Customer Reviews

Signal to Noise

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Signal to Noise reads much like one would imagine a corraboration between Philip K. Dick and Larry Niven would read. The science is generally hard (with one exception: see below), but not nearly so hard as the oppressive sense of paranoia and lurking evil.

Everyone around Jack, the protagonist, is a potential enemy. Every time he takes a step forward, he runs the risk of finding that he's been walking in the wrong direction. Even his good intentions can have (literally) Earth shattering consequences. And we, the audience, share his paranoia. After awhile, the reader begins to feel like he's navigating a bewildering maze of smoke and mirrors, filled with razor-wire and spring-loaded spikes.

The one area where hard science gives way to soft metaphore is via the sophisticated neural-integrated virtual reality technology of the book. Here the book really starts to seem like a PDK work. In a brilliant variation of the tired, old VR theme, Nylund does not create his artificial experiences out of pixels projected on to retinas, but out of vivid metaphors projected directly into the brain. There is a very literal dream quality to those sequences, heightening the sense of paranoia and the nightmare sense of running down an infinite corridore being chased by ever-closer enemies.

It is a good book. True, it could have been better. The characters could have had a tad more depth (although, in a story filled with shadows, too much depth can be a bad thing) and some of the philosophizing strike a tin note. Never the less, it is an engaging and compelling story that plays to that part of our psyche that Kafka used to explore so very well. It was the stort of story that demanded completion by me even as I came to feel stifled by the oppressiveness of the plot. It is absolutely sadistic that it leaves so much to the sequel -- and absolutely delightful that it torments the reader by doing so.

If you liked Snowcrash, the Amber Series, or even The Matrix, pick this one up. I first stumbled over Eric Nylund with his A Game Of Universe, which got me to read his other two novels (Pawn's Dream & Dry Water). Well, sorta...I got distracted before I could finish both of them. But when he's on, the man's ON. And this one is 10 times better than A Game of Universe. It blends future "reality" and VR with alien conspiracies and cyberspace, mythology and cut-throat business politics. It keeps turning up the heat and twisting the plot, and makes you glad the sequel is already being advertised. This is like the first time I encountered Snowcrash...I have trouble putting the book down. Easily Nylund's best to date.

I'm always on the lookout for good "hard" science fiction, so it was with great pleasure that I read this book. Nylund's confident grasp of a wide range of advanced theoretical physics is mixed with a humorous writing style and meticulous attention to story line and character. The "T"s are crossed and the "I"s dotted (no loose ends or deux ex machina solutions) -- and the story goes at such a clip you'll have a hard time putting it down. I'm looking forward to more from this author!

Nyland's "Signal to Noise" is at times confusing, at times deep, and at all times absorbing.

The "good" are his remarkable ideas that truly provoke off-line (or off-book) pondering: the mysterious enzyme, a trade from the alien Wheeler (and dealer?) and what it's effect might be on different personalities; Jack Potter's forced mental implant and it's effect on his psi capabilities; the "gateway" with the puzzles of its power source and its capabilities. Probably included in this short list is Nylund's visualization of software code when Jack is absorbed in the virtual reality wherein he is a supreme expert at synthesizing new information from a complex of myriad data streams.

The "bad" are the confused and confusing relationships between Jack and his 2 friends and business partners, Jack and the ominous NSO governmental spy organization, Jack and the alien Wheeler. Each twist of the tale brings surprising and dangerous changes to what we cautiously took as real.

The "ugly" is the final result of Jack's new found ability to communicate.

Don't be put off by all this. I relished the characters, all of them including "Uncle" Reno, the super-spy Panda, the gene witch Zero and the entire rest of the cast. They all took their assigned roles and played them to perfection.

I highly recommend this intriguing and thought provoking adventure.

I bought this book (unfortunately, along with the sequel, "The signal shattered") on the strength of the Amazon reviews and the editorial blurb alone, and was severely disappointed. Nylund's degrees in chemistry and physics do not prevent him from consistently misspelling gallium arsenide (the name of an actual, not fictional, semiconductor) as "gallium arsinide," or describing a reactor that "burns" (that is, oxidizes) iron oxide (other examples of this kind abound in the book). The blurb on the inside back cover, where Nylund's science training is proudly mentioned, also states that he graduated from some kind of writing workshop. Apparently, this did not do him much good: gems such as "The files were erased. By who?" can be found on every page (by the way, about half of the sentences in the book seem to be just this long, or shorter). By the time the reader's hopes for some kind of basic scientific credibility, or at least decent English, fade, it also becomes clear that Nylund's characters are as flat as his syntactic structures. Bottom line: don't get trapped with this book on a long flight.

