Gain Your Copy Arachne Constructed By Lisa Mason Available Through Digital Format

Quester's a hotshot mediator in telespace, which often means helping her clients get away with things that would be crimes if it wasn't business and they weren't rich.
But when her link goes down in the middle of a mediation, Carly risks losing her lob, . . unless she undergoes probe therapy with a robotic therapist who might want something from Carly herself,

er note: I read an ebook version of a book originally published in thes and revised since then, although I don't know how much.
One thing I noticed changed is the main character's last name, However, I've always had trouble with Goodreads when trying to alter which version of a book, with multiple versions, my review attaches to, or is selected when I mark the book as being read, and so any particular comment might not apply to whatever version of the book the review finally falls under.


Forcasting the near future, particulary involving a technology that exists in its infancy already, is probably the riskiest type of SF you can write, because you have to take the chance that you'll look a little ridiculous in only a few years.
And the cyberpunk movement often had the worst of that, dealing with computers and a wired world before we really understood what that would look like.
Some avoid the pitfalls by not focusing overly much on the computer side, others by being vague and a far enough jump ahead that you could still see it happening as an extension of where we are now.


Unfortunately, this is not one of those books, as the plot relies on an Internet that is not really much like what it turned out to be and, for me, at least, it's hard to take seriously.
And, what's more, it hit on one of my personal pet hates for SF involving computers, . . more than hit on, the plot hinges on it, That is, the idea that the human mind or consciousness 'goes somewhere' when accessing an Internet, and something can happen to it while it's there.
To be fair the author seems to write it not so much as "that's what it's like when you get on the Internet" as "they developed a new Internetlike system that makes use of wild technology that taps into the collective unconscious directly" but still, it's nails on a chalkboard for me to read about characters losing their mind because some key element of their consciousness was 'stolen.
' As such, it's a little hard to be objective, . . the book lost me a few pages in,

Or, mostly did, at least, There was some things I genuinely liked, For example, the legal shenanigans and scheming, big corporations using obscure corporate loopholes to screw over the little guy was entertaining in a grim "hope they eventually get their comeuppance" type of way.
And, I really liked the idea of the Republic of Cool, a fascist government that took over the Berkeley Campus, If the book wasn't about on about Telespace and Archetypes and such all the time and focused more on these elements I might well have enjoyed it more.


One of the other key ingredients of cyberpunk, that often doesn't work well for me, is unlikeable, morally compromised characters, Here the book kind of fell down a little too, there were times that I literally felt, "Okay, well, I see no reason to care about this character anymore," and though they tried to turn it around in the end, it didn't feel genuine.
. . nor, for that matter, did the fall in the first place, Characters sprung from being unconcerned with the moral weight of their actions to being suddenly judgemental to doing the same things they were judgemental about or far worse and not giving a ! about anybody to sort of kind of getting redeemed but just because it was end of the book rather than

for any actual reason.
When one of the more likeable characters in your story is a bot who's bitter about all of humanity and is considering murdering one for their own profit, you're in dangerous territory.


Overall, I'd mark the book as okay, not for me but others might enjoy it more because they don't have my particular annoyance triggers, and there's certainly some talent here.
I immediately moved on to the sequel because I got it as part of the same bundle of ebooks, hoping that a second novel might improve some of the problems, although those hopes were not especially high.
An interesting attempt to blend cyberpunk tech with what read like some flavor of Jungian analysis, The AIs were a bit too human for
me to believe in them and the book ended at a point that suggested it had been cut in two to create a sequel.
Plenty of setting, but not much in the way of story or characters, The best book I've ever read that contains the phrase "People's Republic of Berkeley, "

That's not much of a review, so I'll say this: it's actually really good, but I docked a star because the ending comes out of nowhere, and feels a bit like the author said "Oh, I forgot that I was writing a cyberpunk book, let's throw a bunch of bad shit at the fan and watch the aftermath.
" :/

Good stuff aside from that, though, Spinner reminds me a lot of a friend of mine, Lisa Mason's criticallyacclaimed debut novel, widely considered a classic of cyberpunk literature, receives a distinctive new look, In the nottoodistant future, high above the mean streets of postquake San Francisco, mechanically modified professionals link minds in cybernetic "telespace" everything from business deals to legal decisions can now be accomplished with lightning speed.
But, when young hotshot lawyer Carly Nolan discovers a deadly scheme afoot someone, something, is stealing human souls, and her unconscious mind is the latest target she finds she must entrust her career and her mind to an enigmatic robot therapist.

