Kaleidoscope Century (Paperback)

Josh is a longtimer. That means that every sixteen years he gets sick for six months and drops ten years of aging. He also drops most of his recent memories. Josh has just woken up on Mars and is trying to piece together his past involvement with the KGB and the Committee. Josh lived through and participated in some very violent and wildly changing times. Earth gets abandoned to AIs that make backup copies in humans, limited time travel has been discovered and man is exploring space. Through Josh's 140 years of life we see a fascinating history unfold beginning in the 1960's to the not very distant future.

This is a fun book if you like history. Bush gets a second term and dies of mutAIDS (an airborne variety), Yeltsin conducts a failed coup on international television and plenty of other historical quirks. The only problem is that there is not much in the way of plot. The title only becomes significant at the very end. So what you have is a forty or fifty page story interspersed among an interesting history.

This is one in a series of books dealing with the Memes (the Ais). Others include Candle, Orbital Resonance, and The Sky So Big and Black.

It is the story about how Josh became a spy for the wrong side and did their dirty work--and let me assure you, the work is about as dirty as you will ever read. You become emotionally invested when you find out his father was an abusive drunk and his mother was a commie activist nut. No wonder he is such a basket case! In fact, this story would be a good text book in a "How to make an anti-hero" writing class.

The main story details his search for security (since he had none growing up). He never looks beyond himself. He has no love of communism, certainly no love of capitalism and not much love period. He is out for himself and the rest of the world can go to hell.

If the story interests you so far then read the book. It's a dark, fascinating, downward spiral into depravity. Quite frankly, you hate the main character but you keep reading to find out what happens to him at the end of the story. If, so far, this is not your kind of story, then don't read it. It's doubtful you will like it.

Not knowing much about John Barnes, I find it interesting that later on he worked with all-American Buzz Aldrin on some other projects making him a truly complex writer. Five stars for showing me something I've never seen before.