Signal to Noise is an enjoyable read but certainly not the brilliant new riff on post-cyberpunk for which I was hoping.

It has several good points: firstly, the excellent idea and execution of the virtual environments or 'bubbles', in which most of the characters work, and often live and interact to a high degree. I particularly liked the way in which, linked directly people's brains, they worked by visual metaphor; and Nylund also convincingly conveyed the pain and panic of the characters when they were forced into the real world. Secondly, I liked the way in which the alien race were discoved through complex cryptographic analysis of seemingly random noise patterns - is cryptography the new nanotech (which was the new cyberspace) in sci-fi? Thirdly, the amoral aliens, who of course are only seen as virtual representations, which bypassses the problem of describing alien beings - no unbelievable human-sized insectoids here. Finally, the end of the world was good - I enjoy a good apocalypse, but perhaps I am just too misanthropic.

On the downside, Nylund's characterisation was dreadful. Using stock figures works in the hands of someone like William Gibson because his novels have a strong element of pastiche and irony (not that some people notice!), however here they are just irritating cardboard cut-outs, in particular the Chinese spy, Panda - I think the name says more than I could about cultural stereotyping! Nylund seems to be doing his best to encourage the view that hackers don't know anything about women - his female characters make Neil Stephenson's women look like well-rounded individuals. Secondly - sometimes the descriptions of the mathematics and cryptography involved were too didactic; Stephenson and Greg Egan both do it far better. Finally, I found the underlying politics slightly one-sided: despite having resulted in the destruction of the world, rampant individualism and free trade seems to be the only way that the characters can envisage saving humanity. Perhaps this is an satirical commnetary by Nylund but, given the thoroughly irony-free content of the rest of the book, I doubt it.

I will read the sequel, simply because the story is moderately involving and fun, but I will not hold out hopes of it being a great work of science fiction this time.

Signal to Noise is not like anything I've read before and part of the reason for that is because I have not read any books from this sort of "cyberpunk/hyper punk" genre before, but after reading this book that may change.

The rich, interesting future described when combined with the story, made a book I just couldn't put down. As for people complaints about the writing itself, I didn't even notice. My only complaint would be the times where he uses terms that I simply did not understand but that's to be expected with many sci-fi books.

I would give this book an actual rating of 4.5 Stars and I look forward to reading the sequal.

While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I read the sequel first, which I wouldn't usually do. But the sequel stands very well on it's own. (See my review there.) This book has less edge-of-your-seat action, but it it very well written nevertheless. It does involve you very quickly in the story, and keeps you reading and coming back for more. This book would make a great movie, though I don't know how you could do that with the sequel. Oh, well. Bottom line: Buy this book and the sequel and hang on!

Signal to Noise is fast paced, clean, and above all: fun. The characters are solid. The story line makes sense while still being un-predictable, and Nylund's vison of the future is possible.

I enjoyed this work emmensely and will read it again and again throughout the future

Signal To Noise is a fun, fast book. Nylund's style is completely readable, and he frequently had me on the edge of my seat--this is the kind of novel where you can read two hundred pages in one sitting. The plot is suitably complex, and some of Nylund's ideas are quite interesting. All in all, I enjoyed it a lot...but as my star rating indicates, there are major problems. The protagonist is decently well-developed, but all the other characters are quite thin. When one character is supposed to be undergoing a significant personality change, it has no impact on the reader because we barely know what she was like originally. The writing style is also uneven; there are some very clumsy sentences in here, as well as some misused words. (Nylund must need a new editor--one would think that a good one wouldn't leave untouched mistakes that a high school student could catch.) Finally, some aspects of Nylund's future don't quite ring true. He falls into the commmon trap of always using physical metaphors for computer functions, even though computers don't, and probably never will, work in the same way that the physical world does. The different types of aliens were also able to communicate with humanity much too easily. Image files constructed by one operating system aren't even always readable by another OS designed by the same species, let alone a different one!

Eos has promoted this novel as "hyperpunk," but they have never said exactly what this means. It suggests some kind of relationship with cyberpunk, but this Signal to Noise doesn't really have a cyberpunk feel, even if some of the technology is similar. I don't think that there is any need to create a new subgenre for this book. It's a science fiction novel.

Those who are going to read this book may wish to know that the ending is grim in the extreme. This hasn't changed my rating, of course, but it might be a disappointment if you are reading for light amusement. It does, however, set things up for a potentially very interesting sequel, and one which I will probably buy, despite this book's flaws.