Customer Reviews

Ribofunk

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

 

 

Blown me away. I ran into it during a trip to the local library. I am now a convert. If you are a fan of William Gibson, You gotta read this one.

This is a very entertaining, very engaging book. Fantastic, creative use of language combined with amazing insight into the possibilities of nanotechnology, cloning, genetic manipulation and better living through chemistry. The book and stories are fun but have depth and emotion. I reread this in 2001 after reading it 5 years ago and I was amazed at the perceptive forward vision that the author had in some of these stories originally published 10 years ago.

Definitely bio-punk; the world that Gibson and Williams and Sterling built, with computers de-emphasized and messy smelly squishy sexy biological stuff pumped way up.

At least in this book, Di Filippo is more willing than the classic cyberpunk writers to go over the top, to be a little silly. When he writes "Coney dropped like a smartbomb from a scramjet", he may be accurately forecasting the way technological words seep into common speech, but I suspect he's just having fun. If that sort of thing doesn't bother you, and you don't mind figuring out a heavy dose of new vocabulary on the fly (I like it, myself; I figured out most things, including "whychromes", but although I got the meaning of "reedpair" quickly enough I'm still in the dark on the etymology of it), you'll probably enjoy this book.

I did.

A bunch of short stories, some interconnected or overlapping, all set in the same future universe. Fascinating, unique vision of a future where biological technology is dominant. Clever use of language. BUT THERE IS NO "SULTRY BODYGUARD WHO HAPPENS TO BE PART WOLVERINE"!!!!!!! Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest! I can't imagine how that quote got on the book dust jacket, and now on the Amazon reviews. One story, "Little Worker", features an essentially asexual bodyguard who is part wolverine, AND another character who is sultry. But no sultry wolverine bodyguard. I enjoyed most of the stories, most of the time. My eyes occasionally glazed over at the repeated use of chemical terms I'm not familiar with. On the other hand, I enjoyed deciphering the future slang; "eft" for money (presumably refering to Electronic Funds Transfer), "trump", as in Donald, meaning posh or wonderful (although I'd argue with that idea!) You have to hit the ground running with this book; concepts aren't spelled out, instead the surroundings and characters make it clear what's going on. It's an intelligent, thoughtful, occasionally touching work. The use of genetically altered, intelligent animals serving mankind is not an original one, Cordwainer Smith used the exact same concept in his sci-fi decades ago. That doesn't make Ribofunk any less enjoyable, I just wanted to mention Cordwainer Smith, who I think is an underappreciated genius. His collected short sci-fi, The Rediscovery of Man, is amazing.

Just as the visions of William Gibson (Neuromancer, Count Zero) and Bruce Sterling (Islands in the Net, The Artificial Kid)cassandrize a gritty, dangerous future for our evolving information culture, so Di Filippo's Ribofunk addresses the implications of bio-engineering and nanotechnology.You'll find warewolves, karmachanics, black market twistoids cooking chromos on kinky bio-lab kits, helix twisted "splices" who've mixed theirs with dog chroms (and their rock bands, like Dingo Tush). As today, the culture wars continue with "Anti-Em demonstrations in front of the Board of Strings (Protein Police) chanting "No Mods, No Mixes, No Splices Less Than 60 (% human): Misery to miscegenators." You'll also encounter: surly anabolic downloading lobestrobers, Sapphos and Adoni whose parity bits got switched, Israeli token ring worms, the clubs and trip dens, dreamsnakes just slipped thru the vurt (virtual/ parallel reality) and a host of others that move toward a strangely self-organizing criticality in this challenging work. The women you'll meet are as intriguing as Burgess Shale Hullucinagenia (slots or sockets--as they're called--the men being meats and plugs), like she of the wiley chat, the prehensile nipples and labia--wearing Systemic Meat, a Great Mother somatype with a line of breasts across her torso, wide doggie clone bearing hips. Even the near normals have paralymphatic systems that aggresively react to micro and nano-invaders; arteries reinforced with neogoretex, bones threaded with stonefiber, heart with an onboard assist, hyperflexure in fingers, increased haptic and proprioceptive sensitivity and wetware enhancements hosted by the Noahs. There are also the Cerebrally Enhanced "the swellheads, doubleheads, their naked bulging encephaloceles cradled in special bra-like neckbraces... their virtuality hookups, basal metabolisms supplemented with nutritional and trope exofeeds." Ah! my trump molars, this book seems fashioned by foreign web spiders squeezing through virtual reality fire walls with fuzzy logic search algorithmic info mandibles dripping of quary bytes. You too could get Kevorked, get Bhopal-ed bigtime. So before your rem memories get cyber-hazed till you slip the deltawave syncretic, expose your receptors to the multipolar music of this manic and truly original (anti-arboreal) application of dead trees. And May the Principle of the First Self-Organizer Sooth You Under The Sign Acknowledging Supremacy of the Somapsychic Automony

If I were Tim Robbins in Robert Altman's 'The Player' I might pitch a well-read exec like this: Imagine a biopunk version of William Gibson's 'Burning Chrome'. But I'm not. Briefly, I have a love/hate relationship with science-fiction. Love the genre, hate most of what I find out there. Most science-fiction is poorly conceived and/or poorly written. Di Filippo is different. As a writer, his prose is as tight as his ideas are original. 'Ribofunk' is an excellent collection of short stories connected by a shared dystopian world where genetic engineering has been taken to the extreme. What it means to be human has changed as 'splices', individuals possessing a blend of human and non-human DNA, have become the norm. Animal antlers, fish gills, insect limbs and a host of other add-ons can be acquired in shops for reasons ranging from fashion to military functionality. One's human rights are determined by the possession of no less than 51% human DNA. These and many more provacative premises are cleverly explored throughout 'Ribofunk'. Each story stands on its own. Taken together they form a strange kaleidescope of a future that seems much closer and more plausible with each new 'biotech' headline.

Whenever I recommend authors to people, Paul Di Filipo is one of the first people I recommend. His stories are imaginative. His characters are interesting. His prose is tight and eloquent. Ribofunk expanded my idea of sci-fi in a whole new direction, one that I think is very valid considering the aims of today's technologies. If you are at all interested in organic cybernetics, wetware, biohumanoid technology and the like, I would recommend this book.

The majority of Di Filippo's stories take place using modified groups of criminals and policemen and anthropomorphic animals.

To the extent this book talks about biotechnology, it is of the children's book trope type: criminals and policemen are forced to upgrade themselves for pointless war games, and talking animals are used to illustrate slavery.

Gimmicky and sometimes downright annoying. I was really looking forward to having a new author to read, after Harlan Ellison spoke so highly of di Filippo, but no such luck! I'm a big fan of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, so I really expected to like this book, but I couldn't make myself finish it.

How I wish this writer would do some more of his speculative SF. This collection of short stories is some of the most innovative and well conceived stuff available without a prescription. I absolutely recommend this to anyone who likes writers like greg egan or neal stephensen.