Void Star

Void Star by Zachary Mason (2017 Picador USA paperback 385pp)

 

The say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so I can only assume Zachary Mason is one of William Gibson’s biggest fans. The PR for this book mentions Gibson in passing so it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise that the plot and characters feel lifted right out of Gibson’s ‘Sprawl’ and ‘Bridge’ trilogies. The writing itself perhaps more closely resembles Gibson’s later less angular prose.

There are three story threads each following a different character on their own McGuffin hunt – Irina, a woman in her 40s but taking rejuvenation treatments is something of an “AI whisperer” able to make sense of the future’s massively complex computers which have grown beyond the understanding of most humans.

Kern is a self-educated street kid and fighter. One day he steals what he thinks is an ordinary phone from the wrong person and becomes involved in a cat & mouse chase across the favela which has grown up around a future San Francisco.

Thales, meanwhile lives in a bubble of security after his father, a politician in Brazil was assassinated. He, his Mother and brothers have been moved to a post-breakdown Los Angeles for their own safety.

Both Irina and Thales have been fitted with a memory implant. The implants are failing causing all sorts of worrying side-effects.

Irina is hired by a wealthy businessman to check out problems with his company’s computers but discovers hidden secrets including some of her own memories which seem to have been stolen. Kern starts receiving survival instructions from a young woman on the other end of his phone – can he trust her and how does she know so much? Thales meanwhile starts encountering mysterious strangers in between therapy sessions and starts to piece together what’s really going on.

Needless to say, all three are eventually drawn together. Some weird stuff happens but that’s all eventually explained by certain plot revelations – if you’ve read any similar SF in the last 30 years it wont surprise you much. That’s really my only complaint about this book. It reads well enough and throws out a few new ideas in passing but overall, I felt like I’d read it all before. So maybe you can call it some comfort cyberpunk-ish reading.