Customer Reviews

The Long Run: A Tale of the Continuing Time

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What good things can't be said about this book? It is probably the single strongest cyberpunk novel ever written, with only Walter Jon Williams' Hardwired coming close. The action rocks, the humor is dark, sardonic, and counter-authoritarian, just the way I like it. The hero is strong but not unbeatable (if only his enemies could think like he did).

The hero of the story, Trent, is now in his early twenties, and is a professional high-tech thief and con-man extraordinaire, living his life this way as a statement of principal (and a matter of necessity) against the authorities who used a nuclear weapon to kill his small collective family years before, and in the process, kill hundreds of thousands of bystanders and render millions more homeless.

Trent is thrown from his life as a buccaneer among the underbelly of polite society (or so he sees himself) and is once again pitted against his family's old adversary. The two play cat and mouse for the rest of the book, with Trent one step ahead of his opponent, and thus the title of the book, "The Long Run".

I enjoyed reading every page of this book, I bought it long ago, in it's original paperback version. I loaned it to a friend, never saw it again, and did not hesitate to buy it once more after an extensive search. Now I have this version on order, and will consider that money well-spent, too. I've read the whole novel six times, and will read it many more times in the future.

Simply outstanding.

The Long Run is, in essence, a caper book in a science fiction setting. Like most soundbites, that doesn't remotely adequately explain it.

The world is vibrant and real in a way that most sci fi universes aren't. The writing is crisp, with excellent dialogue, unselfconsicously witty banter, and a solid plot. As a bonus, it features a pair of antagonists (Mohammed Vance and Melissa Du Bois) who are sympathetic characters rather than villains.

And, even having been written two decades ago, Moran manages to capture existential horror in four words: "The network was down."

Read it. Just trust me on this one. Read it.

Daniel Keys Moran (DKM) launches straight into the story, which I love. And once the story gets going there are very few breaks in the action. The book is set in the Manhattan of the future (about 200 years out) but DKM writes as if it's modern day. What I mean by that is he doesn't explain the technology he invents for the future. A modern day author wouldn't write "The phone rang [a phone is a device that one holds to their ear so they can speak with a person any distance away]." DKM doesn't either, as the story continues you understand what these items are from context. Some readers might find this frustrating. Personally I felt like it made the world more real and that DKM thought his readers had the intelligence needed to figure it out. IE he didn't talk down to us.

I found the world very realistic. I like Star Trek and all that, but most future stories the world is either a post apocalyptic cesspool or a sterile everything is solved utopia. In TLR the world is exactly as it is today - corrupt politicians, good politicians, well intentioned government institutions gone awry etc. It might feel a little more apocalyptic because the main character is a thief who just moved away from the slums but the whole world isn't like that.

It is a classic anti-hero story: a guy who didn't plan to take a stand but wound up doing so anyway. He is a very principled bad guy, a pacifist who crusades against drug dealers, a sort of Robin Hood thief. The book isn't about any of those things, that's just a snapshot of what the main character is like.

I found it to be wildly entertaining, riveting, and witty. It is the second of 3 books. I would read this one first however. The first book, Emerald Eyes, is much harder to read (not as well written) when you go into it cold. If you read TLR first then you already understand the world and you are interested in the lives of the characters, so it's easier to get immersed in and care about the plot of EE. The Last Dancer is the third book. I personally thought it was the most boring of the three, but I am in love with the character Trent and he is barely mentioned in TLD, so that may be why.

I find all three to be a worthwhile read and would wholeheartedly endorse them. I hope you love them as much as I did.

On a related note, the author planned 26 (I believe) books in this series and references those other tales. He knows the birth dates, death dates, and major life events of all the characters he introduces and I believe his books benefit greatly from this. He has a real world and real characters in his head. Sadly of the 26 books he has, to my knowledge, only written these 3. Equally sadly about 20 years after writing The Long Run he went back and "improved" it on it's re-release. I did not find any of his changes to be improvements and indeed there are many typos in the new version. Presumably he started changing sentences and didn't finish or changed his mind. This is his corrected version, I would recommend you obtain the original. If you are a diehard fan of the trilogy (or are shopping for a diehard fan) than this version would round out the collection nicely but it is the minorly altered version.

The Long Run easily exists on its own within Moran's larger opus of the Tales of the Continuing Time. While characters from Emerald Eyes would be familiar to readers of that novel, all points of this second novel easily sustain themselves. As a caper novel, The Long Run performs very well. Moran has created as likable and charming a hero in Trent as any of the host of leading men who have played such parts in various media (particularly screen of recent years). However, despite the suspenseful thrill it will successfully provide many readers, its effect on the genre of science-fiction will be very, very small. Because it operates so firmly in the conventions of the caper novel, it will have only the same effect that a particularly well-made bacon-cheeseburger newly branded and marketed on the public would have on the fast-food industry. People will buy it; people will like it. Chains of restaurants will not be built around it; rival restaurants will not be forced to new levels of innovation to deal with it. As to its effects on the genre, science fiction authors will not be forced to deal with Trent the Uncatchable and his run in their own works as they write.

WHO SHOULD READ THIS:

There is a large market for the suspenseful and the thrilling. The Long Run comes in at less than 350 pages, is well-written, and should please many, many science-fiction fans who need not be ashamed to read and like this book. It grips the reader and makes him care about the outcome, which his as much as anyone can ask of this sort of work. For all the people that enjoy Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible, this is your novel. Buy it for your next vacation. Despite our rather harsh review, the harshness stems from a philosophical position rather than contempt for the writing. This just isn't a book we look to put in the time capsule when civilization falls.

WHO SHOULD PASS:

As we said for Emerald Eyes, philosophers should not enter. As in all caper novels and movies, they suffer by comparison to great dramas. For example, briefly compare in your mind Sneakers and Saving Private Ryan or The Stainless Steel Rat and Darwin's Radio. They're operating in different arenas. We might be accused of the same snobbery that prevents comedies from winning best-picture Oscars at the Academy Awards but there it is. We probably are snobs. For readers who are looking for that serious, sober, high-minded work in literature-well, it's missing here. And that will be disappointing most especially for readers who enjoyed that aspect of Moran's Emerald Eyes.

READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW AT INCHOATUS.COM