Flashback
by Dan Simmons
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A provocative dystopian thriller set in a future that seems scarily possible, "Flashback" proves why Dan Simmons is one of our most exciting and versatile writers. The United States is near total collapse. But 87% of the population doesn't care: they're addicted to flashback, a drug that allows its users to re-experience the best moments of their lives. After ex-detective Nick Bottom's wife died in a car accident, he went under the flash to be with her; he's lost his job, his teenage son, show more and his livelihood as a result. Nick may be a lost soul but he's still a good cop, so he is hired to investigate the murder of a top governmental advisor's son. This flashback-addict becomes the one man who may be able to change the course of an entire nation turning away from the future to live in the past. show lessTags
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grizzly.anderson Both books extrapolate on current social and political trends to produce a dystopian future.
Member Reviews
Flashback is a drug that allows you to dream/remember/re-live parts of your past life in real time and with perfect clarity. The novel tells the story of addict and former Denver police detective Nick Bottom, interleaved with the story of his son and father-in-law, and with flashbacks to the last major murder case Nick worked.
In the near future all of the worst predictions about the social and economic future of the US have come to pass and the world is largely divided between the resurgent Japanese and the nations of Islam known as the Caliphate. The US is broken apart, with an ineffective federal government kow-towing to the two powerhouses and losing states to independence and the Mexican Reconquista of the South-West.
In this show more dystopian land, the Japanese district "adviser" for Colorado hires Nick to solve the years-old murder of his son, which remains unsolved despite multiple investigations by local, national, and international authorities. Nick is a flashback addict so desperate to sped all his time re-living the best moments of his life with wife before she died that he has abandoned his son with his father-in-law in California and doesn't really even question the motives of the Adviser in hiring a washed up ex-cop.
Nick's son Val is also a flashback addict, running with a gang in LA that commits violent crimes, the more violent the better, for the purpose of re-living them through flashback. (Think Clockwork Orange) As the situation in LA deteriorates into outright war, Val and his grandfather make their escape to Denver, and Val begins to find his way out of flashback and into reality. In roughly alternating chapters that flash back to run through the same time period, Nick begins to engage more in his investigation and less in his addiction, especially as he begins to believe that the old murder may tie in with the death of his wife.
The story moves swiftly along, especially for a 550 page novel, to bring everything to a conclusion where the detective gathers all the suspects and other players into a room and reveals the killer.
As always with Simmons, the writing is superb, the characters and situations carefully crafted with layers upon layers waiting to be peeled back and exposed. The world is so carefully realized, and such a careful extension of some of the most right-leaning doomsayers that I was often grumpy at those aspects of the premise even as I was completely enthralled with the novel. As a result I found it just as interesting to read Dan Simmons's afterword, where he explains why and how he went about writing a dystopian novel, as it was to read the novel itself. show less
In the near future all of the worst predictions about the social and economic future of the US have come to pass and the world is largely divided between the resurgent Japanese and the nations of Islam known as the Caliphate. The US is broken apart, with an ineffective federal government kow-towing to the two powerhouses and losing states to independence and the Mexican Reconquista of the South-West.
In this show more dystopian land, the Japanese district "adviser" for Colorado hires Nick to solve the years-old murder of his son, which remains unsolved despite multiple investigations by local, national, and international authorities. Nick is a flashback addict so desperate to sped all his time re-living the best moments of his life with wife before she died that he has abandoned his son with his father-in-law in California and doesn't really even question the motives of the Adviser in hiring a washed up ex-cop.
Nick's son Val is also a flashback addict, running with a gang in LA that commits violent crimes, the more violent the better, for the purpose of re-living them through flashback. (Think Clockwork Orange) As the situation in LA deteriorates into outright war, Val and his grandfather make their escape to Denver, and Val begins to find his way out of flashback and into reality. In roughly alternating chapters that flash back to run through the same time period, Nick begins to engage more in his investigation and less in his addiction, especially as he begins to believe that the old murder may tie in with the death of his wife.
The story moves swiftly along, especially for a 550 page novel, to bring everything to a conclusion where the detective gathers all the suspects and other players into a room and reveals the killer.
