Polymorph | |||||||||
by Scott Westerfeld | |||||||||
Roc Books, 276 pages | |||||||||
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A review by Thomas Myer
Scott Westerfeld's New York City of the future is wired -- and I'm
not talking stuff like Ethernet and plain old telephone system.
Caffeine, morphine, adrenaline, amphetamines -- all these sluice the synaptic
juice racing between dendrites. All around town, you can hear the sound of
nervous systems locking and loading. A neurotic free-fire zone.
For a polymorph like Lee, gender and ethnicity, bone structures and
muscles mix and meld and dance, obeying her will. One day she can be a
nondescript but lovely Asian female, and at the moment of danger, a
fanged avenger with a taste for blood.
For other characters, identity shifting is just as easy. Freddie,
hired to "animate" text-based chat rooms, can manipulate his gender
and personal background to anything that'll keep the marks on the
money meter. All hail the anonymity of the command line interface -- none
of this fancy video over the Net. He is a charming throwback to a
simpler day when multi-user systems relied on utilities that sound
more like gastronomic noises than high-powered filters: grep, awk, chown.
Outside, the transvestite prostitutes stalk the street corners, adding
further layers in the game of identity seek-and-destroy.
I asked Scott Westerfeld what was the driving force behind the
creation of Polymorph. His answer was very illuminating:
Polymorph really swings into action when Lee meets a second
polymorph, and she realizes that she is not alone, that there are
other polymorphs. This discovery ratchets quickly into a plot of
revenge, ultimately transforming the most changeable, dynamic
character you'll meet in a long while.
And did I mention the oh-so-cool Payday club, that every week moves
to a new locale, mirroring the protean twists on selfhood, where
hackers, slackers, and slummers caress the infrabass hip-hop? Or
the epic operas based on international energy treaties, sung in
Esperanto, and staged on giant chessboards?
And the sex! Brawny and flavorful like high-impact afterburner, except
add the napalm. Westerfeld is a shining new star ripping across the
horizon, and if we're lucky, he'll ascend to the zodiac of contemporary SF.
I could rant all day. If you liked anything by Wilhelmina Baird or
Neal Stephenson, get down to your local bookstore and buy Polymorph.
Thomas Myer is an unrepentant vegan. He thinks pavlovian is a melodious word. |
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