Armed Memory [Mass Market Paperback]

Jim Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1996

In a twenty-first-century New York, where genetic technology enables people to become whoever--or whatever--they desire, Tim Wandel takes a new job and finds himself in a deadly confrontation with a killer species of shark-humans. Reprint. PW. AB.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The future is a dangerous place-just ask any of the half-dozen main characters in this cutting-edge adventure novel about "microded" (genetically altered) gangsters who, modified from humans into sharklike creatures, dwell in the ocean's depths and do the bidding of shadowy mafia figures. Told as a series of flashbacks and oral testimonials before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the novel divides into two parts. The first is a tale of two cousins: Johnny Stevens, who always wanted to be covered in scales and whose company has now perfected the technology that enables anyone to look like any person or creature they desire; and Timothy Wandel, who goes to work for Johnny as a PR man. They battle the microded hammerheads until triumph and tragedy consume Johnny's company. The novel's second part is far less successful, with less action and less clear-cut goals for the characters as Wandel and others continue to deal with the global hammerhead menace. Still, Young's writing creates a strong sense of excitement, his future world is familiar enough to be appealing (and distorted enough to be hip) and the mysteries he explores are intense and compelling.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Young's second novel arrives 15 years after the first and so powerfully blends imaginative cultural forecasting and gripping storytelling that it makes his return a major event. Along with runaway inflation and a restrictive Mental Health Act, the twenty-first century has brought the ultimate aid for the fashion conscious: a sophisticated genetic technique known as microding that allows physical transformation into anyone or anything, from Elvis to a centaur. But while microding's pioneer, Johnny Stevens, has quickly been getting rich, the criminal underworld has been modifying his techniques insidiously to create brigades of ruthless, sharklike creatures called hammerheads that threaten to eliminate all land-based life. Stevens can save the world by unleashing an airborne virus that will reverse the hammerheads' microding, but he does not anticipate that the most dangerous hammerheads, the warlords, may be immune. Young insightfully examines the double-edged sword of genetic engineering's future possibilities in a chilling scenario that will linger in the reader's memory for a long time. Carl Hays --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction (May 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812550277
• ISBN-13: 978-0812550276
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,649,801 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Smart, Dark and Thought-Provoking, June 22, 2000

By 

Robert Carlberg (Seattle) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Armed Memory (Hardcover)

I must have read the 1993 short story this book is based on in a collection somewhere -- at least most of this novel seemed vaguely familiar. "Lingers in the reader's memory"? No, I just barely got any déja vu from it... But I enjoyed it even more the second(?) time.

Young's story is a brisk, short-chaptered cautionary tale, well-paced and intriguing. There are some major plot elements left unexplained -- like how can the Hammerheads be swimming in the ocean at one point, and rampaging through the streets of New York in another -- do they have fins or legs? -- but as long as you're willing to suspend your disbelief, this is great "soft" science-fiction.

The microcoding fashions reminded me a bit of Delaney's "Dahlgren," and the high-tech high-security future is very Bladerunner. However Young's vision of genetic tinkering gone awry is all his own, as far as I know. Proponents of "designer genes" and nanotechnology-as-mankind's-golden-goose would do well to consider Young's alternative future, where not everyone follows a Disney script.

Chilling and (except for a few implausible details) entirely too plausible.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The ability to create a new you., November 15, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Armed Memory (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a highly enjoyable thriller about a future where extreme body modification - via genetic manipulation - is the latest fad, and what happens when a group of people begin to use it as a route to world domination. A few careless plot gaps and a craving for more keep me from giving the book a higher score, but it doesn't keep me from recommending it to anyone who finds the premise interesting.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Something is Missing, April 18, 2006

By 

W. Boyd (Down South) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Armed Memory (Mass Market Paperback)

While this book was interesting, and I did for the most part enjoy it, there were times when it seemed like parts of the story were missing. The story did not always flow well.
Younger readers would probably get more enjoyment from this book than someone looking for an in-depth detailed, well flowing story; after all, it has cool sharkmen.