As always with Simmons, the writing is superb, the characters and situations carefully crafted with layers upon layers waiting to be peeled back and exposed. The world is so carefully realized, and such a careful extension of some of the most right-leaning doomsayers that I was often grumpy at those aspects of the premise even as I was completely enthralled with the novel. As a result I found it just as interesting to read Dan Simmons's afterword, where he explains why and how he went about writing a dystopian novel, as it was to read the novel itself. show less
As always, Dan Simmons writes a mean story. Whether or not you buy into the political direction of it, you can still enjoy the excitement and imagination in it's pages. The one thing he doesn't do is edit out details. There are plenty of those, and for readers who want a quick and simple read, they will not find it here. At the end of the book, there is a printed interview with Mr. Simmons. In one of the questions, he talks a bit about George Orwell's 1984 and how it has impacted generations since. The introduction of "Big Brother" certainly has produced a level of distrust by many people towards those in authority. This has perhaps been helpful in some instances and irrational in others, but it has affected how we look at the future. show more For writers and readers of dystopian novels, Orwell is the gold standard. I think that Dan Simmons has done a great job of creating this fearful but still hopeful look at what the future could hold. He trusts in the power of love and concern for others to overcome that of any political or power hungry sect or individual. The author himself admits that the politics in the book is not one that he espouses, but in reality, it could be the future of any political direction that goes too far off course. I enjoyed this story and recommend it to anyone who is willing to look at the future with concern and yet a hopeful soul. show less
I was going to start this off by saying it's been a little while since I've read a book by Dan Simmons. After a little research, it turns out that of the six books he has written in the last two decades, four of those were historical fiction, not my preferred read. Dystopian futures though, that is very much a loved genre for me. Simmons did a great job here.
The story follows Nick Bottom, a former detective who is now addicted to a drug called Flashback. It allows users to go back and relive desired times in their past. Nick is hired to discover the killer from a six year old cold case. There is a lot more to it but it is also too much to summarize.
Simmons did a great job of world building, creating new cultures, addictions, show more governments, politics and more. One scary aspect of the book was despite it being written over a decade ago, so much of it can apply right now. Or rather so much of today's world seems like it is a small step away from the world in this novel. The politics and sides fighting and isolation that the USA has here could truly just be around the corner for us in real life. Anyway, I liked the story here also. It was pretty much a big whodunnit mystery but one that seemed to span more than just the people involved. It included the past and the future. It wove together emotions and honor, complexities and paths to power. It also punched a wallop near the end. There was a chapter which had my jaw drop open and left me stunned. The novel is something that will sit in the back of my mind for a while and having me thinking. show less
The story follows Nick Bottom, a former detective who is now addicted to a drug called Flashback. It allows users to go back and relive desired times in their past. Nick is hired to discover the killer from a six year old cold case. There is a lot more to it but it is also too much to summarize.
Simmons did a great job of world building, creating new cultures, addictions, show more governments, politics and more. One scary aspect of the book was despite it being written over a decade ago, so much of it can apply right now. Or rather so much of today's world seems like it is a small step away from the world in this novel. The politics and sides fighting and isolation that the USA has here could truly just be around the corner for us in real life. Anyway, I liked the story here also. It was pretty much a big whodunnit mystery but one that seemed to span more than just the people involved. It included the past and the future. It wove together emotions and honor, complexities and paths to power. It also punched a wallop near the end. There was a chapter which had my jaw drop open and left me stunned. The novel is something that will sit in the back of my mind for a while and having me thinking. show less
Set twenty years from now, in Flashback Simmons envisions an America rapidly disintegrating. The economy has collapsed and hyperinflation set in after the nation has been bankrupted by entitlement programs like Obamacare. "Green" energy policy has failed and our industrial infrastructure lies in ruins. Racial and religious Balkanization is tearing the country apart. Texas has seceded, as have Hawaii (which briefly became a monarchy again before being taken over by Japan) and the People's Republic of Boulder (formerly part of the state of Colorado), and Mexico has reclaimed Arizona, New Mexico, and southern California. Major entertainment venues such as sports arenas and amusement parks have been converted into prisons, Homeland Security show more "detention centers", and refugee camps for the few hundred thousand Jews who survived the nuclear annihilation of Israel, and a global Islamic caliphate rules not only the Middle East, but Africa, most of Europe, and Canada. Illiteracy, crime, gang violence, terrorism, and substance abuse and chemical dependency abound. With the help of these last (and the indoctrination of public "education" in multiculturalism and political correctness), most Americans have gradually become inured to the situation. Specifically, most Americans are addicted to a new drug called flashback, which allows its users to not merely remember but relive happier times.
