Series: Roc Science Fiction | Publication Date: January 2, 2008
A young man is suddenly startled awake. He has no memory. He knows only one thing for certain: Someone is trying to kill him.
Unsure of whom to trust, he is reacquainted with eight companions-trainees of an enigmatic figure known as Maestro. As he attempts to unearth his past and outwit an unseen enemy, skills he never knew he had come into play. And it soon becomes clear that there is far more than his life at stake...
Billed as a near-future thriller, Sagan's first novel plods through terrain all too familiar to SF readers. The narrator awakens with amnesia in a mysterious realm easily identified as a computer-generated virtual reality, fraught with metaphors and symbols. He slowly grasps that his name is Halloween, and that he may have murdered someone called Lazarus. Eventually, he realizes he's one of a handful of high school students attending "Immersive Virtual Reality" classes at the Idlewild IVR Academy, sponsored by the Gedaechtnis Corporation, a multinational biotech company. Intimidated by the villainous teacher, Maestro, and wary of his fellow students, Halloween is determined to recover his memory, apparently damaged in a power surge that threatened to destroy the IVR, and learn what really happened to the missing Lazarus. Despite a compelling twist near the middle, the low tension and meandering plot will likely frustrate the primary target audience, mainstream fans of such futuristic action films as The Matrix and Minority Report. Sagan may not be the next Philip K. Dick or William Gibson, but he shows enough talent here to suggest he can improve on pacing in the promised sequel. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
At age six, Nick Sagan's greeting, "Hello from the children of planet Earth," was recorded and placed aboard NASA's Voyager spacecraft. Launched with a selection of terrestrial greetings, sights, sounds and music, Voyager has since left the solar system; it is now the most distant human-made object in the universe.
The son of astronomer Carl Sagan and artist/writer Linda Salzman, Nick was born in Boston, but grew up in Ithaca and Los Angeles. Frustrated with his junior high and high school experience, he spent his teenage years operating The Freehold, an electronic bulletin board system dedicated to role-playing games. By the mid-eighties, The Freehold had become the largest game-related BBS in Los Angeles, though this success came at the expense of Nick's grades--the time he could have spent studying, he wrote online fantasy and science fiction instead. Inspired to become a filmmaker by Patrick McGoohan's subversive and surreal television series, "The Prisoner," Nick dropped out, took his high school proficiency exam, and enrolled in Santa Monica College. Finally able to study the subjects that interested him, his grades improved dramatically, allowing him to transfer to UCLA's school of Film and Television. Before graduating summa cum laude, Nick wrote a script that the screenwriting chairman, Richard Walter, liked enough to send on to an agent. Within days, a production company optioned that screenplay and hired Nick to adapt Orson Scott Card's classic science fiction novel, Ender's Game.
Since then Nick Sagan has been steadily writing for Hollywood, crafting screenplays, teleplays, animation episodes and computer games. He has worked for a variety of studios and production companies, including Paramount, Warner Brothers, New Line, Universal, Disney, actor/producer Tom Cruise, and directors David Fincher and Martin Scorsese. Nick co-wrote the award-winning computer adventure game, Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands, a story of alchemy, obsession and revenge. His film credits include adaptations of Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, Pierre Ouelette's The Deus Machine, and Charles Pellegrino's Dust. His television credits include two episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and five episodes of "Star Trek: Voyager," where he worked as a story editor in 1999. At the turn of the millennium, astronaut Sally Ride recruited him to work for SPACE.com as Executive Producer of Entertainment & Games. During his tenure there, the spark for Idlewild came to Nick--but unsure whether to write it as a screenplay, a television series or a computer game, he chose instead to write it as a novel, and sold it to Penguin Putnam in 2002.
Idlewild went on to win a starred review from Kirkus, endorsements from acclaimed writers Neil Gaiman and Stephen Baxter, a Book Sense 76 pick, and selection from both Borders and Barnes & Noble as one of the best science fiction/fantasy novels of the year. His second book, Edenborn, hailed by SFX Magazine as "one of the best post-apocalyptic novels you will ever read," is now available in stores. The third book in the series, Everfree, will hit stands on May 18th, 2006.
Nick is married to his high school sweetheart, and spends most of his time in upstate New York.
Neil Gaiman called this book a "roller coaster ride of fusion fiction" and it's easy to understand why. This delightful and diabolically intricate creation transforms from caterpillar to butterfly by way of gothic fantasy, mystery, apocalyptic science fiction, mythology, eschatology, a coming of age story, and even a romance. Ambitious novels like this run the risk of seeming all over the map, but Idlewild hangs together beautifully, with influences from each genre synthesized and reinvented through the pen of an imaginative and strikingly original storyteller.
Sagan begins with a pinpoint focus on his flawed but likeable antihero, who must solve the riddle of his amnesia, and gradually widens the scope to explore a deeper mystery that involves the whole of humanity. Multiple plotlines thread together seamlessly as hidden layers are revealed. This is a rich, dark, compelling tale that refuses to insult the reader's intelligence. Dialogue crackles and sparkles, and the protagonist's inner monologue builds to a furiously witty fever pitch.
My only complaint would be the pacing. It's one of the fastest novels I've ever read, and I tore through it so quickly that I'm left wanting more. That's about as negative as I can be here. Idlewild is simply that good, one of those rare books that stays with you long after you've closed it.
Highly recommended for everyone, and especially for fans of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series.
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A smooth blend of virtual reality and suspense, impressively reminiscent (to this reader anyway) of Iain M Banks (particularly The Bridge) crossed with Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash) with just a touch of Ender's Game thrown in. With the Author's heritage you might perhaps have expected a harder SF slant but this is set in the near future and is a more contemporary book touching on themes of genetics, AI/VR, and even, in an subtle way, certain comic book conventions which are used to good effect (groups of related 'special' people, each with defined characteristics and allegiances/rivalries).
I suggest that the book is best read knowing as little as you can about the plot (i.e. try and avoid reading the dust jacket description)...allowing you to enjoy unravelling events along with the main protoganist who starts the story with amnesia.
This is very much an 'origins' story and whilst it stands alone well (in the way the film Unbreakable does), I would be very surprised if a follow-up was not planned. I'm looking forward to it.
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Sagan's first novel surprised me in that I rather expected it to be fantasy, based on the cover. The first part of the book carried me along in that notion, but then I discovered it was so much more.
This is by no means a polished work, but it is very very good for a first novel. I've read a lot of sf, and this still managed to surprise me (plotwise). Which was refreshing.
It might not be knock your socks off good, but it's definitely worth reading. I'll be nominating Sagan for the Campbell award (best new SF Author) this year.
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