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Virtual Destruction | Rating | |
| F | |||
| Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | N/A | ||
In the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, a major breakthrough in virtual reality has been made. Computers can not only simulate and model airflows or a dogfight, but using minute sensors can reproduce a scene from reality in three dimensions. And not in some clumsy VR gear, with helmet and gloves, but in a good-sized room that you simply walk into. There is even tactile feedback via microspheres suspended in magnetic fields. They can faithfully reproduce a cliff wall or an aiplane throttle. It promises to be a leap forward in games and entertainment, modeling and surveillance - legal and otherwise. But one of the prime researchers is murdered at the facility. Who did it, and why? For that matter, how did it happen with all that security around the place?
I don't know the answers to those questions. I don't even know who the victim is, much less the perpetrator. I read over a third of the wa through the novel, and there was no sign of a plot. Readers are introduced to a handful of people, and we see what they're working on and the environment this is taking place in. We even learn of some real hatreds between certain characters. But there is almost nothing actually happening.
For that matter, the characters aren't really all that pleasant to read of. There's the assistant lab director, who is an idiot too concerned with public opinion and pleasing everyone around him to worry about facts or science. There's the project director, who is brilliant but a bit too centered on making his science proceed - when he's not focused on himself. There's the lead technician, who seems to have ambitions of his own. And there's the man in another building who seems to be the victim of major harrassment, too cringing to bring it to his supervisors' attentions. About the only character I liked at all was the FBI agent, and the story just wasn't focusing on him much.
But I could have coped with an unlikable cast. It cetainly made the victim of the murder less obvious beforehand! I could have dealt with more than a hundred pages without a real story, though of course it still would be less pleasant than otherwise. What was the last straw, though, were some of the abuses heaped on that one character. This isn't office politics going on, denying someone access to resources they need or suspiciously common paperwork misfilings. His lunch is nabbed and eaten in front of him. His badge is placed in a radioactive container. A pellet of plutonium is stuffed down his pants. This is Lawrence Livermore, not the seventh grade! Come on, here!
Taking time to introduce readers to the characters and setting is fine, but a third of the book is a bit long to wait. Especially when the characters and setting are so hard to tolerate, on their own. Eventually, inevitably, I couldn't be bothered to try.
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