- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: FOUR WALLS EIGHT WINDOWS (Nov 1 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1568582404
- ISBN-13: 978-1568582405
- Product Dimensions: 20.7 x 15.3 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 340 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #572,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
In Jim Munroe's near-future novel Everyone in Silico, San Francisco has been destroyed by an earthquake and replaced by the virtual city of Frisco. Nearly everyone on earth wants to move to this fashionable cyberworld. This is no surprise. The physical world has become a sort of virtual reality: no one has privacy, and everyone is monitored by the corporations. Everyone is both consumer and salesperson, earning money by shilling cigarettes or software to strangers and friends. Why not abandon the flesh for the everlasting cyberspace of Frisco?
Still, not everyone seeks to leave the "meat" world. A genetic-engineering artist known as Nicky creates rat-dog splices to sell to naive tourists and resists her mother's pleas to live in Frisco. Professional adman Doug Patterson watches his city, job, and marriage start to crumble as his coworkers and neighbors move online. When she loses her 12-year-old grandson to Frisco, Eileen Ellis dons her old military bodysuit and becomes, once again, a deadly supersoldier--but this time, she serves no corporate master. And Paul, mysterious soul in the cybermachine, seeks to orchestrate a new destiny for the human race.
Everyone in Silico is the third novel by Jim Munroe, the former managing editor of radical anti-advertising magazine Adbusters. As a book, Everyone in Silico is rather wobbly. The pace is unvarying, the dialogue is sometimes slack, and the climax is diffuse. But like Steve Aylett and Paul Di Filippo, his fellow science-fiction satirists at publisher Four Walls Eight Windows, Monroe is unorthodox, off-kilter, and interesting. --Cynthia Ward
From Publishers Weekly
Canadian author Munroe's third novel (after Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gas Mask and Angry Young Spaceman), set in Vancouver, offers a fresh and amusing take on how technology can be used or misused in a consumption-obsessed society. In 2036, a new technology called Self is available to download individual consciousnesses into a shared digital existence where anything is possible for a price. As most people abandon this polluted, intractable world, a few holdouts try to help recreate nature. Those who resist the allure also try to find out what's happening to the "meat" bodies of the multitude who've opted for Self. The narrative switches focus among a small cast of more or less wary holdouts, and Munroe exuberantly studs the action with grotesque extrapolations of politics and advertising that most people accept unthinkingly. Stolen clothing doesn't just set off an alarm, for example; it bursts into flame and kills the shoplifter. Such images prompt a chuckle but also make us wince because they're so close to what we accept. At the same time, the novel allows that Self could be a place to begin escaping familiar, strangling limitations. Munroe balances the danger and the hope waiting in our future. His characters are so stuck in their preconceptions that they have trouble seeing new choices; maybe readers can do better. Those who value deft, witty SF should be well pleased.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
When Paul sat down on the bench, the young man moved over a bit without looking at him. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
When Paul sat down on the bench, the young man moved over a bit without looking at him. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Science, subculture, and silicon,
By
This review is from: Everyone in Silico (Paperback)
It's always interesting to read someone's work after you've met them and spent some time talking about other topics. Jim's novel is very much a reflection and projection of his personality and interests. The anarchist former managing editor of Adbusters crams a lot of political, cultural, and scientific concepts into this novel, which is a good companion read to the work of Cory Doctorow. Everyone in Silico isn't hard sf -- but that doesn't mean that it's soft or easy. Jim's ideas of homegrown genetic engineering, subcultural self-organization, street-level marketing, and the economics and experience of a digital afterlife are fascinating and forward thinking. Down to details such as the tattoo that, when scanned, dials an encrypted phone number, Everyone in Silico's dystopian future is deftly and effectively outlined as the multilayered plot unfolds.(This review originally appeared in Heath Row's Media Diet, ...)
2.0 out of 5 stars
Trying to be Non-Conformist Sometimes Doesn't Work,
By
This review is from: Everyone in Silico (Paperback)
I get it, you're anti-materialistic. I get it, you're non-conformist. But can you at least conform to writing a coherent book? I found the format of this book pretty irritating, especially the lack of Chapters. The entire book just keeps going and going. I like chapters, because it gives you time to set the book aside at a point and reasonably tell people what's going on in the book if they were to ask you. The lack of coherent sections in this book make it pretty laboring to read - and the writing is not good enough to compel readers to keep going. It's free online as an e-book, so I suggest readers go and read it online first before deciding to purchase it. Maybe it would've been better to read in print, cause I read it on my computer screen, which already hurts the eyes enough. I didn't like it.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Horrible....YUCK YUCK YUCK,
By Tonia (ST PAUL, MN United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Everyone in Silico (Paperback)
This is a horrible book. I have never felt so negatively about a book. NEVER! You can't follow the story, who is who? Who is real and who is in "Frisco" and has their body stored. What's up with the freaky make your own pets???? And the air??? The debt collectors vans that snatch you....What happened??? Confusion....ick.....what a waste of a tree.....
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