Customer Reviews

The Unincorporated Man (Sci Fi Essential Books)

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Imagine this: Asia is obliterated. Space travel is possible. Cars fly (finally!). There is no war. There is no unemployment. And while you are imagining all of this, add in the fact that you are incorporated at birth, and that in order to get a job or an education, you must trade stock of yourself. Imagine also that you likely do not own the majority of your own stock, thus your investors decide where you can work and even where you can live.

Is this slavery? Or does it encourage a person to invest in others as a way of improving the whole? That is the question raised in THE UNINCORPORATED MAN.

Justin Cord is a brilliant businessman in the early 21st century, and his success is only matched by his sorrow to hear that he has cancer. Using his vast wealth, Justin constructs a cryogenic tomb and freezes himself.

When he awakens, slowly coming to realize that the cryogenic act was a success, Justin finds himself 300 years into the future. Although there are cosmetic and some technological changes as one would expect, he is more concerned by the future incorporation of mankind. After being bullied (but refusing) to sign an incorporation agreement, thereby no longer owning himself, Justin becomes a central figure in a sinister and complex political machine in the new incorporated world.

THE UNINCORPORATED MAN is a stunning debut. Truly. Forget the genre clichés of laser guns, spaceships, and journeys through black holes and the like. This book is part Heinlein, part Bradbury, and part Asimov. This is no space adventure but a socio-economic envisioning of the future. As such, it would easily fit alongside, say, 1984 or BRAVE NEW WORLD as a chilling and thought-provoking treatise on possible futures.

Brothers Dani and Eytan Kollin have crafted a world here that is at times technologically stunning and exciting and sometimes frightening. Throughout the pages of this novel, you will encounter well-detailed environs peopled with wholly lifelike people --- some are wonderful, others are downright villainous. They have deftly designed a book that will have you questioning the economic principles and the very nature of personal freedom and individuality.

Even if you are not a fan of science fiction per se, THE UNINCORPORATED MAN stretches beyond that genre and brings a hauntingly possible future to life.

--- Reviewed by Stephen Hubbard

Damsah's balls, this was the most overrated book I've read in some time!

Many of the POSITIVE reviews will point out that the characters are static, the writing clumsy, the point of view confused, and the pacing erratic. The book reads like an early draft. I agree with all of that.

I'll add that it's disappointing to see the sophomoric humor ladled out in this book referred to as "clever." And the main character, Justin Cord, is a Mary Sue of the type I typically associate with fanfic. I wonder which one of the Kollin brothers gets to dress up as Cord at Halloween?

Some of the negative reviews point out that the book's cardboard characters spend a lot of their time demolishing straw men in the form of superficial objections to the future utopia based on the perfection of the free-market and the wisdom of handing everything over to corporations. Let me put it this way; I found some of L. Neil Smith's libertarian screeds more convincing (and entertaining). One reviewer said that it "occasionally" comes across like a Glen Beck rant, while another mentioned shades of Ayn Rand. Glen Beck I buy; I think the philosophy that Rand bludgeoned readers with probably had more depth to it.

The basic concept is interesting, but you can get a better understanding of the ramifications of personal incorporation by simply reading the blurb on the dust jacket and having a conversation with some intelligent friends than you will from reading this novel. Even with ham-handed expository scenes galore, the authors manage to skip over inconsistencies in their setting and its premise. Corporate greed contributes to the Great Collapse via VR, so of course the answer is to give more power to the corporations. I don't know about you, but the thought of having public stock in myself at the mercy of automated stock-trading software programs and the whims of day-traders does not suggest a stable financial foundation for the future. Your personal worth would fluctuate wildly over the course of a single day. And that's the future you would have; nobody can check or regulate this practice now--in a future where corporations are seen as benevolent, demi-god entities, regulation will be a four-letter word.

If you were foolish enough to sell off a majority in yourself, good luck being able to afford to buy back your own shares if you became successful. The more successful you become, the higher your stock would be valued, making it more costly to buy. The only way to get around that would be to conceal your real worth long enough to buy your shares. With so much incentive to lie up (as a company) and down (as an individual) about your real value, stock trading becomes just as much of a game of moving shares with little relation to actual worth as it is today. You can say that the market would punish corporations that conceal the truth. In addition to suggesting that many companies in today's Fortune 500 are hardly paragons of virtue, I'd add that it would be pretty simple for a future corporation to buy up a majority stake in any potential whistle-blower and ship them off to Mercury or the Oort Cloud.

Toned down from the extremes presented here, some of these ideas might have potential. Selling private shares in yourself below a certain minority limit might have some traction. It would be somewhat similar to finding a patron or establishing a small base of supporters to whom you would be beholden. Selling a majority stake of yourself on a public market? I sure as stock wouldn't try it.

