The R-Master

This story was an easy read and I'm not angry that I read it, it was okay. The premise of a mind-enhancing drug that increases the problem-solving potential of a human brain with the potential side-effect of rendering a few of the dosed either geniuses or rapidly disintegrating seniles is what hooked me. The story having a plot that was emphatically anti-establishment also pleased me although that was happening out of vengeance.
The story did have a few shocks, well two. The discovery of legally gray death games and the existence of pitting sharks and dolphins against each other in death matches of which the dolphins always get the worst in an undersea tenement were somewhat rattling. They almost didn't really seem to fit the banal show more story even though the former played into the plot.
I wouldn't really recommend this book to anyone but I did find a passage that I think is very relevant to the current zeitgeist on page 127. It's probably the only part of the tale worth taking with you.
...A system - a bureaucracy - is nonphysical. Weapons won't work against it. Riots won't work against it. Even laws won't work. It's a thought, a way of thinking. Even a bloodbath - if you killed off all the bureaucrats, they'd start to appear again the next generation as some people slid back into the old pattern. The only thing that smashes one pattern is a new pattern. show less

A utopian world government (or is it)-everyone is provided for. But, if you're ambitious, you can take the brain advancing experimental drug R-47, which has a one in a million chance -it can either leave you a
vegetable, or a super genius - an "R-Master".
The hero is one of those sullen Dickson loners who is pretty much a playboy until the R-47 drug turns his brother into a vegetable. His brother despondent over the turn of events, attempts to take his own life only to be stopped short of true death and put in cryonic sleep. This event is a catalyst for the hero, who in trying to bring back his brother from the predeath suspension he's kept in, sees only one option available to him to afford the procedure, taking R-47 himself. I think show more you can guess by the title what happens to him.
This is a very entertaining little novel, that by the midway mark I would have told you was one of the best I've read so far of this year. Unfortunately, Dickson resorts to rubber science Vogt tactics to come up with a too cute ending to close this one. Still, a fast entertaining read, full of some neat political intrigue, and some discussion of Dickson's libertarian ethical concerns.
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Writing style seems a bit stoggy. Straight forward story about a stagnant utopia in our future. Such a future violates the basic law of the UNIVERSE "The One constant in the UNIVERSE is Change".