At only about 100 pages this is really a novella and in my eBook edition came with a second shorter and unrelated story – The Tear.
The central premise of this book is both interesting and full of great possibilities most of which are largely ignored; the book instead focuses more on the moral conflicts than the direct effects. The premise is what McDonald has called fracters; abstracts patterns/images/designs that, when viewed, skip the conscious mind and go direct to the subconscious. Amongst a host of other ‘powers’ they can be used to heal, overwhelm with religious ecstasy, destroy with terror or subjugate with involuntary obedience, each one controlled by a different fracter. There is only one copy (on disk) of these fracters that is possessed by the main protagonist, Ethan. And that is one of my main problems with the foundations of this book. Captured by an intelligence agency Ethan is forced to work for them using his fracters to control and assassinate enemies. They even tattoo a couple of them onto his hands. And yet for some reason they do not, apparently, make their own copy of the fracters (even though they are able to do the tattooing) nor do they make any attempt to duplicate the original research that created them in the first place. And then they let Ethan, with his one unique, unbacked up copy of the fracters wander around at will. This is just so implausible as to be laughable and constantly nagged at me whilst reading.
Unhappy about what he has become Ethan embarks upon Japanese pilgrimage (which is actually interesting in its own right) to try and find direction in his life. This journey is the bulk of the book, written in first person with the backstory provided by flashbacks interwoven throughout the story. As Ethan claims to no longer be that original Ethan the flashbacks are interestingly presented in third person.
The story is an enjoyable enough read but is sadly let down by that lack of plausibility in its foundations and also by McDonald’s over optimistic expectations of the pace of technological development. Written in the mid-nineties and set around 2020 McDonald surely cannot have genuinely thought we would advance so far in computers, mind downloading and robotics and have such huge step changes in society in less than thirty years. This too kept nagging at me. Far better had he set the book a hundred years on the future.
This is my first Ian McDonald book and, despite my complaints, I am inclined to try more from him; his ideas are interesting and his writing is solid
3/5 stars
The central premise of this book is both interesting and full of great possibilities most of which are largely ignored; the book instead focuses more on the moral conflicts than the direct effects. The premise is what McDonald has called fracters; abstracts patterns/images/designs that, when viewed, skip the conscious mind and go direct to the subconscious. Amongst a host of other ‘powers’ they can be used to heal, overwhelm with religious ecstasy, destroy with terror or subjugate with involuntary obedience, each one controlled by a different fracter. There is only one copy (on disk) of these fracters that is possessed by the main protagonist, Ethan. And that is one of my main problems with the foundations of this book. Captured by an intelligence agency Ethan is forced to work for them using his fracters to control and assassinate enemies. They even tattoo a couple of them onto his hands. And yet for some reason they do not, apparently, make their own copy of the fracters (even though they are able to do the tattooing) nor do they make any attempt to duplicate the original research that created them in the first place. And then they let Ethan, with his one unique, unbacked up copy of the fracters wander around at will. This is just so implausible as to be laughable and constantly nagged at me whilst reading.
Unhappy about what he has become Ethan embarks upon Japanese pilgrimage (which is actually interesting in its own right) to try and find direction in his life. This journey is the bulk of the book, written in first person with the backstory provided by flashbacks interwoven throughout the story. As Ethan claims to no longer be that original Ethan the flashbacks are interestingly presented in third person.
The story is an enjoyable enough read but is sadly let down by that lack of plausibility in its foundations and also by McDonald’s over optimistic expectations of the pace of technological development. Written in the mid-nineties and set around 2020 McDonald surely cannot have genuinely thought we would advance so far in computers, mind downloading and robotics and have such huge step changes in society in less than thirty years. This too kept nagging at me. Far better had he set the book a hundred years on the future.
This is my first Ian McDonald book and, despite my complaints, I am inclined to try more from him; his ideas are interesting and his writing is solid
3/5 stars
