Ramez NaamReviews

This was a very fun listen. It had (very) speculative neuroscience, nerdy grad students, buddhism, post-human special agents, "uploaded" scientists, lots of actions and plot full of exciting twists and turns. The narration was very good. I'll definitely be listening to the other two parts of the trilogy.

Fantastic. Cannot wait to start the second book.

I finished this book awhile ago. Between then and now I've been letting it settle into my bones, this surprising and satisfying third in the Nexus Trilogy. I am not sure I have ever read any tale this complex in which the ending was so thick with surprise, loss, and, despite that, also happiness.

The series is a wildly complex world-spanning, mind-expanding multi-roller-coaster ride and count yourself lucky that now all three are there for you. I had to WAIT!

This story hijacked my brain. I was not sure Naam could take it as far as I thought it needed to go.

Ha.

Boy could he.

As soon as its sequel came out, I read it too. I've pre-ordered the completion of the trilogy (Apex) because the second one (Crux) was even better with even more complexity!

If complex stories scare you, don't let that stop you here. The author is capable of doing the neurological priming you need. :)

Wow, what a trip.

In this book, humans can be modified, giving them extra strength, and the technology of the near future in this setting has allowed them to do this.
But along with some of the modifications, especially for combat "personnel," comes unknown threats, as in the threat Wats has that he will develop cancer.
"the lump on his forearm was red, agitated. It's stood out against his dark skin. Wats rubbed at it. It felt hard, hot to the touch. Skin peeled away under his fingers. He was bloody underneath. He peered at the uncovered tumor. Deep within it he could almost see the broken strands of DNA, his chromosomes fraying like split ends, giving birth to the cancers that would eat him. Another lump caught his attention. Another. His wrist was covered with them. His hands. His arm. In horror he ripped open his shirt. Red, angry lumps were growing on his chest, on his belly. They were rising, expanding, spreading as he watched, covering him...
Wats jerked awake.
Breathe. Breathe. Early morning light was filtering in through the windows.
Not the cancers. Not yet."
For now, this was only wat's nightmare. However, he has been warned that it could become very real.

Since the Reagan era began it, and we have all become dumbed-down zombies, keeping our heads down, and our eyes trained on the screens...
"The Chandler act (aka the emerging technological threats act of 2032) is the opening salvo in a new War on Science. To understand the future course of this war, one need only look at the history of the War on Drugs and the War on error. Like those two manufactured "wars", this one will be never-ending, freedom-destroying, counterproductive, and ultimately understood to have caused far more damage than the supposed threat it was aimed at ever could have.
Free the future, 2032"

After the government picked up his companions at the party outside the hangar at moffett Field, what was the only one who escaped. He swore to himself that he would save cage. He has followed him across a continent, and an ocean.
Kade and cataranas are invited to a party where the drug Nexus, combined with another drug that enhances empathy, will be provided for participants. Wats sits, unbeknownst to party goers, one floor above, eavesdropping in order to make sure that Kade is safe.
"Wats sat cross-legged one floor above Kade and Cataranes. His weapons were at his sides. Chameleon-wear made his still form difficult to pick out from his surroundings. A heat capacitor attached to his combat suit slowly siphoned off the excess warmth his body produced, keeping him from boiling in the infrared blocking garment. The data fob felt hard and cool against his chest.
His radio had picked up bursts of encrypted chatter twice tonight. The commandos were near. He wasn't sure where, but they were near.
It was a relief to feel the party below drift towards sleep. His nodes were in strictly receive-only mode. It was hard to get a good Nexus connection that way. Two-way feedback was necessary to synchronize, to get a clear transfer of concepts.
But he caught enough. The night had affected him powerfully. He was a part of the Buddha too. He was the dark mirror of a bodhisattva in his own way. He was the opposite of the enlightened teacher. He was one who would risk rebirth in darkness and ignorance, ever further from Nirvana, so that others might have their chance at peace and enlightenment.
He wondered if, in a past life, cataranas had been one of those as well."

From the author's afterword:
"Finally, the Nexus backdoor that Kade and Rangan code on the airplane is based on a very real hack created by Ken Thompson, one of the inventors of the Unix operating system, that gave Thompson and his colleagues a backdoor into every copy of Unix that existed for several years. That hack went undiscovered until Thompson revealed its existence in a public lecture, after all versions containing the back door were gone, more than a decade later."

