Capacity [Mass Market Paperback]

Tony Ballantyne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 26, 2006

Welcome to the year 2252—and congratulations! You’re now a personality construct. We know that can be a daunting stage of personal development, especially if you don’t remember making this life-changing decision. But we’re here to help….

Helen is waking to a dark new reality—one that she’s certain she didn’t choose. In this borrowed existence, she finds an unexpected guide in Judy, a geisha-faced virgin who’s on a mission of her own. Together, the two of them begin a dangerous run through dozens of imagined worlds in an attempt to trap a psychopath haunting the shadowed areas of virtual space—a killer who brutally murdered an earlier version of Helen and who plans to kill again. Meanwhile, Justinian is investigating a peculiar rash of AI suicides on far-off planets—and finds that not only is there more to these “deaths” than he thought, but that they may be linked to his wife Anya’s mysterious coma.

In a future where AIs have taken over human life and the Environment Agency runs everything for our own good, the fact that we can live on after physical death as sentient digital beings should have been a good thing. Instead, as Helen and Justinian are about to discover, it just means there are more ways to die.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this uneven sequel to Ballantyne's Recursion, humans can live on as digital clones or "personality constructs" of themselves, leading multiple lives in the numerous matrices of 23rd-century cyberspace and enjoying equal rights with their physical compatriots. Like the first series entry, this novelinterweaves several story lines concerning the dubious existence of an omnipotent artificial intelligence known as the Watcher, who controls the Environmental Agency, the organization in charge of all aspects of the digital and physical worlds. With the help of a geisha-garbed agent (and her numerous digital clones), a woman seeks asylum from a cyberspace killer determined to repeatedly torture and murder her digital incarnations. Meanwhile, on a remote planet in the physical world, a social worker investigates a series of artificial intelligence suicides that may hold apocalyptic implications. Though Ballantyne writes with engaging authority about high-concept technological novelties, the three protagonists often come across as self-parodies, spouting clumsy and predictable exposition that grinds the tale to a halt during what would otherwise have been memorable climaxes. This is a shame, because the inventive plot, which interweaves such staples of the genre as dilemmas of free will, memory and identity, contains enough mind-bending twists and double-crosses to satisfy most cyberpunk fans. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

After rescue from a trap set at work, Helen is displaced in time. She is now a personality construct, or PC. Her caseworker, Judy, tells her that PCs have the same rights as atomic humans but that for the past 70 years, Helen has been running illegally on the Private Network for the pleasure of customers playing powergames. Helen vows to help Judy hunt down the head of the Private Network. Meanwhile, Justinian, a therapist for troubled PCs, is assigned to an extragalactic world where a several AIs have committed suicide for no apparent reason. It's a strange world of Schroedinger boxes, which become fixed in location only when someone looks at them, and unbreakable black velvet bands, which appear out of nowhere and shrink away to nothing. As Helen and Judy discover Private Network secrets, and Justinian slowly unravels the ever-stranger AI suicides mystery, their stories converge upon a terrifying conspiracy to hide the truth of an outer universe. Ballantyne's pacing and world-building skills make this all engaging and a bit creepy. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 390 pages
• Publisher: Spectra; First Thus edition (December 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553589296
• ISBN-13: 978-0553589290
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1.1 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #684,423 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, Often Entertaining, But not Gripping, February 25, 2007

By 

Russell Clothier (Kansas City, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Capacity (Mass Market Paperback)

I was excited as I read the first half of Capacity. Ballantyne sets up an interesting, if not entirely original, future world. Seemingly benevolent AI's watch over mankind, guided by a semi-mythical chief AI, "the Watcher," which may be extraterrestrial in origin. Copies of human personalities live in processing spaces that mimic the real "atomic" world. Harmony and peace are ensured by "Social Care," who tend to every need both physical and psychological. If problems arise, they are dealt with by agents such as Judy, the main character - or characters, since the "atomic" Judy has 12 copies that patrol the virtual world. The Judies are hunting a virtual predator, Kevin, who has been torturing multiple copies of a woman named Helen. Meanwhile, halfway to the Andromeda galaxy, the AI's have encountered an alien threat that seems to feed off intelligence in any form. And it is heading our way. A promising set up. . .

