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reviewed The Zero Signal by Rick Wayne (Science Crimes Division, #1)

Rick Wayne, Rick Wayne: The Zero Signal (Paperback, 2021, Independent) 5 stars

In the decades after tomorrow, the intersection of emerging technologies like AI, gene editing, and …

Cyberpunk for this century

5 stars

At the risk of being quotable: this is the post-cyberpunk book a post-cyberpunk world needs.

I'm not sure I should go into plot here. The blurb on the book page is enough of an introduction, and plot details might spoiler something.

What compels me to write is genre and subtext.

In terms of genre, the easiest comparison to make is Cyberpunk, and if anyone would ask me for a modern Cyberpunk recommendation, this book is easily at the top of my list. But various people have called it Biopunk, and Dave Higgins called it "hard weird" - as in weird fiction, but also hard sci-fi.

The thing is, all of these are apt descriptions. You do have your ubiquitous 'net and artificial limbs - but they're not shiny neon and chrome. You do have gene manipulation, which in some ways is actually a central theme to the book - but …