|
 Headcrash by Bruce Bethke
reviewed by Underview
Original appearance: Albedo one issue 11, 1996
The 1995 Philip K. Dick Award went to Headcrash by Bruce Bethke. It was a novel that passed me by when originally published last year but seeing as how it won something and I was pretty hard up for primo product I decided to give it a try.
Now some bloke who goes by the name of Joel Rosenberg is quoted on the cover as saying, 'Watch out Bruce Sterling, William Gibson and John Shirley. Here comes Bruce Bethke. And he's got a chainsaw.' Pardon me for requesting a reality check but, unless my brain has been out to lunch for the past decade I'm pretty sure that the writers named in the above quote have a science fiction style in common. To put it in plain language they write what may still be referred to (though the label is already headed for that vault called passé or at least déclassé) as cyberpunk. So I do not think it unreasonable that I should have expected something stylistically similar to the works of the aforesaid gentlemen from Bruce Bethke.
Admittedly Headcrash features computers and the future - a not too pleasant near-future at that - and some of the action even takes place in cyberspace but, repeat for emphasis, but cyberpunk as a moniker was given to a style and an outlook, not just a bunch of furniture to be pushed around the stage of science fiction stories. Headcrash has definitely got the furniture but it is about as far from cyberpunk in feel as it is possible to get. Has William Gibson ever written a story that even pretended to humour? Could the desire to make his readers laugh be surgically implanted in John Shirley? (Please insert your own Bruce Sterling query here.)
But what the hell, despite having my mouth in shape for hard-edged, dystopian fiction with a side order of social relevance and a seasoning of predictive élan, I was presented with... Headcrash by Bruce Bethke, one of the few intelligent comic novels to have entered the science fiction filed in the (post?) cyberpunk era.
Jack Burroughs is a computer nerd. In real life he is a reasonably competent programmer working for a large multi-national corporation. In cyberspace he is Max Cool, hard drinker, fast liver, hero to nerds and possessor of a killer Harley (virtual, of course). In real life he gets fired because his new boss doesn't like him and nobody cares enough to help him. But in cyberspace he is offered a million dollars to perform one (not so) simple task. Only a coward would turn down an opportunity like that. As it turns out, only an idiot would have accepted.
The only trait that Jack possesses in more abundance than cowardice is stupidity. He takes the job and discovers himself involved with hackers possessed of a higher level of ability than he had even imagined possible - super users. To survive he will have to become one himself. To become one he will have to use the dreaded new and illegal technology which produced the Procto-Prod. Bummer. Once he has experienced its uniquely intimate interface (Vaseline recommended) cyberspace will never be the same again.Bethke's book is wildly imaginative, ingenious, inventive and a lot of other words with the in prefix. It is also highly amusing and effortlessly entertaining. The terrifying thing is that Headcrash is his first novel. If he's this good now, who knows the heights he might reach by the time he's got half a dozen under his belt. As long as he doesn't take the easy way out and write sequels.
|