I found the book entertaining at times, often on the unintentional comedy scale in terms of some of the phrasing and the "gee-whiz" factor attached to tech that's been speculated about more convincingly elsewhere for years, but it fails as both a thought-provoking novel of ideas AND as a story with engaging characters. I gave it a two because it's a first novel and everybody has to start somewhere.

I saw the Kollin brothers read an excerpt from this book at last year's BayCon and was intrigued enough to pre-order. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book on a couple of levels and found myself discussing the well thought-out economic and social implications of personal incorporation on an almost daily basis before I'd reached the last page. The Unincorporated Man is a great combination of high concept science fiction and hard science extrapolations. This book fits perfectly in my bookcase.
It's hard to write one of these without sounding cliche, so let me just end by saying that I had the rare pleasure of looking forward to a sequel after putting the book down. Well worth your time.

There are several things wrong with this book, but the first one is that it commits the unforgivable sin of bad writing. Omniscient authorial voice? Check. Characters changing their firmly held principles to meet the needs of the plot? Check. Multiple pages used to describe events off stage? Check.

When you get to the point where you realize that the protagonist -- who of course is an entirely blameless, kind and heroic multimillionare industrialist who had himself frozen and sent down a mineshaft for hundreds of years and comes back surrounded by the beautiful nurse who is secretly in love with him, the wise elder who has bowed out of a career as a cutthroat executive, and the wisecracking salt of the earth miner -- when you realize that this guy is going to win and topple the system, then the book is over. It happens a third of the way through the book. At that point, you're treated to all the various actors getting up and giving their say. But they're wrong, of course, because they're standing against the protagonist.

It is that bad. It's not even as though it's entertainingly bad. At least with Ayn Rand, you could count on the protagonist being a total misanthropic bastard who would leave his own children in the woods if it would build self-sufficiency. At least with Heinlein, you had characterization and a sense of wonder and fun that made the plot and the sexism bearable. But this is just awful. I'm actually angry that I read this, even for a book club.

I was very excited about the book because I know one of the authors/brothers. When I first started reading it I couldn't put it down. The idea was great and very compelling. There was a ton of action, too. A little past the half way point it started to peter out for me. Don't get me wrong, there were still some twists and turns peppered in there, but a good 100 pages could have easily been edited out to make it much better. There were times that things would drag on and I'd think that something would be important for later on in the book, only to never be mentioned again. A really good job for first time writers, but I only give it a "C" based on the second half of the book. It would certainly make a pretty good movie.

The basic premise of the book is that each individual is a legal corporation, with shares of themselves bought and sold as well as the predicted impact on the choices a person may make. The protagonist is a man from the past (literally) who refuses incorporation.

Im a fan of breakdowns (since Im lazy and not a terribly good writer), so here we go:

The good: a fantastic and interesting idea discussed at length from many angles. Interesting discussions ranging from what is slavery and freedom, to Ayn Rand-ian self interest and its benefits.

The bad: Not much of a story, somewhat robotic characters that really are just vehicles for philosophy discussions. Further, it seems like the authors had a nice big story planned out with no idea how to connect the dots, so lots of awkward transitions and beats within the story that come pretty much out of nowhere repeatedly. I'm all for a roller-coaster and some surprises, but it was a bit ridiculous how often rather insane events occurred with little or no foreshadowing.

The bottom line: You know, I still enjoyed the book. I don't know if its going to be getting a second read any time soon, but it had a lot of good food for thought, so 3 stars for that. I will say that they had the opportunity to do so much more with this story.

Let me start by saying I really wanted to love this novel. However, I only made it to chapter 3 before feeling impelled to write a review. A great concept and written -- or at least I thought it was written -- in my favorite point-of-view narrative: third-person limited. I like being in the head and POV of the character, but find first-person accounts too limiting (if not jarring). The maddening thing with the writing here is the bouncing from one person's POV to another. You think you're getting the thoughts and feelings of one character, only to find the writer jumps into the head of another character willy-nilly...and then back again! And all within a few paragraphs. I much prefer sticking with one characters POV for an entire scene. This may be transparent to some readers, especially those who are not familiar with writing themselves. And third-person narrative head-bouncing is not uncommon in first novels, but this one is particularly irksome since I was so looking forward to reading this book. Not sure if I'll be able to pick it up again. Do the authors need to improve their understanding of POV? Or was this intentional?

The premise of this story is a familiar thought exercise: what if a present-day man or woman were defrosted in the future - how would they adapt? What if society advanced in some areas and regressed in others? What changes could they assimilate and which ones would be anathema?

What if capitalism were carried out to its absurd extreme: shares of people could be publicly offered; parents were gifted automatically with 20 percent of their children's "portfolio:" the government was given 5% in lieu of taxation. If everyone is healthy, long-lived, and employed, who is suffering? It's a Friedmanesque utopia!