By the end of the book, I was less satisfied. I understood the world as the backstory filled in, but the storyline remained enigmatic. Worse, the motives of the characters are too obscure for their actions to fully make sense. After spending 300 pages with Judy, I still don't get her. By the end of the book, I'm not sure who is on whose side, what they are trying to accomplish, and why. I don't need protagonists in white hats and villains in black, but if I'm to care, things need to be better defined than this.

Also, though the world is fairly well explained, it is not fleshed out. Ballantyne has about 10 characters in the book, which is enough, but they almost never interact with anyone else. We never see another agent, or Judy's boss, or neighbors, or passersby. There is not enough detail to bring the everyday world to life.

All in all, Capacity was worth reading. I imagine much will be cleared up in the sequel, so that it all makes sense. But I'm not sure I care enough to find out.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Expansive, mind blowing, challenging read, November 30, 2007

By 

Daric - See all my reviews

This review is from: Capacity (Mass Market Paperback)

I read this book before reading 'Recursion' the first of the trilogy, thinking that 'Capacity' was a stand alone book. My head nearly exploded reading this book. There are a lot of different and cool concepts in the book dealing with multiple versions of people, plots which span for centuries, etc. A lot of the future tech is explained in the 'Recursion' and, the author doesn't slow down to explain things into detail. A reviewer mentioned that Ballantyne's descriptions is like reading a screenplay - very sparse which I agree with (sometimes more sparse than a script!) I just finished reading 'Recursion' and would have enjoyed Capacity more if I read it in sequence. So if you're thinking about jumping into this author's work, I recommend you read them in order. Definitely worth the read if you're looking for new perspectives and complex story lines.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant, June 17, 2007

By 

Avid Reader (Franklin, Tn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Capacity (Mass Market Paperback)

I sometimes wonder what readers could possibly want. Here one is given a snapping literary style (is writing even an important element to folks anymore?), unforgettable characters, originality, a bold plot and lots of action. The book's real concern is the whole notion of freedom, choice, purpose and what it means to be human. Is a replicated pattern of electronic waves a "human being" like our carbone selves? If a machine can predict our actions does that mean we have no free will? Calvin must be jumping for joy.

I approach a novel, particularly science fiction, from the viewpoint of the entire package. Particularly I look for characterization and human relations - two areas that many sci-fi writers tend to overlook. In tales of the future most authors resort to having our descendents talk familiarly about our time (as if we sat around discussing the culture and society of the Aztecs, Ming Dynasty or Ghanian Empire). These authors can't seem to escape their boundaries - terrestrial and literary. One gets the idea that Ballantyne is having a little fun with his variations, alternate endings, simulataneous realities and interplay between the atomic and virtual worlds. This is NOT the usual "We are the Zeeboos from Planet X here to demand you stop your atomic testing" LOL

Yet, as complex and far-astride as the story reads, it was a blast. Only afterwards did I discover it was the sequeal to Divergence (that I am now reading). Even not knowing beforehand the X-file like mythology - Watcher, Eva, Mary, Social Care, DIANA - I found it a great read. Judy (in all here vairations) is a heroine for the new age. Helen disappoints in the end but Frances, the robot, almost steals the show with her achingly human tenderness and brilliant insights.

I didn't understand the swipe against business - as if living under the "corporate yoke" was worse than the Big Brother Nightmare of the future. This authoritarian structure combined the worst from all political areas - the Right's moral purity crusade, the Left's devotion to collectivism over individuals and the middles complacency with increasing encroachment on the power of the State. Social Care controlled people "for their own good" - how many times have we heard this in history? What did not make sense was the unevenness - people lived no longer than today - they got arthritis for Pete's sake! Yetthere is FTL travel, nanotech, and the lives seemed magical from our point of view. Then one recalls the small conversation from the man who opined there was only so much "capacity" in the universe. In fact, the word "capacity" was used skillfully in several contexts throughout the story - another great literary ploy. My grade: A