The Jazz [Kindle Edition]

Melissa Scott (Author)

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

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.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 4070 KB
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (June 3, 2000)
• Sold by: Macmillan
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000QCQU60
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #634,750 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "I Heard a Rumour", May 27, 2002

By 

lb136 "lb136" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Jazz (Paperback)

Remember those commercials at the height of the dotcom boom, the ones that showed these amazed, enthusiastic people demanding "are you ready?" in an attempt to lure you to the Internet's supposed wonders? In Melissa Scott's version, people are, but it's hell (many form nostalgiac gated communities just to avoid it).

The book is set in an indefinite future America that seems to be a generation or so from now, where most of society seems bent on amusing itself to death, especially people who "play the jazz."

And the people who play the jazz in Scott's world don't have saxophones; they have web equipment, and the idea is to spread chaos through rumour. (Anyone whose first wakeup call to the dark side of the Internet occurred on the day they received their first e-mail warning about the Good Times virus will quickly get the idea.) In one sequence, in order to create a diversion at one point the heroine, Tin Lizzy, creates chaos at a shopping mall by sending out false rumors of a new product. But let Scott tell it herself, regarding the ultimate jazz her heroine "Tin Lizzy" plays: "this was something people wanted to hear, and this one, too, was picked up and repeated."

The story is told from two POVs, Lizzy's (who takes to the road with the teenager she's trying to help) and the cop trying to capture her while staying on the good side of his boss, who's a borderline psychopath. Scott's prose is spare; her characters seem real; the climax is cynical.

Each sequence is a beautiful set piece in itself. Despite the title, nothing seems improvisatory. It's all schemed out as carefully as a Bananarama album, and it entertains in precisely the same way.