Reviews Logo
SearchHomeContents PageSite Map
Nanotime
Bart Kosko
Avon Books, 311 pages

A review by Wayne MacLaurin

Built on a solid technical backbone, Nanotime is a taut cyber-thriller. Combining elements of chip-head cyberpunk with those of a more conventional spy-thriller, Bart Kosko has crafted a remarkable novel.

It's a rare, wonderful occurrence to find a novel that is written by an author with the expertise to back up the plot. Nanotime is just such a novel. Written by an leader in the field of fuzzy logic and machine intelligence, Nanotime reveals an Orwellian tale of a world gone crazy with governments that can watch virtually everything an individual does, a world run by ever-more powerful computers that are constantly getting smaller and cheaper.

The year is 2030, the world has doubled in population and oil reserves continue to be depleted. But in a world where everything depends on computers, those computers still need energy to run.

Enter John Grant, a brilliant young engineer who has patented a new molecule that can split water and produce hydrogen. Grant's quest to bring his technology onto the world market leads him into conflict with a master Sufi terrorist. Hamid Tabriz has learned to encode the mind in computer chips and replace parts of a living brain. These chip-heads make ideal assassins and Tabriz starts a campaign of terrorism that is aimed at starting a third world war -- a war that will end with the destruction of the world's oil reserves and with Tabriz controlling Grant's new technology as a source of unlimited energy.

Nanotime is a startling realistic glimpse at our future and the world's reliance on oil as a major source of energy. The implications of smart weapons (like cruise missiles) being cheaper than the defenses against them are, to say the least, scary. Bart Kosko's world of prying government eyes is only a small leap from our own world where computers have already made privacy a major issue.

Copyright © 1997 by Wayne MacLaurin

Wayne MacLaurin is a regular SF Site reviewer. More of his opinions are available on our Book Reviews pages.

Nanotime
Bart Kosko
A professor of electrical engineering, Bark Kosko holds degrees in philosophy, economics, mathematics and electrical engineering. The author of the best selling Fuzzy Thinking, Kosko is an acknowledged leader in the field of fuzzy logic and machine intelligence.

Nanotime Excerpt

Past Feature Reviews


SearchContents PageSite MapContact UsCopyright

If you find any errors, typos or other stuff worth mentioning, please send it to editor@sfsite.com.
Copyright © 1996-2014 SF Site All Rights Reserved Worldwide