When Lisa Mason's novel "Arachne" was first published in, it was hailed as an instant classic of cyberpunk literature, My rating flipflopped about twenty times as I read this book, I went from liking it to loving it to disliking it in the span ofpages, I love cyberpunk type settings as I read a ton of Shadowrun and while the world that Ms, Mason had created was interesting, it was hard to like as was the main character, Carly Nolan, Carly is very shallow and while the author certainly tried to assert her as a woman of power and ambition, Carly never got above an entitled spoiled lawyer who should have it all.
In my opinion, the A, I. Bot, Pr. Spinner actually had more personality combined than the other two main characters, Carly and Wolfe, But the most disconcerting thing was that by the end of the book, it had descended into a drug story, It wasn't about lawyers or a futuristic world or overcoming obstacles, . . it was about the dangers of illegal drugs, That's ultimately what turned me off and led me down to the "" rating, It's not a bad book, it just fell off the deep end, I'm being generous. I guess if a novel about cyberpunk attorneys were my thing, I might like it, As it is, unfortunately, I found it rather boring, With its blend of lawyers practicing in cyberspace, a neardystopian future wherein Aborigine and Aztec cultists roam the streets and college campuses are martiallaw citystates policed by armed revolutionaries, Jungian archetypes made manifest in the consensusreality of the telelink, and putupon AIs wishing humanity would do a better job of recognizing their sentience, Arachne by Lisa Mason is a brilliant cyberpunk novel.
The Arachne's two main protagonists, hotshot human lawyer Carly Nolan and an AI called Prober Spinner, are very wellwritten and engaging Pr, Spinner is particularly fascinating in her lovehate relationship with humanity, Arachne is another cyberpunk book that explores what it means to be human, what are the boundaries of being human, and can these boundaries be transcended or, at the very least, gone beyond.
In addition to this fascinating aspect of the book, Mason builds a livedin, believable, nearfuture California that is tinged with dark humor such as when traffic gridlocks last so long fixed communities start to spring up.
The book stumbles, in my estimation, in Carly's dalliance with a coworker, In these passages, Mason's usual taut, brisk, evocative prose which, with its futuristic neologisms, reminded me somewhat of A Clockwork Orange descends a bit into treacly romancenovel language particularly bothersome was a reference to Carly's "delta".
But the book recovers from these sections, as indeed does Carly, and the final third is thrilling as Carly and Pr, Spinner strive to overcome a threat inside cyberspace that could have dire consequences for Carly in the 'real' world, Overall, Arachne was a fun and fast book, an excellent exemplar of the cyberpunk genre, I read this book one long sick night, It is imaginative on a high scale, My copy has a different cover of course from a different publisher, . hehehe It explores the depth of what humanity might go through in the not so distant future, It bills itself as cyberpunk, . but it goes far beyond that, It makes us look inside ourselves and ponder deep philosophical issues, I am very picky with my sci fi, and this book has made it into my permanent collection, Carly Quester has been groomed from birth to be a prolinker in telespace, She was part of the first generation to have their genes tweaked, started getting telelink modifications early, went to the right schools and is now on the fast track at Ava amp Rice.
At least she was until her link crashes during her first solo mediation, Now suspension is looming over her head with thousands of others ready to take her place, She gets some solace from D, Wolfe, a senior associate, who turns out to have his own problems, He has seen ghosts in telespace so he is very interested in how this pans out for Carly, What he's done up to now is use cram and abuse other substances,

Carly goes for an electropsy which gives her a clean bill of health, but does not explain the crash, To be certified for Prime Time again Carly has to have her telespace perimeter probed three times, She is disconcerted because the medcenter sengine has sent her to Prober Spinner, an AI, when she specifically requested human, Pr. Spinner has her own ambition, to gain an archtype, something that will allow her to be more than just a program,

Fun read, well developed characters, interesting future society, Telespace is not your run of the mill virtual reality, I was able to conceptualize it well enough for myself so the plot flowed smoothly and made the Carly and Pr, Spinner probe scenes informative and exciting, I am a little surprised to see Cyberweb was released five years after Arachne, Not that Arachne left some big cliffhanger, but it left society unchanged, Are the big corporations just going to keep on taking advantage of individuals Is Carly going to be able to make a positive influence Stay safe and well in! Please visit my website at sitelink for all my print books, ebooks, screenplays, Storybundles, interviews, blogs, my husband Tom Robinsons bespoke jewelry and artwork, cute cat pictures, and !My second collection, ODDITIES:Stories, is available now as an ebook on Kindle worldwide and as a print book in seven countries, including the U.
S. and the U. K. The collection includes stories previously published in OMNI, Asimovs Science Fiction Magazine, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Full Spectrum, and others, plus six new stories.
A Locus Magazine Notable Book, Ive got eight other books available as beautiful trade paperbacks and ebooks: CHROME, Summer of Love, The Gilded Age, The Stay safe and well in! Please visit my website at sitelink for all my print books, ebooks, screenplays, Storybundles, interviews, blogs, my husband Tom Robinson's bespoke jewelry and artwork, cute cat pictures, and !My second collection, ODDITIES:Stories, is available now as an ebook on Kindle worldwide and as a print book in seven countries, including the U.
S. and the U. K. The collection includes stories previously published in OMNI, Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Full Spectrum, and others, plus six new stories.
A Locus Magazine Notable Book, I've got eight other books available as beautiful trade paperbacks and ebooks: CHROME, Summer of Love, The Gilded Age, The Garden of Abracadabra, Arachne, Cyberweb, One Day in the Life of Alexa, and Strange Ladies:Stories.
Summer of Love was a Philip K, Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book, The Gilded Age was a New York Times Notable Book, My Omni story, "Tomorrow's Child," sold outright as a feature film to Universal Pictures and is in development, sitelink.