Overview
William Gibson meets Tom Clancy in this brilliant and chilling cyberthriller set in the multimedia world of the near furture—where oil is running out, wars are smart, and intelkligent software agents may be the only friends you can trust.
In the year 2030—when the world has doubled in population and no one escape the prying eyes of the State—John Grant wants to save the Earth from its addiction to oil and get rich in the process. But the revoultionary new molecule he has patented—an astonishing advance that can split water and produce a virtually limitless supply of cheap feul hydrogen—has marke him as a traitor to his country. . .and as a target. Sufi mystic, genius mathematician and master terroist Hamid Tabriz wants Grant's patent and his mind. Now both goals are within Tabriz's reach, thankls to a chip he has perfected which enables him to place his own mind in another's head.
An increasingly chatic world is racing toward annihilation. And John Grant will have to defend it—and himself—from a disembdied place far beyond the confines of space and time: in NANOTIME.
Editorials
San Diego Union-Tribune
A fast and gripping read...His characters live in a scary world, and Kosko makes it a plausible one.Gregory Benford
Fast, authoritative, street-savvy, and altogether too plausible—this is a power read for the next millenium.Publishers Weekly -
Cyberpunk composer, professor of electrical engineering and chief exponent of the AI field known as "fuzzy logic," witty West Coast media-darling Kosko spices his first novel with a gaudy array of new technologies, from artificial wombs that can tailor a fetus's genes at its parents' whim to miniaturized computers able to replace a human brain. The year is 2030, and John Grant has invented a process to transform water into virtually cost-free hydrogen fuel. Unfortunately for him, half the world's governments, dependent on rapidly decreasing oil reserves, want control of his invention, while the oil-producing governments want the secret of his process destroyed. Naturally, neither side is particularly interested in maintaining Grant's health. The action is fast and furious as our hero fights off attacks by secret agents, some of them supposedly on his side, while the planet teeters towards a third world war. Kosko's abilities to plot and develop characters aren't equal to his skills at the speculative blackboard. The only partially developed character, Grant, is thoroughly unpleasant, self-centered and self-righteous, while his adventures consist of a series of barely sketched encounters, most of which follow some variation of the same plot: a spy, soldier, head of state or scientist first tries to reason with someone else, then either kills him or is killed by him. Still, it's hard to dislike a novel that lets its protagonist commune with his own computer-generated, computer-enhanced John Stewart Mill (aka "Jism") while he dodges bullets and rescues life on Earth as we know it (only much, much cooler). (Oct.)Kirkus Reviews
Debut novel from the guru of fuzzy logic (the nonfiction Fuzzy Thinking, 1993). By 2030 the world's oil is running out, leading to conflict in the Middle East. Backed by Israel, John Grant has invented a "smart" molecule that splits water into hydrogen fuel and oxygen, and has a pilot plant up and running at Eilat. Then Sufi mystic, genius mathematician, and terrorist Hamid Tabriz destroys Eilat before grabbing Denise Cheng, John's lover and financial backer, in order to replace her brain with a super- microchip controlled by Tabriz. John is forced to kill Denise, though the unnamed US agencies that are keeping tabs on him seem curiously reluctant to get involved in the action. Later, the Israelis implant a chip in John's brain, so now his mind works at nanospeeds, while the Israelis control him via the chip—and use him as bait to tempt Tabriz out of hiding. But John's secret ally, Jism, an artificial intelligence he's created using the template of Victorian genius John Stuart Mill, can help him handle his new superfast intellect, evade the Israeli mindblocks, and zap Tabriz. Meanwhile, the Middle East conflict rapidly accelerates towards WW III.A brash, confused, and, well, fuzzy yarn that, with its relentlessly amoral inhabitants and doings, leaves an unpleasant aftertaste.