Hydrogen Steel (Paperback)

~ K. A. Bedford (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—Hydrogen Steel features a main character who has only recently figured out that she's a machine. As she spirals into an identity crisis, she wonders which of her memories were implanted and whether an android is worthy of love. The story takes off when an old friend arrives with a bomb in his stomach. This novel covers much of the same terrain as Phillip K. Dick's work, including Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Bedford's novel features a similarly vulnerable and confused protagonist, reality is fluid, and no one can quite say what it means to be human. But he also offers a more humane take than Dick ever gave his subjects, with characters who are amiable and sane compared to Dick's usual misanthropic outcasts. Action is nonstop, and there are endless plot twists in this satisfying story. Bedford makes the far-out seem familiar: spaceships have make and model numbers, interplanetary travel can be done business class. This familiarity brings readers back to the story's heart. These people may be enhanced with robotics and nanocomputers, but they're really not so different from us. The author builds a well-realized portrait of someone trying to understand who she is, something that will resonate with almost any teen.—Emma Coleman, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description

When retired top homicide inspector Zette McGee, late of Winter City, Ganymede, gets called out of her mysterious retirement to help Kell Fallow, a desperate former android accused unjustly of murdering his wife and children, she knows she has to help him, for Zette has a secret she is desperate to keep, and Fallow knows all about it.

With the help of her best friend, the elderly but very suave former secret agent Gideon Smith, and his ridiculously impressive personal starship, the Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, Zette sets out (a) to help the accused man, but also (b) to keep Gideon from finding out her own awful secret, even as everything they learn in the investigation keeps pointing to it.

But when Kell Fallow is killed by a bomb he didn't know was buried in his guts, and when a homebrew android identical to Zette destroys her home on the luxurious Serendipity habitat, Gideon and Zette go on the run, only to run afoul of sabotage, spies, nasty infections, and bad guys galore and ordinary machines come to relentless, murderous life.

The case will take Zette and Gideon on a terrifying journey into the darkest reaches of human space, in pursuit of an ancient truth -- and will bring her into deadly contact with that truth's keeper, the awesomely powerful firemind, Hydrogen Steel, an artificial consciousness evolved far beyond its original design, and which is utterly determined to keep that same truth from getting out, at any cost.

Hydrogen Steel is a tense and thrilling mystery within a mystery, a tale of secrets and truth, and a journey to the limits of existence--and a bit beyond!

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing; 1 edition (August 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1894063201
• ISBN-13: 978-1894063203
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,261,630 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gem of a novel, July 12, 2007

By	Paul Lappen (Manchester, CT USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Zette McGee is a private investigator, and former cop, in a habitat on Ganymede. She abruptly retired from the force, rather than risk exposure of a personal secret. McGee is called out of retirement by a frantic phone call from android Kell Fallow, who knows her secret, and who swears he did not kill his family. Before Fallow can reach her, he is killed by a bomb in his gut.

At every step in the investigation, McGee, and Gideon Smith, a friend with a shadowy past, are stopped cold. It is the work of a firemind called Hydrogen Steel. Think of an artificial intelligence that has had eons of time (about a hundred years in human time) to grow and evolve. It can do a lot more than just read minds, for instance. Wherever they are, it can disable their ship, leaving them stranded in space. It can infect their neural implants with all sorts of major viruses. It can send an android that looks identical to McGee to destroy her residence. It can create intruders out of thin air, then disappear into thin air, to kill anyone it wishes. Hydrogen Steel can also infect McGee and Smith with bombs identical to the one that killed Fallow, forcing them to get quantum scans of their brains, and those scans downloaded into new bodies.

Hydrogen Steel's mission is to prevent any release of information regarding how the Earth disappeared years before. There wasn't any rubble from its destruction, just "poof." Another firemind, Otaru, finds out the truth, but knows that it will not survive the expected battle with Hydrogen Steel.

This is a gem of a novel. It's a really good mystery/thriller; how does anyone deal with an entity that can reach into your DNA, and do something nasty? It's also quite mind blowing, and is very much worth reading.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A top pick for both science fiction and mystery lending libraries., March 12, 2007

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

It's rare to see a genuine mystery embedded into the rich fabric of a science fiction setting, but HYDROGEN STEEL accomplishes both in the tale of a retired homicide inspector Zette, called out of retirement to help a former android accused of murder. Her attempts to save Kell will endanger her own closely-held secrets and leads to personal danger when Kell is killed and her home is destroyed. You won't find many more science fiction titles holding so much gripping mystery action and twists of plot, making HYDROGEN STEEL a top pick for both science fiction and mystery lending libraries.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch