and not a criticism. My disappointment was that with so much detail having been provided and a story that really felt it was going somewhere the end was, at best, anticlimactic. At the end it felt that Mr Lantos had run out of steam and just wanted to draw to a close a plot that had enormous potential. A great pity. Perhaps William Boyd or Ian McEwan might like to run with it……

[Wilde Sky · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scientist experimenting with changing people’s behaviour patterns is approached by a state agency and offered funding in return for help with ‘the control of undesirables’ but feels uneasy about accepting due to the authoritarian nature of the Government.

I found the central idea of this book to be interesting and it was reasonably well written, but it kept drifting off into back story and was a bit slow.

[Ade Couper · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't get on with this.

The main idea (Scientist decodes human thought patterns: military want to use it to be nasty to people) is good, but unfortunately I really couldn't warm to the characters at all . I tried to like it, but when even the hero comes across as rather unpleasant & dislikeable then there's not really any way back....