Kaleidoscope Century [Mass Market Paperback]

John Barnes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 1996 | Series: Kaleidoscope Century (Book 1)

Joshua Ali Quare wakes in 2019 at the age of 140 in a strong youthful body with no memory of his past, to find he is at the center of a vast and deadly conspiracy. The only clues to his identity are the records he has left--messages from the man he once was...

As Quare journeys through his past, he discovers he has been a key figure in the history of a turbulent, violent century--soldier, criminal, assassin, spy. A century filled with killing plagues and warring cults, ruthless corporations and dying nations. A century where treachery is often the only way to survive.

Now someone is looking for him. Someone from his past. And Quare must learn the terrifying secret of his history before it unleashed devastating consequences for the future of the human race.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A stunning evocation of humanity's violent downward slide, Barnes's fourth SF novel is set on Mars during the early part of the 22nd century, in a universe chimerically similar to that of his first, Orbital Resonance. The novel consists primarily of a series of escapades undertaken by narrator Joshua Ali Quare, whose violent career path under the aegis of the Organization, a successor group to a super-efficient amalgam of KGB/Communist Party, is the ultra-leftist equivalent of many Heinlein protagonists. Born in 1968, Joshua had been recruited by the KGB in the late 20th century, which infected him with a virus that incapacitates him in a near-coma every 15 years, from which he awakens, rejuvenated, 10 years younger each time, but nearly amnesiac. Joshua has been ruthless in pursuit of his missions, most of which have concerned scientific discoveries. Like others around him, he has lost almost all human feeling: he voices only the occasional expression of regret after "serbing" a sorority or defiling his father's grave. The environment Barnes creates is appalling: Josh and his cohort-in-crime, Sadi, appear to delight in their repeated antisocial actions and attitudes. Josh spouts such homilies as "if you don't want a brain to think the wrong thoughts, the surest way is to put a hole in it." Whether or not one is put off by the pervasive cynical mentality, as a picture of the degradation of society in the 22nd century, the novel is gripping.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In Barnes's latest, a tailored virus allows a man to live for centuries.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction (September 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812533461
• ISBN-13: 978-0812533460
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,803,664 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

My thirtieth commercially published novel will be coming out in spring 2012. I've published about 5 million words that I got paid for. So I'm an abundantly published very obscure writer.

I used to teach in the Communication and Theatre program at Western State College. I got my PhD at Pitt in the early 90s, masters degrees at U of Montana in the mid 80s, bachelors at Washington University in the 70s; worked for Middle South Services in New Orleans in the early 80s. I do paid blogging mostly about the math of marketing analysis at TheCMOSite and All Analytics. If any of that is familiar to you, then yes, I am THAT John Barnes.

There are also many Johns Barneses I am not. I am not the British footballer, the Australian rules footballer, the former Red Sox pitcher, the Tory MP, the expert on ADA programming, the biographer of Eva Peron, the authority on Dante, the mycologist, the travel writer, the guy who does some form of massage healing that I don't really understand at all, the oil executive, the film historian, or that guy that Mom said was my father. I do wish I'd written that book on titmice, though.

I used to think I was the only paid consulting statistical semiotician for business and industry in the world, but I now know four of them. So now I have a large market share of a growing field.

Semiotics is pretty much what Louis Armstrong said about jazz, except jazz paid a lot better for him than semiotics does for me. If you're trying to place me in the semiosphere, I am a Peircean (the sign is three parts, ), a Lotmanian (art, culture, and mind are all populations of those tripartite signs) and a statistician (the mathematical structures and forms that can be found within those populations of signs are the source of meaning). The branch in which I do consulting work is the mathematics and statistics of large populations of signs, which has applications in marketing, poll analysis, and annoying the literary theorists who want to keep semiotics all to themselves.

I have been married three times, and divorced twice, and I believe that's quite enough in both categories. I'm a hobby cook, sometime theatre artist, and still going through the motions after many years in martial arts.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece -- but a bummer July 27, 1998

By Glenn H. Reynolds

Format:Mass Market Paperback

This is a tour de force in every way; a consistent and sensible future-world, interesting action, and characters who hold your interest. But there's the problem (it's not a flaw, because Barnes did it on purpose). The characters are so damned repulsive that by the end of the book you feel unclean. Ugh. And it doesn't help that, in a wholly unadmirable way, it's at core a love story. It's truly a masterpiece in terms of craft, but it's not beach reading. At least, not if you want to enjoy the beach.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Complex, challenging and excellent August 27, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Unfortunately, most of the customer reviewers missed the entire point of this book. Even more unfortunately, to correct them requires spoiling the flash of excitement and pleasure when the reader realizes what is going on here.

This is a very Heinleinesque - high praise! - story of The Man Who Learned Better. Yes, it's very grim, because the world described is not merely dystopian, but apocalyptic.

Now for the clues, for those who didn't get it, or didn't finish it (stop here if you haven't read it yet!):

1) This is a time travel novel.