As group leaders in this philosophical exploration, the Kollins have done an excellent job. At first, I expected something along the lines of the plodding didactics of Ayn Rand - reheated with some cyber effects. Fortunately, I was proven wrong.

For starters, the Kollins have a sense of humor. The wit is not just derived from the predictable anachronisms, and there are some clever lexical shifts. There are even some extended indulgences, such as when the protagonist, Justin, and his Amazonian girlfriend first make love in the streets at a solar-system-wide Mardi Gras debauch, and she has modified her body to appear as a hell-spawned winged demon in bondage latex. Who doesn't fantasize about that? OK, well maybe half the readership.

Second, unlike the oppressive repetition of Rand's sophomoric platform points, the argument rarely drives into the weeds of pure editorial. There are occasions where the authors' perspectives intrude and it sounds like some cast-off diatribe overheard on the Glenn Beck program. Can we please get back to story? However, it's usually the characters themselves that represent the spectrum of positions that people might take on the "incorporationist" versus "primitive" social models.

Finally, and what's most important here, the main characters themselves are multi-dimensional, if a bit on the archetypal side. There's an establishment doctor who prefers to act on the fringe, rather than expose himself to risk; a young, idealistic therapist in love with her patient; a self-made billionaire with a heart of gold and a mind like a steel trap; a crafty political gamesman who is a devout of the incorporationist model; and a deus ex machina known as The Chairman whose invisible will drives much of the action. They all have blind spots, which make for some fine plot reversals.

Now to where the Kollins need refinement: one major technical issue is with the consistency of narrative voice. The best American novels of the last fifty years or so tend to use a limited omniscient narrator - so that as we begin and end a scene or a chapter, we are privy to the thoughts and feelings of one character at a time, while seeing the events unfold through their eyes. The least skillful authors tend to jump around from mind to mind using the perfect omniscient narrator, usually a freshman technique. This last method is probably more useful for authors who are really writing a screenplay disguised as a novel.

At times, especially in the first third of the novel, the Kollins lose discipline and jump from mind to mind too readily, so that instead of showing you an action and a character's interpretation, you get the comprehensive interpretation and the "figuring it out" is already done for you.

Another flaw that really brings the story down half a star is the unmistakable deus ex machina of The Chairman. So Godlike in fact that we don't even get to know his name, if memory serves. The threat of his implied power is invoked so often that it irritates. It's bewildering to me that in 2010, scifi authors or any authors for that matter resort to this. I won't reveal too much, but the saving grace is that there is a parallel with ancient Greek and Christian religion carried out, with cigars as an instrument.

What other reviews have criticized are perhaps a lack of editing and slow movement, heavily centered around dialogue. I understand the critique - but bear in mind that while many other scifi authors who bring you into a future civilization purposely avoid giving direct exposition, in order to let you figure out the meanings of coined words and acronyms, the Kollins' purpose here is to dissect the future civilization itself, and that is no small feat. It requires that the reader learn a new language, to a degree, that of incorporationism, as well as the new history. So we are in effect living in Justin's head for most of the novel.

A bright spot in this dissection is the sequence where Justin confronts the virtual reality catastrophe that the whole world experienced - at the hands of one of his own former employees. However, its walloping impact is countered a bit - dare I say undermined? - by the introduction of VR characters - who purport to be the ultimate drivers of the past few centuries of human history. The authors simply abandon what is a compelling "backstage" storyline like a boring side quest in a role-playing video game, to be performed on the second round.

The last red mark I would make is that, while I was expecting a Twain-esque satire of such a future civilization, or maybe a strong statement about the horror of an entire race slipping contentedly into oblivion via an empty utopian lifestyle, The Unincorporated Man delivers neither. At least not passionately or convincingly. No one - except for an easily discredited elite few - "wakes up" to the moral bankruptcy of human portfolio ownership, and then goes through the pain of intellectual rebirth. Justin himself does not evolve - he "becomes more himself." The characters are in debate with each other, but do not evolve.

What's at war here are three concepts: liberty, equality and fraternity. Justin IS the 2000's cliche of a liberated, independently wealthy man - self-made, self-determined, owned by no one and no government; Incorporationism is the pairing of pure capitalism with a fraternal moderating influence - everyone has a stake in everyone else's well-being; and equality is viewed by both camps as a dirty word, wielded as a weapon only by the lazy and decrepit. Here, I feel the authors missed an opportunity to expose the folly of all absolutist doctrines in a society of tens of billions - after all, different communities may have vastly different needs, and different levels of indepdendence or homogeneity. That's what the social contract is all about.

It's a great thought exercise with a degree of page-turning action, much more "symposium" like dialogue, and some good humor. The Kollins' Incorporationist universe will likely bear a ton of fruit in future novels.