This is a wonderful book, about a drug called Nexus, that modifies human brains, modifying them in order for a human brain to communicate directly with another's mind.
The government is trying to stop anyone from using it, because they fear they will not be able to control it, and make money out of it.

I think my Goodreads friend aPriL will have gotten more out of this than I could, with her experience with computers. I do not know any programming, and I know less than the average young person does, about computers. However, if you don't understand those parts of the book, where there's computer commands and they're talking about computer "stuff," there's still plenty of gist to be got out of those parts, by context.
This is part of a three-book series, and I already have the second book coming from the library.

3.5 stars
In the beginning of this book, Kade is using his back door to Nexus to make sure it is not being used by people driven by chaos. In one instant, a man is using a virus passed through Nexus, to coerce a girl to letting him rape her:
"Memories came back, streaming from bogdan's mind. Corfu. Ibiza. Mykonos. Three Nexus-aided thefts. One leading to a murder.
And worse. He caught a glimpse of a girl, terrified, senses mentally crippled, her clothes half ripped off, her body held down by bogdan's will and his perverted code as he...
Kade grimaced, and yanked himself away from bogdan's memory. Thousands of miles away, his stomach rose up. His fists clenched.
You're disgusting, Bogdan.
Kade started in on the rewiring, tying neural circuits together. Bogdan's knowledge of programming. His understanding of Nexus. His concept of violence. His capacity for sexual arousal. All of these Kade tied to nausea, to crippling anxiety, to pervasive pain.
The man yelled at him. What are you doing?
I'm neutering you, Kade told him, Grim satisfaction rising in his thoughts. You won't ever steal, or kill, or f*** again.
Bogdan gasped in shock, then resumed his rage. You can't do this! What gives you the right?
I made this, Kade told the man. That gives me the right.

Ilya Alexander, Kade's friend who helped program Nexus 5, is captured and being held prisoner at the homeland security complex. She's been tortured for the passcode to the back door, but nothing has broken her so far. She knows she won't be able to hold out for much longer, so she selects a program within Nexus to end her own life. I almost cried at this part:
"she had to do it. She wouldn't give them the codes. She wouldn't live and have others die or be degraded instead.
Lub-dub.
The meaning of a thing is the impact it has on the world around it, she thought. The meaning of a life is the impact that life has on the world. I won't have my life mean slavery in mind control for others.
Ilya Alexander took one last deep breath, and ran the code she'd written. Her body trembled.
Lub dub. Lub... Dub.
Her heart beat one last time, then nothing. The world began to fade away, bit by final bit.
she heard a tone sound as she left the world behind. An alarm. The sound of a door opening and people rushing in to keep her alive. To break her.
But they were too late. Too late.
As the last light of consciousness left Ilya Alexander, she felt, as if far far away, the thoughts of other minds. Children's minds. Messy, chaotic, and so very... Very... Bright. And her last thought was one of Hope."

Shiva Prasad is a billionaire who promotes children receiving Nexus 5. He believes that Nexus 5 can be used for good in the world. Sam looks up what he's done with his foundation, Mira, because she's hoping to join it when Shiva allows the children that must move from the orphanage where she's helping, to move there with him to his island complex But so far, he won't allow her to come with them:
"A corrupt Laotian Governor -- who'd swapped medicines Mira delivered for fakes, sold the real ones on the black market, hanged in his living room.
A criminal gang in Burma who'd abducted and gangraped three female Mira foundation workers. The gang members had been found hog-tied and chained to the floor, face down on their knees, dead of massive hemorrhaging from the blunt objects they'd been violated with.
No crime had ever been pinned on Mira. But across the net she found the quiet assumption that Mira had been responsible, and approval that they'd taken on the thugs that plagued the developing world.
She reached the case she remembered last. The Dalit orphanage in Bihar, in Northern India. A rumor had spread among villagers that it was the site of transhuman experiments, that loathed Dalit children inside we're being turned into superhuman untouchables with black magical abilities. Tensions had run high. Then one night the orphanage Gates had been chained shut from the outside and the whole structure had been burned to the ground. 35 children and half-a-dozen orphanage staff had burned to death.
Sam Shivered reading it, thinking of her own childhood, of the suspicions of the villagers from mae dong. Of the bottle throwing, the attack on Jake.
There had been a trial, with a lacklustre prosecution and a judge who'd dismissed all charges against the seven villagers charged with the murder.
A week later, those villagers, the judge, and the prosecutor had been found dead, crucified and burned to death just outside the village."
Now that's Justice!

