- Mass Market Paperback
- Publisher: Ace; First THUS edition (1968)
- Language: English
- ASIN: B000MZV2R8
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unknown Masterpiece, Feb 11 2011
By Mithridates VI of Pontus - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Sythajoy (Mass Market Paperback)
Compton's Synthajoy combines an unusual (and occasionally challenging) non-linear delivery, a engaging plot, a realistic near-future technology, a female main character, and compelling characters. A great UNKNOWN work.Brief Plot Summary (limited spoilers)
Thea Springfield, a nurse, is interned in the Kingston center for supposedly killing her husband. She undergoes Sensitape treatment -- a technology that she herself had developed with her husband, Dr. Edward Cadence, and her lover Tony Stech.
Sensitape technology records various emotions -- the emotions coursing through a jazz musician while he plays, religious experience right before the moment of death, love between caring husband and wife, etc. and is ostensibly developed to treat UDW (Uncompensated Death Wish -- the unexplainable desire to die). Sensitape also has lucrative commercial (and somewhat nefarious) applications...
Through a series of flashbacks over seven treatment days, Thea recounts in a spontaneous non-linear fashion the sequence of events leading up the to death of her husband. Compton is quite ingenious in his use of flashbacks -- often Thea inserts her own present opinions into the accounts of past events -- in short, voiceover. It takes around forty or so pages to tease out the main plot threads/characters because of the non-linear nature of the work - however, the persistent reader will be richly rewarded. And of course, the adept use of the narrative structure adds depth to the characters...
Final Thoughts
For a science fiction author, D. G. Compton is quite the stylist. In addition, his strong female protagonist, Thea Springfield, is not only refreshing but convincing. Flashbacks in fiction (and film) are often poorly done -- too frequently cringeworthy and contrived. However, Compton's usage feels natural, unforced, and I found that the limited viewpoint intensifies the experience.
The world we glimpse through Thea's eyes is a bleak one. UDW accounts for millions of deaths. Their discovery of Sensitape has substantially reduced these deaths BUT the act of replaying someone else's emotions, substituting someone else's emotions for one's own has far reaching and disastrous consequences...
By far my best sci-fi read of the year so far. D. G. Compton is criminally under-read.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A well told moral tale, Jan 7 2008
By Eve R. Bieber - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Sythajoy (Mass Market Paperback)
Well told allegory of the danger inherent in in any act that lacks restraint. Substitute drugs, alcohol, or any vice, for the synthajoy technology and the results would be the same. But the story is subtle enough that readers will only realize this when they get to the end of the story.
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