Despite this dystopian, sci-fi setting, the story is really more of a noirish mystery (as though Simmons has been reading a lot of Frank Miller and Mickey Spillane---Flashback reads like Mike Hammer in Hell). Former detective (and flashback addict) Nick Bottom is hired to investigate the five-year-old murder of the son of one of Japan's "advisors" to what's left of the United States. But the further he progresses into the investigation, the more there seems to be at stake---perhaps even the future of nations.
So far, most reviewers are reacting negatively to what they perceive to be the novel's political slant---but they're missing the point. Simmons has explicitly denied that the dystopian setting represents his own political views (and from what I can gather from essays and things he's written, my best guess is that his views are actually closest to some sort of Jeffersonian agrarianism)---though he does seem to be genuinely (and appropriately) concerned with some of these issues, such as runaway government spending. But the book is simply a dystopian projection of current government policies---and more, of the ideologies behind our cultural trends. And the theme of the story is not "Obama bad", but the danger of living in the past.
To be sure, other writers have done this sort of near-future scenario before (Robert Ferrigno's Assassin trilogy comes to mind), but Simmons does it better. All in all, while this isn't one of his best novels, and while it's in some ways even bleaker than The Terror and Drood, Flashback is something of a return to form for Simmons. After his last few, I hadn't gotten around to reading this one until now, over six months after its release---but now, I'll be eagerly awaiting his next book!
And now, I've just received my copy of another near-future dystopian thriller that came out this week, Living Proof by Kira Peikoff...time to see what happens if the Republican candidate wins this November! If there's any truth in fiction, it looks like we're screwed either way... show less
Despite this dystopian, sci-fi setting, the story is really more of a noirish mystery (as though Simmons has been reading a lot of Frank Miller and Mickey Spillane---Flashback reads like Mike Hammer in Hell). Former detective (and flashback addict) Nick Bottom is hired to investigate the five-year-old murder of the son of one of Japan's "advisors" to what's left of the United States. But the further he progresses into the investigation, the more there seems to be at stake---perhaps even the future of nations.
So far, most reviewers are reacting negatively to what they perceive to be the novel's political slant---but they're missing the point. Simmons has explicitly denied that the dystopian setting represents his own political views (and from what I can gather from essays and things he's written, my best guess is that his views are actually closest to some sort of Jeffersonian agrarianism)---though he does seem to be genuinely (and appropriately) concerned with some of these issues, such as runaway government spending. But the book is simply a dystopian projection of current government policies---and more, of the ideologies behind our cultural trends. And the theme of the story is not "Obama bad", but the danger of living in the past.
To be sure, other writers have done this sort of near-future scenario before (Robert Ferrigno's Assassin trilogy comes to mind), but Simmons does it better. All in all, while this isn't one of his best novels, and while it's in some ways even bleaker than The Terror and Drood, Flashback is something of a return to form for Simmons. After his last few, I hadn't gotten around to reading this one until now, over six months after its release---but now, I'll be eagerly awaiting his next book!
And now, I've just received my copy of another near-future dystopian thriller that came out this week, Living Proof by Kira Peikoff...time to see what happens if the Republican candidate wins this November! If there's any truth in fiction, it looks like we're screwed either way... show less
Nick Bottom, once a detective with the Denver Police Department, once a family man with a wife and young son and a beautiful little house set among greenery and mountain views, has been, for the last half decade, an addict. He, like 85 percent of the rest of the population of what's left of the United States, is addicted to flashback, a drug that allows the user to relive memories exactly, in real time. After his wife died in a fiery car crash Bottom sent his son to live in L.A. with his father-in-law and has spent as much time as he could afford to buy reliving the time he had with his wife.
