I just finished David Marusek's Counting Heads and found the novel better than the average near-future/cyberpunk/ science fiction novel. Counting Heads has nanobots, genetic engineering, clones, "singularity-able" AI, and more all supporting a fully realized future. One of the main characters was born in 1951 with the help of anti-aging treatments looks like he is in his 30s when the novel starts but then ends up "seared" when he is infected with a viral or nano bug that as one side-effect, forces him to age normally. Chicago and lower Illinois (Decatur) are major locations in the novel along with the idea of reconstructing a human after decapitation. I liked how the various technology modes combine to provide a world that has similarities with our economically stratified society in that technology is not classless but that the values of the upper classes are reflected in both the availablity and access of different types of technology. The clone cultures and substories were also different from other novels in this genre as well. Marusek just published a sequel to Counting Heads so I'll go ahead and request the sequel through our ILL at the library.
Many of these novels in the genre are running together but I enjoy reading this particular near-term hard science fiction genre because I enjoy these stores (with a different setting and/or character development they become similar to other genre storytelling like detective, historical, or even romantic genres) and like imagine the underlying technological developments that would theoretically have to develop to reach a particular level found in the novel's narrative. I have been neglectful in writing my responses to the major print novels and non-fiction in this blog but I'll try to be more diligent after finishing a particular work. The next novel I just received through Marmot (our shared library catalog) is Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan. This is a sequel to Altered Carbon.
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