Is it real life or...
Review: It’s Real Life by Paul Levinson
This is an expansion of a short story. Here’s where I confess one of the ways in which I’m a bad Brit.
I’m not a huge fan of the Beatles. I like their music well enough, but I don’t experience the kind of feeling from it of the fans I know. I doubt I’d have been part of Beatlemania if I was the right age.
Fortunately for me, Levinson also touches on other musical heroes, including Leonard Cohen of all people.
Unfortunately, there’s more exploration of musical history and its possibilities in this book than good plot. The characters, including our protagonist (a DJ) are great, not to mention the Suzanne who is and is not Cohen’s Suzanne (There’s always a Suzanne. It’s not always the same Suzanne).
The concept of randomly traveling to alternate realities is entertaining. But the central goal of the protagonist is to prevent the murder of John Lennon in 1980.
Some people might be satisfied with the fact that the protagonist didn’t do it, we don’t know if the character who did it succeeded, and it’s left completely…it’s not even clear that the alternate reality still exists. On top of that, wouldn’t they have just created another, new alternate reality.
In other words, I found the ending unsatisfying, especially as the rest of the book is decent. I’d recommend it to Beatles fans and music history buffs. I’m not sure about the rest of us.
Review: Club Contango by Eliane Boey
On Freeport station in another solar system, Connie Lam has only one thing in mind…not being shipped back to Earth without her daughter.
She’ll do anything, legal or otherwise, to stay with the child (who is only ever called Sticky). Club Contango is a cyberpunk-in-space novel, although honestly Freeport could just as well be any cyberpunk city. It being a station in the asteroid belt of another solar system is no more than flavor. I didn’t mind the flavor, but I would have liked a bit more of a sense of this being a dangerous place on the frontier, not just another neon city.
That said, the plot involves a digital twin, assorted corporate shenanigans, illegal gambling (and the author invented a new thing to bet on…is she British?), labor actions.
At its heart, though, this book feels as if it’s a timely indictment of the H-1 visa system everyone is fighting about right now. It really does.
When you’re a contractor on a work visa and the place you have to go back to is a hellhole…and your child is a citizen…
There’s the usual cyberpunk concerns about identity here too, as well as taking work monitoring software to the ultimate level…warehouse workers who are forcibly logged into a game interface their entire shift where they “play” by controlling the equipment is absolutely something Bezos would love. The stuff with Chance is decidedly odd, but I had to let it pass.
I liked this book. It’s a strong reflection of the fact that science fiction is about two times…the one in which it is set and the one in which it is written…
…and it doesn’t have great things to say about the latter.
Recommended.