Holtzman is a government scientist who is finding out how corrupt his employers are. He's been told to do work that he's no longer comfortable with: finding a vaccine for children who have been infected with Nexus, and forcing Nexus out of the brains of the children who are imprisoned in the homeland security complex. He finds out that the government started a group pretending to fight the government's attempt to stop post-humans. Domestic Terrorist attacks:
"Someone had used the Nexus from his lab. Someone had used the software his team had built. They'd used it to take control of Steve Travers, to turn him into a robot assassin, they'd used it to tell him to fire.
And to fire half a meter to the left of his Target.
They'd used it to shoot at the president, but not to hit him. To miss.
'they could have at least been better shots!' Anne [his wife] said in his memories.
Oh no. They hit exactly what they meant to.
Who had the most to gain? Nakamura's voice asked him.
Stockton [the president] was losing until the PLF tried to kill him, Anne answered. He's going to win because of the assassination attempt.
The answer was clear.
The president had the most to gain."

This part, where a monk named Ananda had taught Kade how to control his thinking, to fight against the government trying to capture him, trying to torture him to give them information. I need to remember it when my machista ex-husband says cruel things to try to hurt me, and my mind becomes so enraged that I can't think clearly:
"then Ananda was in his thoughts. A memory of the monk.
When you suffer, Ananda had told him, when you rage. When you weep. When you crave. That is when you must still your mind."

I liked this book; I like how Sam stopped working for the CIA, and joined Kade's efforts to stop people working chaos with Nexus. it wasn't as good as the first book; there was just so much of these superhuman soldiers fighting like ninjas.
Moreover, in the afterward by the author, Naam talked about how what happened in this book is being worked on in real life. How experiments are being done on monkeys and rats, implanting things in their brains, to see if they can reach out to other minds.
This is what I hate: using animals without their permission. I've seen videos of monkeys with these horrors implanted in their brains. It brought down my opinion of the author very much, because he spoke of it as if it's a good thing.

This has a little of everything - action fighting, philosophy, human interaction, a little sex here and there, but so far, it's not really excelling at any of them, to me. It seems like it's trying to push certain ways of thinking about what it is to be human, and whether we should embrace the ability to become super humans or cloned humans.

So far, it's still hard to tell who are the good guys and bad guys. One group is the US government fighting against drugs that give people more power. They come off as realists in the beginning, but toward the end, they begin to look like tyrants.

On the other side are scientists and idealists who think only good will come from their efforts. They seem a bit naive to me, so far. All in all, it's got the flavor of the Star Wars movies, except that the force is a sort of drug, called Nexus.

I think the second part will tell whether this is an exceptional or so-so book.

I had mixed feelings about this series. I rated it a little higher because the science is, to me, believable and real. I've been into computers and electronics off and on for over 40 years, and "modern" computers for over 25. I was a programmer using the internet by 1990 (mainly newsgroups at that time), so I felt right at home with a lot of the technical talk. Much of the technical terms would be above an average reader's comprehension, though. If that were the case with me, I don't know if I would have enjoyed it very much.

I've read a lot of similar stories where human consciousness is uploaded, duplicated, backed up, etc; it makes you wonder just what makes us who we are, and whether we can effectively live on after our body dies. After all, people have parts of their body replaced without becoming less human, so what if you replace your entire body, and duplicate your memories and brain's capabilities? If you haven't read books that explore these concepts, you might be interested in that aspect of the book.

I also found it interesting to have servers running inside your brain, like having a server running on your computer. This is something else I've had a lot of experience with, so it all seemed real and understandable to me.

However, the main story was a different beast. I was often not sure who were the good guys and the bad guys. Perhaps that was part of the reason for the story - that people are not black or white. Many of the people did bad things for good reasons, but it's hard to know whether they were right to do these things - like trying to force their solutions on people. It was often hard to really be sympathetic toward any of the characters. The one I liked best was Feng, a clone who was built to be a fighter/killing machine. He was definitely the most entertaining to me. But overall, I found the story itself to be unsatisfying.

Entertaining, not mindblowing (pun not intended)

This book remains unfinished, as it was a bit of a dense read for me. My son saw the cover and asked to borrow it and he is finding it an interesting read. I hope if finds its way back to me so I can finish it!

3.5 stars!

