Cut throat business practices in a far flung century!! What more could one ask for? ( )

There’s nothing like a slick, smart, well-written science fiction thriller to set the mind buzzing and racing with strange new ideas and brilliant, imaginative, logical leaps into the future. The reader is plunged into a world that is utterly strange and yet oddly familiar, as the old human passions and drives and desires play their old games in this future funhouse.

The future funhouse of Infoquake, gives us a world where technology is literally built into people, turning them into walking iPhones, and the big business is in creating, developing and selling apps for a populace hungry for novelty and innovation. Fiefcorps compete savagely for their share of the market, and one of the youngest, hungriest and most devious of these fiefcorps is run by a supremely ambitious young man called Natch, along with his old friend Horvil, an engineer, and an analyst called Jara, who finds her conscience under severe strain thanks to some of Natch’s more underhanded strategies. Their exploits bring them to the attention of Margaret Surina, descendant of one of the genuises who helped create the technology that shaped the world. Rumour has it that she may be set to reshape the world again with a mysterious new technology called Multireal.

With enemies and rivals closing in on all sides, Surina convinces Natch to prepare and develop Multireal for demonstration and release in only a few days. But potentially lethal rivals and a crushing deadline are only minor problems compared to the biggest of all: nobody seems to know what Multireal is.

At heart, Infioquake is a old school corporate thriller full of cut-throat boardroom poilitics, maneuvers and counter-maneuvers, back-stabbing and betrayal, all married to a vividly realised world full of wild technological marvels. It’s an adrenaline-fueled ride from start to finish as Neetch and friends fight to stay alive and stay on top. ( )

Picked the book up at the store, hoping it would be something like Clade(biopunk), because of this bio/logic programming mentioned on the back cover.
Instead the book turned out to be mostly about nasty business tactics of a startup company head.
I must admit the prose was very readable, and the main character was interesting, the business bits very refreshing, - so much so that I eventually bought and read the remaining 2 books.
That said, I didn't get the biopunk I was hoping for, - the uses of this bio/logic programming read more like a fantasy than scifi. As mentioned in other reviews, the science/tech was unexplained, which would be fine(many authors do it that way), but it didn't jell! The whole projection onto other locations didn't make sense - it was neither an extension of virtual reality nor some freaky quantum superscience, it sort of hung there in between, as if the author couldn't be bothered to make up his mind, but needed certain things to happen in terms of plot, and just left it like that.
That's the first scifi book, that I read, that had such a terrible blooper in science/tech.

It's not that the tech is implausible(I will always allow a leeway), or unexplained(also fine), but that the abilities described were not, and cannot be attributed fully to anyone type of tech, or even a combination. That really bothered me. ( )

David Louis Edelman jumps in the sci-fi scene with Infoquake, his debut novel. In this novel, which is pure science-fiction with a hit of cyberpunk, Edelman tells the tale of the advancement of technology through the eyes of a businessman.

The first of the trilogy revolves around Natch, an arrogant and perfectionist programmer with delusions of grandeur. He evolves in a world where bio/logics, which are, according to one of the many appendices of the novel, "The science of using programming code to extend the capabilities of the human body and mind." In other words, bio/logic programs are augmentations to make a person more 'perfect', are prevalent. And the protagonist, which some imagine is quite mad, excels at programming, and marketing, such programs.

Bio/logics programs are made either by fiefcorps, which are the equivalent of private companies, and memecorps, which could be defined as our current non-profit organizations. Their goals differ, yet are similar. They launch products in the DataSea, which is their main source of information, where anybody and everybody can buy them and use them at their leisure.

In a world where fiefcorps compete for the top spot on Primo's, and where the government consists of a single body, Natch finally reaches that elusive top spot, for which he has worked his whole life, stopping at nothing to reach that goal. That achievement will attract Margaret Surina's attention and will make him an offer he can't refuse: market a product two decades in the making, against all the money and power he can manage.

While this first novel is merely an introduction to the world which, no doubt, is developed further throughout the trilogy, it wasn't interesting enough for me to want to continue reading on. The characters are well developed, especially Natch, which is introduced in the current period of the novel, only for his life story to be explained further on. The reader then understands why the protagonist is the way he is, and why so many people are wary of him.

The world itself is rich without being burdened with technobabble, and terms are easily understandable and interpreted throughout the novel, complemented with helpful appendices. Edelman tells a common story with a refreshing twist, although I thought events unfolded at too fast a pace, where things are revealed much too quickly.

Sci-fi is supposed to wow the reader. Unfortunately, despite the freshness the author gives to the genre with this book, it has failed to sweep me off my feet.

3/5 ( )

Infoquake by David Louis Edelman was the fifth book to be chosen for the io9 book club, and was scheduled to coincide nicely with their Posthumanity special feature. Infoquake is Edelman's debut novel and the first volume in the Jump 225 trilogy. Other than that, I didn't really know much about the book before I started reading it except for the fact that I adored its tagline, "Hack the body and the mind will follow." Turns out the book was also a finalist for the 2007 John W. Campbell Memorial Award. So, even though I wasn't familiar with Edelman or his work, I looked forward to reading Infoquake.

Natch is notoriously difficult to work with, demanding impossible perfection from his apprentices. Many of his employees can't wait for their contracts to be over and even his head engineer (and probably only friend) can't completely understand him. A master of bio/logics ("the science of using programming code to extend the capabilities of the human body and mind"), Natch isn't afraid to play dirty in a highly competitive market and he is more than willing to be a manipulative bastard to get just what he wants. So when the opportunity arises to get involved with a project with the potential to shatter the bio/logics industry and change the world, he takes it. It's a dangerous and highly risky move, for him and his fiefcorp, and Natch certainly has more than one enemy who would love to see him fail.

It has been a while since I've read a novel that has appendices, but Edelman does it right. All sorts of wonderful information is provided for the reader who wants to delve deeper into the world but at the same time it is not necessary to read the the additional material to enjoy the book. There are a few minor exceptions, but most everything can be understood in context and there are some really cool ideas in Infoquake. (Although I will admit I did have a bit of trouble grasping the government structure.) However, one thing that really frustrated me was MultiReal--I just didn't get it. Now granted, none of the characters in Infoquake seemed to really understand it either. This, I think is where a problem might be. As important as MultiReal is said to be, especially latter in the book, it seems as though a big deal is being made of nothing. Hints are given as to practical applications, but explicit information is mostly implied rather than directly specified. Something just doesn't sit quite right with me about MultiReal and there is plenty of room for potential inconsistencies.

Overall, I found Infoquake to be quite engrossing. Edelman's writing moves at a quick pace although there is an occasional tangent or aside that seemed out of place; This would break the flow and I didn't understand the point of some of them. From time to time, a sentence would make me cringe due to a particular word choice or use of metaphor, but generally the style was good, especially for a first novel. Some of the plot twists seemed unnecessary if not unbelievable--without giving too much away, an example being the unexpected reappearance of a certain character--but perhaps more will be revealed in the subsequent books to explain things more thoroughly. It may seem as though I'm complaining about a lot of things, but I did actually really enjoy the book. I particularly appreciated the focus given to programmers and programming for one (Edelman himself is a programmer) and the field of bio/logics is one that I could see developing in some form or another; I am always interested in interpretations of "post-humanity." Edelman has some great ideas and interesting characters and I'd like to see where he takes things in the next book of the Jump 225 trilogy, Multireal.

Experiments in Reading ( )