2) The reason the main character remembers different events differently is not that his records are faulty, but that he has experienced them multiple times, in different timelines.

3) The characters aren't merely unlikable - one of them is a psychpath!

4) The first time around, things were terrible, because the psychopath was the one who was travelling in time and arranging things to her liking.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars People Just Don't Get John Barnes. March 24, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Mass Market Paperback

It's gonna be tricky doing this one justice in just 1,000 words...

Barnes doesn't write "Nice" books where everybody lives happily ever after. And this is clearly his ugliest and most controversial book to date. Like all good science fiction, he takes some scientific principles, and imagines a world where they are in a different balance from the familiar. His genius lies in his ability to extrapolate a frighteningly accurate picture of the people who might inhabit such a place. When the place gets ugly, what do you think his characters are going to be like?

This is a DARK book. The main character is an American child of a militant communist mother and a wife-beating father. He's abused, disabused, and then recruited by the KGB as a spy. When a rapid-fire string of apocalytic diseases and wars fought by successively deadlier technology leave the world order upside down, what do you think the life of such a mercenary will be like? And I haven't even mentioned the Memes yet!

NOT for the squeamish. The violence is dirty and the sex is worse. You will want to take a bath when you're done. But if you can take the heat, prepare to have your socks blown off.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Josh, the quintessential evil anti-hero March 28, 2004

By A Customer

Format:Mass Market Paperback

This is a VERY good story about a VERY evil man. How do you become emotionally invested in a main character who is a rapist, murderer, KGB spy, and all around selfish bastard? The answer is here. I have no idea how an American KGB spy is made but chances are the answer is in this book.

It is the story about how Josh became a spy for the wrong side and did their dirty work--and let me assure you, the work is about as dirty as you will ever read. You become emotionally invested when you find out his father was an abusive drunk and his mother was a commie activist nut. No wonder he is such a basket case! In fact, this story would be a good text book in a "How to make an anti-hero" writing class.

The main story details his search for security (since he had none growing up). He never looks beyond himself. He has no love of communism, certainly no love of capitalism and not much love period. He is out for himself and the rest of the world can go to hell.

If the story interests you so far then read the book. It's a dark, fascinating, downward spiral into depravity. Quite frankly, you hate the main character but you keep reading to find out what happens to him at the end of the story. If, so far, this is not your kind of story, then don't read it. It's doubtful you will like it.

Not knowing much about John Barnes, I find it interesting that later on he worked with all-American Buzz Aldrin on some other projects making him a truly complex writer. Five stars for showing me something I've never seen before.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Dark Depiction of a Possible Future March 25, 2004

By Filmguy

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Barnes' second novel in the Century series (unofficially titled the Century series, the books include Book #1: Orbital Resonance, Book #2: Kaleidoscope Century, Book #3: Candle, and Book #4: The Sky So Big and Black) is a harrowing and often unflattering depiction of an all too possible future in which one man, Joshua Ali Quare, wages a War of Self against circumstances that constantly threaten to kill him or destroy his identity in one way or another.

The first thing that must be addressed in this review is the other reviewers failure to understand the complexity and depth of the protagonist of this story, much as the other characters in this novel fail to truly understand him. Joshua Ali Quare's personality and actions, like every other human being that walks the face of this planet, are formulated by a combination of influences from environment, upbringing, and his own innate sense of self. His parents were fringe elements, his mother an african-american communist activist, his father a hard drinking "good old boy" white criminal with a violent streak and a gift for an eloquent turn of phrase. He is recruited by his mother's communist friends to act as a spy for the KGB/Organization within the U.S. military. As awful an act as this must seem to many readers, Josh tells us himself, "I grew up knowing that the United States had to fall eventually." This is not a patriotic American child. This is the child of revolutionaries, and he shows the resilient, pragmatic approach to life that revolutionaries have. He does commit despicable acts of murder and rape, but most of the time when he does these things he is under the influence of powerful psychotropic drugs. That he is a revolutionary terrorist is not to be disputed.... The acts he performs are truly disgusting, but one must look at the whole picture before judging Joshua Ali Quare.

In the course of the book Josh leads many different lives under many different identities. His memory is erased and his age regressed every 15 years. The only information he has to connect him to the world and himself are the trinkets and words he has left behind, and as he himself puts it, he is not a good writer. Some of the lives Josh lives are positive, productive lives. But he is under no illusions. Everything move he makes is done in intelligent self interest, and he knows it. This does not mean however that he is a monster. He, as Shakespeare's character of Shylock so eloquently puts it, bleeds when he is pricked, cries when he is hurt, laughs when he loves.

The key to understanding this novel is to understand that in every person there is the potential for good and evil to some greater or lesser degree. Read the book with an open mind and you will see it as an interesting exploration of a sociopath's mind. It will also show you a future whose similarities to our own will disturb you, and it will open your mind to the possiblities of what can happen if one is true to oneself. Read more ›