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frasersimons 's review for:
Data Runner
by Sam A. Patel
4/5 Data Runner, I really enjoyed this book.
“There are no limits, only plateaus.”
In a not too distant future Jack, a young high school student with a lot of tech know-how, finds himself in a predicament. His father has lost 50,000k and the only way he knows how to make enough money by the time he needs it, is to become a Data Runner.
Megacorps reign supreme and although it is a dystopia, it instead focuses on people in a community without running water (drawing on a lot of Flint coverage) due to fracking. The town got a settlement and most took off, the people that remain are squatters combined with original town members that won't leave their home. It endears you to Jack, his single parent father Martin, and some other town members we meet really well.
"The traceur doesn’t knock an obstacle out of the way unless it’s absolutely necessary. He meanders his way past it. Over. Under. Through. Around. He gets past not by moving the obstacle but by moving himself. That is parkour, and working this job I use every technique I know just to get it done."
What really makes this interesting though is not the setting, (at least for me) it's the emphasis on parkour AND the lifestyle. It's not a tacked on bit of just action, although the action sequences with Jack tracing his way through areas was done super well and I loved it. Repeatedly the author reiterated why Jack loves it so much and it's always the drilled down philosophy of parkour which, when distilled to its root is this: Freedom.
There there's the aggrenet (what the internet became with future progress and corporate intervention), the undernet (the net of the counterculture movement in the story), and the sneakernet (not so much a virtual playground, but the network of Data Runners physically running packages through the city). The real theme is freedom, and more so that Jack and others do not have it. In fact, nobody does - except the corps, of course.
"the bioidentical cortex chip that will be implanted subcutaneously on the inside of your forearm. It is a proprietary biocircuit developed in our labs specifically for this purpose, and it is unlike any other in the world."
Data runners are not a new concept BUT, the way it is done here is fantastic. Jack joins the Aves, which use a subdermal chip to hold the information on it. Here's the thing though, it's also biotech - which means it feeds off of his body. He has to eat and make sure his temperature is good, and some other stuff. They use SQUID devices to load up the data, and the runners are off on foot to their drop points. He's got a tattoo on his forearm that has scorpion ink in it that scrambles the signal from this chip. The tattoo, and all the Aves tattoos, are of birds. It's a small detail that ends up being worked into the story really well and also reinforces the freedom theme.
"..that’s what parkour helps us get back in touch with. It isn’t just a process of discovery, it’s the process of rediscovery as well."
"standard Superconducting Quantum Interference Device, or SQUID, interface. The same kind doctors use to communicate with surgically implanted components like pacemakers."
This coupled with the technical know-how of the authors parkour moves and philosophy makes it a really enjoyable book. Jack is young, naive, intelligent, and a very likeable character. I usually like my cyberpunk to have a human condition element to the story, but this was great. It'd make a great movie, too.
There's lots of technical bits about the future, what happened, the aggrenet, undernet, sneakernet, etc. That makes the setting feel pretty good but there's not much description further than the technical details of what's happened. I missed that further on after it was established or I would have given it 5/5. Overall, it was pretty great. The world just could have been fleshed out a bit more for me.
"Sooner or later we stop running, stop climbing, stop reaching for the sky. We stop pushing ourselves toward unattainable goals because common sense tells us that the only logical thing to do is push ourselves toward the attainable ones. If running through the world like kids on the playground is a kind of dream, then at a certain point we just stop dreaming."
“There are no limits, only plateaus.”
In a not too distant future Jack, a young high school student with a lot of tech know-how, finds himself in a predicament. His father has lost 50,000k and the only way he knows how to make enough money by the time he needs it, is to become a Data Runner.
Megacorps reign supreme and although it is a dystopia, it instead focuses on people in a community without running water (drawing on a lot of Flint coverage) due to fracking. The town got a settlement and most took off, the people that remain are squatters combined with original town members that won't leave their home. It endears you to Jack, his single parent father Martin, and some other town members we meet really well.
"The traceur doesn’t knock an obstacle out of the way unless it’s absolutely necessary. He meanders his way past it. Over. Under. Through. Around. He gets past not by moving the obstacle but by moving himself. That is parkour, and working this job I use every technique I know just to get it done."
What really makes this interesting though is not the setting, (at least for me) it's the emphasis on parkour AND the lifestyle. It's not a tacked on bit of just action, although the action sequences with Jack tracing his way through areas was done super well and I loved it. Repeatedly the author reiterated why Jack loves it so much and it's always the drilled down philosophy of parkour which, when distilled to its root is this: Freedom.
There there's the aggrenet (what the internet became with future progress and corporate intervention), the undernet (the net of the counterculture movement in the story), and the sneakernet (not so much a virtual playground, but the network of Data Runners physically running packages through the city). The real theme is freedom, and more so that Jack and others do not have it. In fact, nobody does - except the corps, of course.
"the bioidentical cortex chip that will be implanted subcutaneously on the inside of your forearm. It is a proprietary biocircuit developed in our labs specifically for this purpose, and it is unlike any other in the world."
Data runners are not a new concept BUT, the way it is done here is fantastic. Jack joins the Aves, which use a subdermal chip to hold the information on it. Here's the thing though, it's also biotech - which means it feeds off of his body. He has to eat and make sure his temperature is good, and some other stuff. They use SQUID devices to load up the data, and the runners are off on foot to their drop points. He's got a tattoo on his forearm that has scorpion ink in it that scrambles the signal from this chip. The tattoo, and all the Aves tattoos, are of birds. It's a small detail that ends up being worked into the story really well and also reinforces the freedom theme.
"..that’s what parkour helps us get back in touch with. It isn’t just a process of discovery, it’s the process of rediscovery as well."
"standard Superconducting Quantum Interference Device, or SQUID, interface. The same kind doctors use to communicate with surgically implanted components like pacemakers."
This coupled with the technical know-how of the authors parkour moves and philosophy makes it a really enjoyable book. Jack is young, naive, intelligent, and a very likeable character. I usually like my cyberpunk to have a human condition element to the story, but this was great. It'd make a great movie, too.
There's lots of technical bits about the future, what happened, the aggrenet, undernet, sneakernet, etc. That makes the setting feel pretty good but there's not much description further than the technical details of what's happened. I missed that further on after it was established or I would have given it 5/5. Overall, it was pretty great. The world just could have been fleshed out a bit more for me.
"Sooner or later we stop running, stop climbing, stop reaching for the sky. We stop pushing ourselves toward unattainable goals because common sense tells us that the only logical thing to do is push ourselves toward the attainable ones. If running through the world like kids on the playground is a kind of dream, then at a certain point we just stop dreaming."