| I'll be curious to get your take after rereading it. If my essay gets any bigger it'll break the browser, so I'm going to make a few more notes here, while the book is fresh on my mind:
There's also a third story arc, centered on the three government agents, Daniel's handlers. Turner has some psi ability--he penetrates Bingle's organization and is discovered. Bingle ties him to a chair and keeps him dosed with LSD, along with an ex-SPAC student named Guglielmo; the two become Bingle's "zombies": a kind of human, mind-linked computer, a "Mr. Justice-sensor." Interesting parallel between these two and "the Doll," Daniel's lifelike supercomputer. Both are post-humans searching for the superhuman; in Bruce Sterling-speak, one might be called a Shaper and the other a Mechanist. Eventually Justice rescues Turner, and Turner becomes Justice's agent. Burgess is obsessed with "the Ridleys," a group of gene-altered Brainiacs; he's convinced that one of them has to be Justice. Eventually he tracks them down and kills them, a senseless waste of life that earns him a bullet from Turner. Bailey I've already mentioned. He alone continues to consider himself a government agent, long after there is no government. What happens to him after the "trial"? Perhaps he returns in the sequel.
To partly answer a question I posed a few days ago: Yes, Pala has time-hopping powers. It explains her initial appearance, nude, in Eric Fortney's trash can. It also explains her "disappearances" after she materializes to tantalize Daniel a few times.
Finally, DP mentioned writing a sequel to this book in our interview, and there are plenty of threads to be picked up. Who knows where Bingle went? Perhaps he lives, horrible burned. We readers are owed some back story on Macklin, and of course, Pala has had a child that may be the Kwisatz Haderach, or however the hell Frank Herbert spelled it.
I'm sure I'll think of more. Oh, yeah. Who's the bigger influence here, Theodore Sturgeon or A.E. Van Vogt? Traces of both are present. I'd say the former, from the writerly way the story's told. VV deals with the superhuman a lot, but his stories don't always "add up." Piserchia's, on the other hand, really works!
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There's also a third story arc, centered on the three government agents, Daniel's handlers. Turner has some psi ability--he penetrates Bingle's organization and is discovered. Bingle ties him to a chair and keeps him dosed with LSD, along with an ex-SPAC student named Guglielmo; the two become Bingle's "zombies": a kind of human, mind-linked computer, a "Mr. Justice-sensor." Interesting parallel between these two and "the Doll," Daniel's lifelike supercomputer. Both are post-humans searching for the superhuman; in Bruce Sterling-speak, one might be called a Shaper and the other a Mechanist. Eventually Justice rescues Turner, and Turner becomes Justice's agent. Burgess is obsessed with "the Ridleys," a group of gene-altered Brainiacs; he's convinced that one of them has to be Justice. Eventually he tracks them down and kills them, a senseless waste of life that earns him a bullet from Turner. Bailey I've already mentioned. He alone continues to consider himself a government agent, long after there is no government. What happens to him after the "trial"? Perhaps he returns in the sequel.
To partly answer a question I posed a few days ago: Yes, Pala has time-hopping powers. It explains her initial appearance, nude, in Eric Fortney's trash can. It also explains her "disappearances" after she materializes to tantalize Daniel a few times.
Finally, DP mentioned writing a sequel to this book in our interview, and there are plenty of threads to be picked up. Who knows where Bingle went? Perhaps he lives, horrible burned. We readers are owed some back story on Macklin, and of course, Pala has had a child that may be the Kwisatz Haderach, or however the hell Frank Herbert spelled it.
I'm sure I'll think of more. Oh, yeah. Who's the bigger influence here, Theodore Sturgeon or A.E. Van Vogt? Traces of both are present. I'd say the former, from the writerly way the story's told. VV deals with the superhuman a lot, but his stories don't always "add up." Piserchia's, on the other hand, really works!
- tom moody 4-10-2002 6:26 am