This is a book I've owned for forever and I am glad I finally got to it. This book is a near-future sci-fi cyberpunk type story. I have a hard time occasionally with these type of stories because I have my own strong opinions about experimental and future tech and the ramifications of this tech. Facebook's motto used to be "move fast and break things" and they did help with breaking lots of things, including possibly privacy and democracy. This did come into conflict for me with this book. I am not sold on the solution the hero comes up with. What I did like was the complex moral scenario the authors sets up and his ability to provide different perspectives on what should happen in a way that allows the reader to try to answer it for themselves.

I liked the characters fine but they did take a back seat for me. The characters were put in some harrowing situations and I could never bring myself to really care if they made it or not. This did lessen the emotional impact of certain scenes and I do wish I had connected more to the characters. I also felt like I never really understood what made Kade so specially. Like, obviously he is super smart and has created this new tech but it seems like there are a couple of scientists working on it but a bunch of people putting themselves in danger to protect Kade. There are other characters like Sam that I wanted to connect to but couldn't really. She has an interesting back story and motivation but I just never really cared about her. The characters are good vehicles for the story but didn't stand out to me.

I think I probably will continue on with this series at some point. The writing is good and it is very thought provoking. I'm glad I finally picked this one up and if you like fiction about the possibilities of tech in the near future, I would recommend this.½

I really enjoyed Nexus and was excited to see how the story would continue in book 2. As I read Crux I was intrigued by the plot, apparently enough to plod through the clumsy writing and overlook the almost unforgivable number of typos. After I finally made it to the end, after 500 pages of frustration, I was feeling a little less enthusiastic about the plot. I have Apex sitting in front of me now and am trying to work my way through. I am still interested in the premise of the trilogy and want to see how the story ends, but the clunky writing and blatant typos are a serious distraction.

Outstanding, insightful argument for how human ingenuity will solve the problems facing us.

It's been a while since I've read near future science fiction that wasn't overly apocalyptic. This was a good re-introduction thereto.

Basically, we're a few decades in the future. Genemods and other biotechnology are known and not entirely uncommon. I'm not sure such technology will actually be available in only 25 years, but it would be interesting to live in a world where such things have come to be.

The technology at the core of the story is Nexus: a nanotech drug that allows brain to brain communication. Even further, the main character has figured out how to run an OS on it. You're basically installing a new OS and code directly on your brain. That sounds at once really cool and terrifying to me. Especially since I do believe that this is in our future, whether or not it comes about via something like Nexus. It's only a matter of time.

Beyond that, I found the characters in general interesting. Seeing Kaden Lane's thought process as he came up against radically different government philosophies and ended up in situations well out of his depth was interesting. Su-Yong Shu as an early posthuman seemed at once just human and alien enough to be believable.

As both a positive and negative, there are a lot of frantic action scenes, particularly in the latter half of the book. They're well written and driving but got right on the edge of action fatigue by the end.

Overall, great book. Among the best cyberpunkish / near future sci fi I've ever read. Big world building cliff hanger right at the end. Definitely going to read the sequel(s).

Crux basically picks up where Nexus let off.

Nexus is a force in the world, with more than a million people using it, growing every day. One particularly interesting use is giving Nexus to children with autism to allow them to communicate directly mind to mind. Another is the children that were born to parents using Nexus. Interesting in both cases.

On the negative side, there have already been cases of people using Nexus for more nefarious purposes. Rape. Blackmail. Assassination. Like any new technology, there is the potential for much to go wrong. Something this big? Of course it does.

But where it really starts getting terrifying is when you consider the parallels with what Snowden revealed a few years ago and the current election cycle. The United States government (among others) in the world of Nexus has made such transhuman technology a crime. They are detaining those same children born with Nexus. One of the main storylines of Crux is just how deep such a hidden agenda might go. It's well written.

One note from a structural standpoint is that there is quite a lot of action in this book. It gets to the point where the action itself starts to drag. It could really use a few more breathers. It's certainly not a dealbreaker, but I think Nexus did it better.

All together, an excellent book. I look forward to the conclusion.

Final note: Feng is my favorite. He's hilarious.

A solid conclusion to the Nexus trilogy. Some things go exactly as I expected them to, but there are still a fair few surprises thrown in for good measure. For the most part, a lot of loose ends are tied up, making it a good way to end a series.

The stakes go up with most of the world in turmoil, the US and China in particular. The Chinese part was interesting (particularly since I've spent some time studying how the Chinese censorship systems work in the modern day), but felt tonally rather different from the previous books. It vaguely fits, but it felt almost like half a sequel and half something entirely new.