As wretched a piece of humanity as Nick Bottom is, why would powerful Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Nakamura want to hire him to solve the murder, show more now a cold case six years gone, of his son? In particular, why would Nakamura want to hire him to solve the case which was Bottom's last case as a detective, a case which he was unable to solve with all the resources of the Denver PD behind him? Whatever the reason (and we won't discover it until far into this 550 page novel), hire him he does, and for a very good price.
After using a large portion of the money he's been paid up front to buy a massive quantity of flashback, Bottom intends to spend as much of the rest of his life as he can immersed in memory, coming up only once every few hours to walk around so that his muscles don't atrophy. He's quickly disabused of this notion by Nakamura's chief of security, Hideki Sato, who's been assigned to accompany Bottom for the duration of the investigation.
The world that Flashback is set in, a future a mere twenty-one years out from our present, is bleak. A large portion of the world--including pockets of the United States--is ruled by the Caliphate, a well-organized group of Islamic extremists from across the Muslim world. The Japanese own much of the rest of the world, and, having shed the restrictions placed upon them after the second World War, are working to rebuild Japanese society according to the ideals of medieval Japan. The remains of the United States (there are 44 states, several having either seceded or been absorbed by other countries), reeling in the twenty-third year of the jobless recovery, hires its armed forces out to other countries to bring in much-needed revenue, but still its cities crumble and fall.
Flashback is set in a dystopian future which reads very much like an ultra-conservative I-told-you-so wet dream. It is unfortunate to a reader of liberal bent that Simmons's contempt for the current administration and its policies is so scathingly obvious, and that he prognosticates such a bleak future for the world based on this contempt. And yet, dammit, he's a brilliant writer. The future he imagines for us, whatever its inception, is perfectly realized and excruciatingly believable.
The story alternates between Nick and Sato traveling the Southwest, often in bad-ass armored vehicles, as they chase down leads, and Nick's father-in-law, Professor Emeritus George Leonard Fox and his son, sixteen year old Val as they flee L.A. in a convoy of independent truckers. The tension is almost unbearable, as each of the small parties is faced with obstacle after life-threatening, seemingly-insurmountable obstacle, and as it seems less and less obvious that they'll ever meet up.
Besides his often gorgeous prose, one of Dan Simmons's most admirable qualities is his ability to write in seemingly every genre ever invented. Flashback has elements of all of those genres, from the hardboiled Joe Kurtz novels through the uber-futuristic world of Hyperion. Throw in fully realized characters, horrifying violence and disregard of humanity, and touching relationships, and you've got a nearly perfect novel. Ultra-conservative global-warming denial, anti-Muslim sentiment, and all.
And oh, it all comes together--the storylines, the investigations, the relationships--in an ending which is absolutely killer. show less
As wretched a piece of humanity as Nick Bottom is, why would powerful Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Nakamura want to hire him to solve the murder, show more now a cold case six years gone, of his son? In particular, why would Nakamura want to hire him to solve the case which was Bottom's last case as a detective, a case which he was unable to solve with all the resources of the Denver PD behind him? Whatever the reason (and we won't discover it until far into this 550 page novel), hire him he does, and for a very good price.
After using a large portion of the money he's been paid up front to buy a massive quantity of flashback, Bottom intends to spend as much of the rest of his life as he can immersed in memory, coming up only once every few hours to walk around so that his muscles don't atrophy. He's quickly disabused of this notion by Nakamura's chief of security, Hideki Sato, who's been assigned to accompany Bottom for the duration of the investigation.
The world that Flashback is set in, a future a mere twenty-one years out from our present, is bleak. A large portion of the world--including pockets of the United States--is ruled by the Caliphate, a well-organized group of Islamic extremists from across the Muslim world. The Japanese own much of the rest of the world, and, having shed the restrictions placed upon them after the second World War, are working to rebuild Japanese society according to the ideals of medieval Japan. The remains of the United States (there are 44 states, several having either seceded or been absorbed by other countries), reeling in the twenty-third year of the jobless recovery, hires its armed forces out to other countries to bring in much-needed revenue, but still its cities crumble and fall.