The reviews are obviously polarized for this book, so I'll do what I can to give a bit of guidance from my perspective. The book features a single idea, developed superficially yet at great length. The story props up the idea but is predictable and uninteresting, featuring data dumps and flat characters. The science is mostly missing, and silly when it appears (avatars! elevator tubes! phone implants!)

If you like idea stories and are not particularly interested in plots, characters, or writing style, then it might work for you. For instance, if you like Jack McDevitt, late-series Asimov (e.g., Prelude to Foundation), or Geoffrey Landis then you might tolerate it. To be sure, they are all much better writers, but are not masters of character or style. (I suppose that's why the authors here are compared to Heinlein, but I expect Heinlein would have a short story of this one.)

However, if you want a compelling *story* or stylistic writing, I expect you will hate it. China Mieville comes to mind as someone at the polar end of the writing spectrum: chock full of ideas, sometimes maddening, but a beautiful stylist and never plodding.

Here's a simple excerpt (from p. 60) that pretty much shows every problem in a single paragraph: "Justin, the odds of the 'crash' event as you describe it are 349,120,004 to one. You have a better chance of winning the lottery ... three times in a row."

Points: (1) this comes from an exchange that does nothing to advance either the plot or the characters. (2) how can a device (who is the speaker here) communicate quotation marks ("'crash'") and why is that even necessary? (read Strunk and White) (3) why does the lottery still exist in this future? or does it? why does it matter? (4) most seriously: the cube root of the number here is approximately 704, meaning that the odds against winning the lottery *once* would be 704:1. What kind of lottery is that? If the authors make such a silly error in probability, and then put the words in the mouth of a computer, why should they be trusted to say anything interesting about science? Or about finance and the stock market?

After 73 pages (only *two* long and slow chapters!), I abandoned it as a waste of my time and will donate it to a community rummage sale. As others have said, the plot line and its resolution seem extremely predictable. Even if a surprise were in store, which I doubt, I don't care enough about either the idea or the characters to wade through the remaining 400 pages.

In short, if you like SF with hard science, plot action, or stylistic writing, skip it. OTOH, if you like yarns that expound an interesting idea at length, it might work for you.

Finally, a recommendation: if you'd like to read a series featuring economic plots and better science at a similar future time horizon, try David Louis Edelman's Jump 225 trilogy Infoquake (Jump 225 Trilogy). Edelman packs in many more ideas that develop in more interesting ways, and a good plot line.

A futuristic society in which people are incorporated just like other assets, cars fly and walls are permeable. Sound intriguing? I thought so, which is why I picked up this book. And just like the jacket blurb promised, Justin Cord, our hero, wakes up from his 300 year long cryogenic sleep into a futuristic world, where the sickness he was dying of, has been cured. Thus restored to health and "reanimated" he is ready to assimilate into modern day society. There are many good things about this modern world, which he is ready to embrace, but there is one thing he isn't kosher with - and that is incorporation of the self.

Everyone in the present day world is incorporated. Each individual has stocks of himself/herself bought and sold in the financial market , and the goal is to achieve majority to gain economic independence. The better a person does in his career, the more his stock rises. Justin, with his notions of slavery (which he likens to incorporation) doesn't want to be incorporated, and is thus the only un-incorporated man in the world. Since he is a wealthy and popular man, the fight is on to force him into the system, and own his stock. Will Justin be able to stand his ground?

I was eager to read this book, because it looked like an interesting premise wrapped up in hard science fiction. Unfortunately, that illusion broke very quickly. This book is fairly shallow science fiction, because although it has futuristic gadgetry and niftily named inventions, there is not much "science" to back it up. The entire story is propped up by one idea and one idea alone - incorporation, and the book, it seems, is but an exercise to project that idea. The sci-fi angle seems an afterthought to the whole process.

I'm put off that this is not the sci-fi read I was hoping for, but am willing to overlook that fact, if the book by itself was engrossing enough. Unfortunately, it fails on that count too. The writing is bad (and I doubt the book had an editor). The style is clunky, and the authors have a tendency to harp over and over explain every thought and event, putting an end to any semblance of mystery or intrigue. The narrative breaks every so often with the authors taking little segue-ways to explain the new fangled technology. Thus the pace is lackadaisical, and the characters underdeveloped. As such, although I do like the main protagonists Justin and Neela, I do not know too much about their inner selves and am hard pressed to feel more than perfunctory warmth for them.

"The unincoporated man" tries to do many things. It is situated in a futuristic world, so it has the trappings of science fiction. There is a social and financial theme, as well as a budding (forbidden) romance. There are also wordy scenes in a court of law. All this is tied up in its over-arching theme of incorporation. Although I appreciate this book for its novel premise (really, what is better than a great big new idea ?), I do think that many facets of good storytelling were sacrificed to propagate it. Better written, and with adequate emphasis on character development and story this might have been a great book. As it is now, I had trouble finishing it up, although I did finish it.