In a clash between transhumans and the religious right, a washed up PI ends up as the meat in the sandwich, with the fate of humanity resting on his reluctant shoulders. Moving between the Earth, the Moon and Omega Point, this is a fast-paced science fiction thriller, with the trademark plot twists that will delight readers of this author's previous work.
In a clash between transhumans and the religious right, a washed up PI ends up as the meat in the sandwich, with the fate of humanity resting on his reluctant shoulders.
When struggling PI Rik Sylver takes on a simple courier's job, it turns out the package he is transporting contains a virus that can control people's minds and powerful, dangerous people want to take it from him - many of them dangerous transhumans from Omega Point. All Rik has to do is hand over the package and get paid - but then he loses the package and the only way to save himself and everyone he loves, is to collaborate with these people to retrieve it. Yet things are not what they seem and deciding who or what to believe is the only way Rik can save himself and the world he knows.
The Credulity Nexus is the first book in the Rik Sylver series and also the first of Graham Storrs's novels set in his Placid Point universe. Moving between the Earth, the Moon and Omega Point, this is a fast-paced science fiction thriller, with the trademark plot twists that will delight readers of this author's previous work.
Professional Reviews
Fabulous, fun, fast, and thought-provoking.
Washed up PI Rik Sylver 3 Drew has pretty much nothing going for him other than being good at what he does. His personal life is a disaster, his friends hate him, and he's divorced from one wife and in the middle of a divorce from his two current lunar wives. His best friend in the world is an Upload (a human consciousness in a robot body) and his employer is a far-right religious nutter trying to change humanity into mindless drones. His OTHER employer is a multi-trillionaire whose consciousness lives at Omega Point, the retirement home for the ridiculously wealthy on the far end of the solar system. And then there's the ex-catburglar running around in an Upload body designed solely for murder.
This story was crazy, fun and full-on. Rik may be typical of his type (alpha-male with Mummy issues) but he's got guts and he tries to do the right thing. He sucks so badly at personal relationships, but is likeable nonetheless. In fact all of the characters in this book were likeable to a degree, or at least, you could understand their position. I adored Veb, the Upload in the huge robot body. I really liked MI6 Agent Fariba Freymann, and loved the fact that she put Rik in his place, and took none of his overprotective s***.
But what I loved most was the incredible detail of this far-future world, where humans have begun to colonise the solar system, where hatred and fear of Uploads drives a lot of tension between Earth and Lunar, and where a massive data farm can be home to thousands of very wealthy and very powerful minds.
A fast, entertaining read that will also make you think about what it means to be human.
Perfect for Jack Reacher fans!
This was a seriously fantastic book, filled with good old literary escapism. The first night I started reading this, I managed to get through an enormous chunk of it very quickly. The plot is fast moving, and Rik Sylver is a very likable hero, who has been down on his luck for a very long time. With a plethora of bad guys, and an interesting amalgamated team of good - it was a fabulous explosive read, and the ultimate test of good and good, and bad and the bad. Everyone has a motive. Everyone except for Rik.
This book was the perfect read over the Summer for me.
Five Star Review
This is Graham's fifth novel, and I must admit the quality of this work impressed me just as much as anything he's previously penned. It has an amazing sense of the golden sci-fi era about it - his homages to Heinlein are marvellous - and the opening chapter really gels that sort of work into a contemporary futuristic setting, if that makes any sense at all. It's hard to describe accurately, but books depicting the future written thirty years ago have a very different feel to the majority of today's titles. Storrs has managed to leap that gap, I felt like I was reading something Heinlein himself would've written today. And the phrase "dumb ox", it's just the sort of thing any of Heinlein's Narrators (Ames, Kettle-Belly Baldwin, Mannie Davis, Matt Dodson (having grown up a bit of course), Maureen Johnson and possibly most appropriately The Great Lorenzo) would've dropped in a heartbeat.
What did I love about it? I like the way Storrs takes something growing today (The Tor Project, for instance) and just fits in a technological extrapolation (in the form of skin-on-skin contact bypassing prying eyes). He's not pushing politics down your throat with the statement, but he's giving us the future with the crap included. I learned a new word, too - I have never read a book where anything was crepitated before, how cool is that?
I also especially think it's brilliant how the work has its own distinct vitality, yet is clearly part of a larger whole. You can really read this by itself, but then you'll want to go pick up Placid Point just so you can read more about some of the things mentioned. The "upload" angle is very much a part of the story, and it's fascinating to see how the time line of the world Storrs is building is going to be filled in over the coming years. I think it'd be pretty cool if we had an online time line to look at, or the back of the book included one showcasing published short stories (and planned future publications?) and roughly where they're going to go.
The structure of the book worked well. I loved the opening, as I've already said, and things really start to explode in chapter three. From there on Storrs plays on the old hat technique of courier with a job to do, but it's so interspersed with asides and potent and interesting technologies that it doesn't really feel like a rehash at all. Then of course we enter the climactic events toward the end of the book and the whole thing shifts on to a new and exciting path, and by the time the book ends and we are shown where everyone's ended up we're breathless to see the ramifications in future stories: for the characters, the Earth, Omega Point, and every thing and one inbetween!
On a basic level, The Credulity Nexus is a sci-fi thriller with an intelligent antihero who I'm sure has many more stories in him, with plot twists you and he see coming about at the same time on some occasions, which is very cleverly executed. But it's also a tantalizing glimpse into a future which holds both promise and pain in equal measure, a universe of possibility and problem Storrs can assuredly rock with short story after novel after series. We've seen Heinlein's Future History and Sanderson's Cosmere. I think it is not at all unfair to say Storrs has birthed Transhumanity in glowing fashion. Long, long may it endure.
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