Speaking of a different focus, this book does turn a bit of the focus away from Nexus towards the post-human thoughts. Shu in particular. That particular storyline had already come about in the second book, but it really comes to the fore here. Again, it feels like the general story was drifting a bit, even if the drifting was interesting.

Overall, I think this Apex is weaker than Nexus and about as strong as the middle book. Apex is crazy huge and drags at time, but by this point I've invested enough time that I really want to see it through. I'm glad I did.

Random side note: The blurb says "They call them the Apex - humanity's replacement.". Did they actually mention this term at all in this book? I don't remember that overmuch.

His is a very ambitious final book in the trilogy and I think it is wonderfully insightful and nuanced in its look at enhanced humans. I really enjoyed this series a lot and feel like I got to think about many ideas I had not previously considered. Bravo!

Ok, to start with the obvious: the author should have been told that tacking on a 5 minute lecture on the dangers of fascism as an epilogue is a terrible idea. Once again, I blame the editor. After a largely show me, don't tell me book, why, oh why would you add this in?

But over the years I've noticed that libertarians can't resist a good preach when they get a chance and audience. And make no mistake about it while the ideas in this book are fun and the concepts are fresh, the setting is, erm, old. Big government struggling against big government and our little libertarian-leaning hero in a moral dilemma in which he has to decide whether to release all this new tech gunpowder out into the world.

There are pretty standard techno-thriller troupes and scenes here. Nothing particularly new, but the characters are believably drawn with actual moral dilemmas that they struggle with. Not to say there is ever a chance they will do anything but what the action sequences say they will, but at least they are internally struggling with it.

Not that its a bad book, it's a joy to read a techno thriller by someone who actually understands the mechanics of creating tech- at least programming. I'm pretty certain all the nano and bio tech are just hand waving. But the descriptions of what it is like to program were pretty spot on. I was cracking up when I hit a part where they have to hack the dates on the source control entries and log messages! As a software guy, I can tell you that at least that part was very realistic.

So overall a pretty good book. A quick read so if you don't like it, at least you haven't lost much time. I almost certainly won't go for the second one coming out because there just wasn't enough new about his to make it rise above its tired setting.

Great book. Highly recommended.

Second Nexus book finished! Will there be a third?I do enjoy these techno-thrillers, but the writing is a bit stale. That said, I'll continue to read these! Ramez can only get better. :)

Pretty solid science fiction book. A quick read and very readable and also a quite good story overall.

The first third of this book is spectacular; it promises to weave together interesting technology, psychedelia, theory of mind, and the life of a grad student into one coherent package. And then it turns into Tom Clancy shlock and never comes back to any of those themes. It's a shame how much wasted opportunity I found in this book.

Fantastic! Gets my vote for the Campbell award!

Naive tech hippie
vs. cartoon government
killing kids and monks.

Ramez Naam, a technologist at Microsoft, gives his literary influences as Neal Stephenson, William Gibson and Charlie Stross, and these show quite heavily in this, his first novel. It is a sci-fi novel of ideas, of technological advancement and the way society views and tries to integrate - or reject - these technologies, so very much in the ballpark of Stephenson, especially his earlier work.


The technologies in question are those that enhance human abilities - genetic tech and muscle and nerve enhancements and, the particular focus, nanotech designer drugs that impart both cerebral enhancement and integrated consciousness. In the 2040s the US has lead - or pushed - the rest of the world into the Copenhagen Accords, which ban the use and development of these drugs but, of course, some governments do develop them for their own use and even some US government agencies tasked with their control are not above utilising their effects.


The most widespread of these drugs is Nexus and a young scientist named Kaden Lane has developed Nexus 5, in iteration which seems to bond itself to the neurons and axons of the brain and make these effects not only more acute, but permanent. When busted by the ERD (the Emerging Risks Directorate, the US agency seeking to control - or eradicate - these technologies) he is given the choice of working for them or he and all his friends and acquaintances and anyone he has ever supplied going to prison for a very long time.


Naam writes a good action novel full of excellent ideas, wherein he explores the arguments and ideals of different points of view on the issue of human enhancement - indeed, post-humanism - and gives gives all the characters enough personality and personal motivation that there are no monsters; the ‘bad guys’ have very good, moral reasons for their standpoints and actions. The writing is sometimes a little on the clumsy side, but it is a first novel, and I am very much looking forward to seeing Naam develop as a writer and to see where his ideas go in the rest of the series.