Coils [Paperback]

Roger Zelazny (Author), Fred Saberhagen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1982

A new entity is being born. Its cells are microprocessors, its soul lives in data banks from Wall Street to Red Square. It is neither good nor evil. But it is very dangerous. The Angra Oil Corporation thinks it is just another resource to be used up....

Coils: The story of a man and a woman trapped in the battle between a soulless corporation and the soul of a new machine.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

In addition to the popular Dracula Series, Fred Saberhagen is the author of the popular Berserker (tm) Series and the bestselling Lost Swords and Book of Lost Swords. Fred Saberhagen lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books; aFirst Edition First Printing edition (May 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067144915X
• ISBN-13: 978-0671449155
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,105,606 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent S-F intrigue, June 20, 2001

By 

G. Swift "97jedi" (Southwestern Missouri) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Coils (Mass Market Paperback)

Having met a new love, Don decides, on an impulse, to return home and have her meet his family. Imagine his surprise when he realizes that he has never been to his hometown! Apparently his entire past has been implanted, and he is determined to discover the truth of his life.

What follows is a VERY well-written tale in a very classic style. He meets up with former associates who were happy with his amnesiac state. They of course object most strenuously to his recovering memory, and they try to arrest his progress in increasingly lethal degrees. Eventually they resort to kidnapping the only loved one Don has, and that is beyond tolerance.

This novel is not very long, taking just a couple hours to read, but there are moany things that the authors foresaw (in 1982) that have more or less come to be, like universal access to facilities like banking from any computer outlet (one of the minor such cases). He is aided by a very unique ability, the reason his associates fear him, that of a sort of machine telepathy. He is able to send his consciousness into any electronic device. This you can bet comes in very handy in such a technological (1994!) setting.

I have only recently begun tracking down all of Zelazny's books, this being the third I have read, and I consider this to be a great novel. There is good character advancement, well-written first-person perspective, and action without excessive gratuitous violence.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but not great Zelazny, with a dash of Saberhagen, February 13, 2005

By 

T. D. Welsh (Basingstoke, Hampshire UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Coils (Mass Market Paperback)

This thoughtfully illustrated little book will provide anyone with a fine day's entertainment. For Zelazny fans, it is something more - even a mediocre Zelazny is better than most writers' best. Fred Saberhagen's contribution was not so obvious to me, although no doubt it had to do with the "conscious computer" aspect of the plot.

The action moves right along from the start, in a version of the "Wait a minute - I don't know who I am!" scenario that appears in Edward Dmytryk's movie "Mirage", Heinlein's short story "The Strange Profession of Jonathan Hoag", A.E. van Vogt's "The World of Null-A" and Desmond Bagley's fine thriller "The Tightrope Men".

Challenged by his new girlfriend Cora, Don BelPatri begins to wonder about his idyllic existence. Living in Florida, comfortably well off, enjoying life day to day, he has only vague recollections of his earlier life. But when he takes Cora to see his parents, he finds that he has never before seen the town he thought of as home. When he has himself examined by a psychologist, the man is found dead the very next morning. Then Don discovers that his mind can reach out and "see" the internal states of computers - and even change them.

The tension is built up skilfully as more and more of the truth is revealed, and Don finds himself up against formidable and ruthless enemies. Although his growing ability to control all kinds of electronic equipment gives him a huge advantage, in the end he needs all the help he can get from his friends - and even some of his enemies.

Don's ability to exercise direct mental control over computer circuitry remotely is a mixture of inspiration and naivete that only a handful of authors could pull off. "Coils" was published four years before William Gibson's first novel, "Neuromancer" appeared in 1986, but Alfred Bester had explored similar ideas in "The Computer Connection" (1973) and subsequent work. Bester's thinking seems to have paralleled Zelazny's, as can be seen from their later collaboration on "Psychoshop".

Zelazny was to take the theme much further, for instance in "24 Views of Mt Fuji, by Hokusai" (in "The Last Defender of Camelot") and his last, unfinished, novel, the magisterial "Donnerjack"...

5.0 out of 5 stars Coils by Roger Zelazny, October 21, 2011

By 

William A. Averill "wildbillzamora" (corrales, nm usa) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Coils (Hardcover)

Great read! I read this when I was in college lo, these many years ago, and it occurred to me to read it again. Looked the title up in Amazon & there it was! Loved it again.