Flashback is set in a dystopian future which reads very much like an ultra-conservative I-told-you-so wet dream. It is unfortunate to a reader of liberal bent that Simmons's contempt for the current administration and its policies is so scathingly obvious, and that he prognosticates such a bleak future for the world based on this contempt. And yet, dammit, he's a brilliant writer. The future he imagines for us, whatever its inception, is perfectly realized and excruciatingly believable.
The story alternates between Nick and Sato traveling the Southwest, often in bad-ass armored vehicles, as they chase down leads, and Nick's father-in-law, Professor Emeritus George Leonard Fox and his son, sixteen year old Val as they flee L.A. in a convoy of independent truckers. The tension is almost unbearable, as each of the small parties is faced with obstacle after life-threatening, seemingly-insurmountable obstacle, and as it seems less and less obvious that they'll ever meet up.
Besides his often gorgeous prose, one of Dan Simmons's most admirable qualities is his ability to write in seemingly every genre ever invented. Flashback has elements of all of those genres, from the hardboiled Joe Kurtz novels through the uber-futuristic world of Hyperion. Throw in fully realized characters, horrifying violence and disregard of humanity, and touching relationships, and you've got a nearly perfect novel. Ultra-conservative global-warming denial, anti-Muslim sentiment, and all.
And oh, it all comes together--the storylines, the investigations, the relationships--in an ending which is absolutely killer. show less
There have been plenty of reviews which recap the plot so I won't. I'll just tell you my reaction to the book. The first 50 or so pages were pretty depressing. Not as depressing as, say, "The Road", but depressing none the less. The story takes place 20 years from now. I have every hope of still being alive 20 years from now but being 80 years old in the world depicted in Flashback would not be pleasant. But I started getting into the story of disgraced former Denver cop Nick Bottom, drawn back into his worst case but someone he is powerless to resist. Nick is powerless because he is a Flashback addict and lives as much time as possible under the influence of the drug that allows him to relive his time with his beloved, but dead, wife. show more As Nick worked the case he started to change, started to become the man he once was. I also liked the story of Nick's son, Val, whom he abandoned in LA with his father-in-law (who is about as old as I'll be in 20 years). Through much of the story, until Val, Nick and Leonard (the father-in-law) finally join together, Simmons keeps the two story lines (and sometimes more than 2 story lines) un-synchronized in time. This got confusing at times. I did like the twist at the end, has America (lead by the Republic of Texas) turned the corner and started to fight back or is the ending Nick's Flashback 2 fantasy?
My real problem with the book, and the reason I'm only giving this a rating of 2, is the same as mentioned by many other reviewers. It took me awhile to realize it but this American dystopia was caused by every radical right-wing fear-mongers fantasy you could imagine. The reconquista is rampaging through the US southwest. The New Caliphate has taken over the entire mid-east, most of Europe, and is making inroads in Canada. Muslims have wiped out Israel with nukes. Universal health care with 19-month waits to see a specialist (even when the condition you have will kill you in 6 without care). The US president observing 9/11 with the New York iman, at the mosque built right on Ground Zero. This world would have been even worst with run away global warming, but global warming turned out to be a hoax. It goes on and on.
At first, I thought that maybe Simmons meant this as a parody. There is a short scene where Val hears a snippet of an illegal right-wing talk show (on a pirate radio station), where the host (who was probably Glen Beck) was saying "I told you this would happen". I've not read anything recent by Simmons so I wasn't aware of his apparent political leanings. But late in the book, Nick confronts Mr. Nakamura, the Japanese overlord character who is forcing Nick to re-investigate the old case. Nakamura goes into full Obama Derangement Syndrome ascribing all the ills of 2032 to that American president of 20 years ago. Then I knew that Simmons was serious.
Mr. Simmons is free to have is opinion, of course. And I could have chosen not to read the book. It there had been any hint at all on the dust jacket (maybe a favorable quote from Rush Limbaugh), I probably wouldn't have read it. show less
My real problem with the book, and the reason I'm only giving this a rating of 2, is the same as mentioned by many other reviewers. It took me awhile to realize it but this American dystopia was caused by every radical right-wing fear-mongers fantasy you could imagine. The reconquista is rampaging through the US southwest. The New Caliphate has taken over the entire mid-east, most of Europe, and is making inroads in Canada. Muslims have wiped out Israel with nukes. Universal health care with 19-month waits to see a specialist (even when the condition you have will kill you in 6 without care). The US president observing 9/11 with the New York iman, at the mosque built right on Ground Zero. This world would have been even worst with run away global warming, but global warming turned out to be a hoax. It goes on and on.
