The Jazz [Paperback]

Melissa Scott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 6, 2001

Melissa Scott, winner of the John W. Campbell Award, twice winner of the Lambda Award for best novel, and author of the cyberpunk classic, Trouble and Her Friends, returns with a hip novel of the media-dominated future, when the internet is filled with Jazz: intentional misinformation and bewildering disinformation that are both an artform and a business.

Tin Lizzy, a respected Jazz artist with a checkered past, is a theatrical Web site designer who does backgrounds for Jazz productions. When a nifty new script shows up on the web, Lizzy is surprised to learn it came from a teenage boy named Keyz. It turns out Keyz used his parents' access codes to borrow a Hollywood studio's editing program- the true, hidden source of the studio's success. Now the studio head wants to lock him in jail and throw away the key.

So Lizzy rescues him and takes him on the road, across the altered landscape of twenty-first century USA, trying to stay one step ahead of the police . . . . and the vengeance of a megalomaniac CEO.

The Jazz is a road chase novel of the future, filled with shady characters, close calls, and colorful neat ideas.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Misinformation, PR, disinformation, rumors, spinning, lies--in the near future, the art of untruth has evolved into the jazz: virtual-reality Internet theatre, an entertainment for the cognoscenti and a source of pain and scandal for those who believe what they see, read, or experience. Tin Lizzy has escaped her troubled criminal adolescence to become one of the premiere design programmers of the jazz. But when she agrees to design the back-tech for a teenage boy's brilliant jazz scenario, she discovers too late that Keyz created his jazz with a sophisticated program stolen from a Hollywood studio. Now Lizzy is a criminal again, a desperate fugitive on the run with Keyz through the dangerous underground of the 21st century, fleeing cops, bounty hunters, studio detectives, and a powerful, ruthless CEO who has a secret to preserve, and boundless resources and vindictiveness.

Quietly, outside the hot, critical spotlight turned upon the original cyberpunks and second-generation cyberwunderkind Neil Stephenson, Melissa Scott has become one of the strongest, most productive, and least street-glamour-blinded cyberpunks writing at the turn of the millennium. This is not entirely a surprise; in 1986, she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She is also a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for best science fiction novel. If you haven't read Melissa Scott, The Jazz is a fine place to start. --Cynthia Ward --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Best known for her densely conceived, far-future settings, complex plotting and radical political commentary, Scott (Dreaming Metal; The Shapes of Their Hearts) here offers her fans a more straightforward, near-future cyberthriller. Tin Lizzy, another of the author's highly competent hackers with a heart of gold, makes her living producing virtual background scenarios for the jazz, the newest Internet art form: an inspired combination of personality journalism, gossip, cyberpranks and outright lies. When Lizzy finds herself teamed with Keyz, a teenaged boy whose jazz has jumped seemingly overnight from amateur to brilliant, she senses that something isn't right. Her fears are confirmed when, soon after his first professional sale, Keyz discloses that he's been helped by Orpha-Toto, a secret and highly experimental expert program that he's stolen from one of the major movie studios. Hounded by Gardner Gerretty, the ruthless CEO of the studio, the same man who was responsible for Lizzy's having done hard time many years earlier, the two hackers find themselves fleeing across an increasingly strange, near-future America, looking desperately for a way to escape from Gerretty's monomaniacal pursuit. Less ambitious than Scott's very best work and marred by a villain whose sheer relentlessness strains credulity, this is nonetheless a powerfully imagined suspense novel. Scott maintains her position, first established in Trouble and Her Friends, as one of the best writers around in portraying what life online may really be like in the future. (June) FYI: Scott has won two Lambda Awards for her SF.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (July 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312875428
• ISBN-13: 978-0312875428
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,822,463 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating view of the future of the Internet, May 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Jazz (Hardcover)

Melissa Scott's "The Jazz" is a smart, hip look at the future of the Internet and the future of entertainment media in our culture, and where the two shall meet. The term "jazz" refers to the placement of false or hoax information on the net, which among the elite is considered to be an artform. Keyz, a 16 year old hoping to become a jazz "player", hacks something he shouldn't and ends up on the run. Lucky for him, he's helped by Tin Lizzy, an experienced player who knows the streets, both cyber and real.

My only minor quibbles are that Keyz is underdevloped as a character, and the ending is a little too quick to be satisfying. Tin Lizzy is well-rendered, however, and the descriptions of surfing the net are truly interesting. It's not hard to believe that the future Scott describes may be the way we're headed. For another, different version of the future Internet, I also recommend Shariann Lewitt's "Interface Masque".

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Playing 'The Jazz' has its delights, October 13, 2000

By 

Robert Baker-Self (Reading, Berkshire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Jazz (Hardcover)

Anyone who follows Melissa Scott's work will know that she seems to write in several 'veins'. This book is very much in the style of 'Trouble and Her Friends', but improves in several key areas.

Set in a near-future world with cyberpunk atmosphere but without the usual 'cyber' accoutrements, this book is about people living on the grey side of the law. Keyz is a teenage hacker who has stolen a program from a major studio without realising how important it is. Pursued by the studio, he turns to Tin Lizzy, the women who put up a piece of his satirical writing ('The Jazz' of the title). Unfortunately, Tin Lizzy has her own problems, not least a colourful history that comes back to haunt her.

As always, Scott's conviction in the worlds she builds and her skill at conveying it mean the book immerses you effortlessly. Tin Lizzy is a well-realised character, someone you think you would like to meet, but that you would probably hate if you did. Her motivations are clear and understandable, but she is by no means a saint. Keyz never really develops as a character, but as he is the initiation of the story rather than its impetus it doesn't really matter. (In addition, it works quite well to convey an 'innocent' caught up in events that he doesn't really understand).

The negative on this book surrounds the plot. It's not a bad plot, and it is sustained the length of the book quite nicely. The problem is that the plot does not require the milieu. It fails the SF test of being unable to be told outside of the world in which it has been set. In fact, it faintly reminded me of the film 'The Parallax View', though I haven't entirely figured out why. Scott is capable of writing top-notch SF ('Dreamships', 'The Kindly Ones', 'Burning Bright', 'Shadow Man'), but this is not quite up to that caliber.

What it is, however, is an undeniably enjoyable read and a decent way to spend a few quid. It doesn't, to me, reveal or question any fundamentals, the way the other books listed do.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Trouble and Her Friends, draft 2, January 27, 2003

By 

R. Sundquist (Madison, Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Jazz (Paperback)

Basically, this book takes the plot of Scott's earlier novel Trouble and Her Friends, and changes the technology a little. Instead of netwalking and criminal hacking, it's about people who spread misinformation over the internet as their profession. This is an interesting idea, and could have made a very good short story or novella. But Scott takes it and makes a thriller around it, complete with a villain. It reminded me of The Fugitive.

I have to admit I never finished reading this book. After half of it, I decided that the plot wasn't nearly strong enough, the characters weren't alive, and the setting was too mundane to keep my interest. Compared to Trouble, the tech in this book is peanuts - the computers aren't too much further along than those we have today - and not much else has changed. Such near-future settings can work, obviously, but there wasn't enough substance here.

I would love to see this idea - the jazz - rewritten in a shorter format. As the basis for a novel, I don't think it's strong enough; especially not as the basis for a thriller like this book wants to be.