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Book Review: Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams
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Book Review: Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams
Published in 1986 by Tor Books
With Cover art by Royo
Hardwired is required reading in the genre of Cyberpunk Near Future Fiction. It should be required reading for all who enjoy science fiction. It definitely should be required reading for anyone that wishes to write based on their roleplaying gaming experiences. Hardwired exceeds all expectations placed on it by the superb cover art by Royo and by the intriguing back cover blurb, which follows:
Quote:
Mudboys, dirtgils, zonedancers, buttonheads, Gravity-well dirt beneath the Orbital platforms which control their world. But the underground and the underworld declare war against the Orbital Heaven: in the air with delta fighters and military shuttles, in the interface of computer fraud and data flow, in flooded slum alleys with lasers and bombs. It’s a war with new warriors, new legends.
Dropping off the final sentence, still the rest of the back cover blurb tells it all. The classic cyberpunk theme of Haves versus Have Nots, of the mighty Multinational Corporation (dead since the end of 2008) versus the person on the street, of the control of knowledge and the power that control has. It is all here and more in Hardwired.
Hardwired is the story of two people fighting against the impersonal forces of their time. Cowboy is a former Delta Jockey. Born before the Rock War, where the Orbitals used Kinetic Kill weapons on the earthbound corporations the war was fought with, he was a pilot when flight was still possible. Smuggling drugs, weapons, mail from one part of the former United States to another. As time passed, the deltas (jet planes) ended up being ground based hovercraft called panzers (similar to the armored tanks of Germany in World War II), where he fulfills the same functions, smuggling food, drugs, weapons, what ever from one part of the country to another.
Sarah is a former prostitute turned killer / bodyguard for hire. Her brother Daud is still in the flesh trade business, and early in the book is injured and ends up under medical care, the hook that is used by the author to have her life, and Cowboy’s, interest. From that point on it is a running battle on the streets, in corn fields, in computer databases and in person for the two of them.
They both have been surgically augmented the better to survive in their damaged and dangerous world. Cowboy modified to interface directly with the vehicles he drives, Sarah with chemically activated enhanced reflexes and one of the most innovative weapons created for all of Science Fiction, the cybernsnake, which is named Weasel. They both have skills relating to their career fields that complement each other, and in the course of business they are paired together, the relationship comes into existence, the partnership that with help will bring about lasting change in their world.
Hardwired is a great read. It has some excellent fight scenes that are realistic in their depiction. The computer hacking is more believable than the interface style of the Neuromancer styled books, more akin to modern day hacking and data retrieval than surfing brain first into a computer. Along with believable characters and a plausible societal and world setting this raises the book into the Top 10 of the Cyberpunk genre in the view of this reviewer.
This novel is one of the most influential on the genre. Along with the Neuromancer novels from Walter Gibson and the works of Rudy Rucker, this reviewer feels that Hardwired has had almost the greatest impact on the development of Cyberpunk during the mid to late 1980s, the heyday of the movement.
Additionally R. Talsorian published a sourcebook for their Cyberpunk Roleplaying Game system with the approval and assistance of Walter Jon Williams, expanding on the world that Cowboy and Sarah live in.
This reviewer forgets when and where he bought this book new when it first came out in 1986,
A few sites for more details:
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