At first, I thought that maybe Simmons meant this as a parody. There is a short scene where Val hears a snippet of an illegal right-wing talk show (on a pirate radio station), where the host (who was probably Glen Beck) was saying "I told you this would happen". I've not read anything recent by Simmons so I wasn't aware of his apparent political leanings. But late in the book, Nick confronts Mr. Nakamura, the Japanese overlord character who is forcing Nick to re-investigate the old case. Nakamura goes into full Obama Derangement Syndrome ascribing all the ills of 2032 to that American president of 20 years ago. Then I knew that Simmons was serious.
Mr. Simmons is free to have is opinion, of course. And I could have chosen not to read the book. It there had been any hint at all on the dust jacket (maybe a favorable quote from Rush Limbaugh), I probably wouldn't have read it. show less
In Flashback, a dystopian novel by Dan Simmons, many current citizens in a future, fracture United States take flashback, a drug that allows users to revisit past memories in real time as an unseen observer. Former Denver police officer Nick Bottom, is among the citizens addicted to flashback. Rather than living in the present after his wife's death he sent his son to live in L.A. with his father-in-law and is taking flashback to re-live happier times with his wife. Now Nick is out of funds and needs to take on a case as a private investigator in order to earn money to feed his addiction.
Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Nakamura hires Nick to investigate the murder of his son, Keigo. The crime was never solved and Nick was one of the show more officers involved in the investigation six years earlier... before his wife's death and the onset of his flashback addiction. While Nick is just looking for a way to score some more flashback and re-live memories with his wife, Nakamura has other plans and has Sato, his body guard, closely follow Nick and the investigation. But, as in all good mysteries, everything is not quite what it seems to be.
Flashback is part science fiction, part murder mystery, and should appeal to fans of both genres. It is a long novel, 560 pages, but I thought the action in Flashback made the novel move along quickly. (In spite of the fact that it appears I took a long time to read it, in fact, I took a long time to get this review written.)
I was looking forward to reading Flashback, but kept putting it off as the reviews kept rating it lower and lower. Now I know why that likely happened and why I shouldn't have waited. Simmons takes current political and economic events and projects a future based on potential outcomes from these events. Most of the low reviews are seemingly based on people upset that Simmons is blaming the current administration for everything. The thing is Simmons never names names or points fingers - he just extrapolates his future events based on current factual events.
So, what I'm trying to say is that Flashback does not deserve the bad reviews and low ratings. Plenty of other authors are allowed to take conservative or religious ideology and put their own fictional spin on outcomes. Simmons certainly deserves the same right to examine a fictional future outcome. He is also a writer who is talented enough to do it better than most.
Flashback is very well written. The characters are all well developed and believable. Simmons' insights into this future dystopian society are well reasoned and chillingly realistic. Will this future world happen? Most likely not. This is fiction. So, even if you would call yourself a liberal, set politics aside and enjoy this futurist murder mystery. If you are a student of political history who enjoys fiction do yourself a favor and read Flashback.
Obviously Flashback is very highly recommended. http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/ show less
Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Nakamura hires Nick to investigate the murder of his son, Keigo. The crime was never solved and Nick was one of the show more officers involved in the investigation six years earlier... before his wife's death and the onset of his flashback addiction. While Nick is just looking for a way to score some more flashback and re-live memories with his wife, Nakamura has other plans and has Sato, his body guard, closely follow Nick and the investigation. But, as in all good mysteries, everything is not quite what it seems to be.
Flashback is part science fiction, part murder mystery, and should appeal to fans of both genres. It is a long novel, 560 pages, but I thought the action in Flashback made the novel move along quickly. (In spite of the fact that it appears I took a long time to read it, in fact, I took a long time to get this review written.)
