With INFOQUAKE, David Louis Edelman showed that there is definitely a place on the science-fiction shelves for a novel that dispatched with the conventional tropes of the genre and gave readers a book that replaced starships with free markets and favored backroom corporate strategy over laser battles.
With MULTIREAL, the second book of his “Jump 225″ trilogy, Edleman showed that he was no one-hit wonder, carrying the story to further Byzantine depths and creative heights. Now, he wraps up the sequence with GEOSYNCHRON, and as the story of ultimate entrepreneur Natch reaches its zenith, the author matches the plot’s depth and richness with a further burst of creativity and world-building complexity.
“Jump 225″ newbies have no good reason, really, not to read the preceding books in the sequence before they hit up GEOSYNCHRON. But if, say, the world ends and you’re reading this from an abandoned library in some futuristic wasteland ruled by apes and the only books available are GEOSYNCHRON and BREAKING DAWN, I say go for it! There’s a pile of appendices in the back of the book that explain not only the story thus far, but the backstory to the backstory, as well as a glossary and a timeline, to boot.
In a nutshell, here we go: Humanity has been transformed by biotech widgets in your bloodstream that can change perceptions and physical abilities, and you can purchase and download new apps for your nervous system just by thinking about it. Thus, most everybody’s connected to each other, and this has transformed society to an awesome degree.
The free market for these widgets creates a new kind of corporation and a new type of entrepreneur. The hinge of the trilogy is the emergence of MultiReal, a program that allows people to game the probabilities of everything in their lives via high-speed simulation. This, of course, has big ramifications for society, and threatens the existing power structure.
GEOSYNCHRON starts after MULTIREAL left off, with everything in disarray and our antihero, Natch, MIA. His corporation is in disarray, the government’s in shambles, and nobody has much of a clue what to do next. As they plot, scheme and employ various marketing and political tactics against each other, it starts to become clear that there’s more at play than anyone initially realized, and these higher stakes lead to devastating consequences. (It’s really hard to summarize and not spoil the plot.)
What’s easy to say, though, is that Edelman’s writing is as good — if not better — than ever. Many Big Idea world-building authors get so immersed in the intricacies of their imaginary worlds that the resulting plots are confusing to those who aren’t equally immersed. This isn’t the case with GEOSYNCHRON. Readers have to pay attention, of course, but Edelman takes huge creative leaps (for example, the crazy, brutal laser-tag world of GEOSYNCHRON’s orbital prisons) without losing the thread of the plot. Yes, there’s a giant glossary in the back, but he doesn’t use it as a crutch.
And although this is the third book of a trilogy, there’s constant character development and enrichment going on — nobody in the novel coasts to the end unscathed or unchanged by the events contained within, nor gets off easy. New suprises and characters only alluded to previously are around every corner; it’s rare for a trilogy’s conclusion to have such depth of new material.
There’s no need to pigeonhole the “Jump 225″ trilogy. It favors new ideas and new ways of telling a science-fiction story over crazy action and dystopian moping, and it stands in a category of its own. With GEOSYNCHRON, Edelman has proven that he could keep the promise that he offered up in INFOQUAKE; readers should only be worried about whether or not having your mind blown is hazardous to your health. —Ryun Patterson
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• INFOQUAKE by David Louis Edelman
• MULTIREAL by David Louis Edelman
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Worth a look. Locus Magazine had a nice review in their March 2010 issue.