I was looking forward to reading Flashback, but kept putting it off as the reviews kept rating it lower and lower. Now I know why that likely happened and why I shouldn't have waited. Simmons takes current political and economic events and projects a future based on potential outcomes from these events. Most of the low reviews are seemingly based on people upset that Simmons is blaming the current administration for everything. The thing is Simmons never names names or points fingers - he just extrapolates his future events based on current factual events.
So, what I'm trying to say is that Flashback does not deserve the bad reviews and low ratings. Plenty of other authors are allowed to take conservative or religious ideology and put their own fictional spin on outcomes. Simmons certainly deserves the same right to examine a fictional future outcome. He is also a writer who is talented enough to do it better than most.
Flashback is very well written. The characters are all well developed and believable. Simmons' insights into this future dystopian society are well reasoned and chillingly realistic. Will this future world happen? Most likely not. This is fiction. So, even if you would call yourself a liberal, set politics aside and enjoy this futurist murder mystery. If you are a student of political history who enjoys fiction do yourself a favor and read Flashback.
Obviously Flashback is very highly recommended. http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/ show less
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ThingScore 42
Reading all this left me with distinctly mixed feelings. I enjoyed much of the novel. Simmons provides a strong narrative and well-imagined characters — the man can write — and yet I thought his dystopian vision of political reality, however deeply felt, vacillated between the improbable and the ridiculous. Give him this: With any luck, Simmons could be the Tolstoy of the tea party; at the show more very least, he’s more fun than Ayn Rand. show less
added by psybre
Marcel Proust, the great author of memory, gets a swift kick in the pants in Dan Simmons' latest novel of an apocalyptic future, "Flashback" (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown: 560 pp., $27.99). Remember all that stuff Proust wrote about memories returning to him with the taste of a madeleine cookie? For Simmons, memories can be summoned and controlled far more easily, and reliably, with a few show more snorts of a drug called flashback. show less
added by psybre
Set roughly two decades from now, the book centers on Nick Bottom, a disgraced Denver police detective haunted by the memory of his dead wife as well as the unsolved murder that ended his career. The PKD-like twist is that the drug Bottom is addicted to, flashback, lets its users relive moments from their past in vivid, immersive detail. That twist isn’t nearly enough to redeem Simmons’ show more leaden exposition, inconsistent voice, and histrionically ridiculous vision of a broken America—not to mention his moth-eaten bag of genre stereotypes. show less
added by paradoxosalpha
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Science fiction writer Dan Simmons was born in East Peoria, Illinois in 1948. He graduated from Wabash College in 1970 and received an M. A. from Washington University the following year. Simmons was an elementary school teacher and worked in the education field for a decade, including working to develop a gifted education program. His first show more successful short story was won a contest and was published in 1982. His first novel, Song of Kali, won a World Fantasy Award, and Simmons has also won a Theodore Sturgeon Award for short fiction, four Bram Stoker Awards, and eight Locus Awards. He is also the author of the Hyperion series, and Simmons and his work have been compared to Herbert's Dune and Asimov's Foundation series. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Awards
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Is an expanded version of
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Flashback
- Original title
- Flashback
- Original publication date
- 2011-07
- People/Characters
- Nick Bottom; Hiroshi Nakamura; Val Bottom; George Leonard Fox; William Coyne; Hideki Sato
- Important places
- Denver, Colorado, USA; Los Angeles, California, USA
- Epigraph*
- Nous trouvons de tout dans notre mémoire : elle est une espèce de pharmacie, de laboratoire de chimie, où on met au hasard la main tantôt sur une drogue calmante, tantôt sur un poison dangereux.
Marcel Prous... (show all)t, La Prisonnière - Dedication*
- Ce livre est pour Tom et Jane Glenn, qui sont le véritable avenir
- First words
- "You're probably wondering why I asked you to come here today, Mr. Bottom," said Hiroshi Nakamura.
- Quotations*
- Dans la vie, on trouve toujours une occasion de payer ses dettes de différentes façons, avec différentes personnes.
Vivre, c'est avoir la force de faire face à la douleur et au deuil, et être capable de les traverser pour trouver quelque chose de réel de l'autre côté. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Anything less is just flashback.
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.54
- Canonical LCC
- PS3569.I4725
- Disambiguation notice
- This is the novel version of the novella.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
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- ISBNs
- 26
- ASINs
- 12
