You know that feeling with reading novels when your bookmark location is in the second half of the book and you find yourself turning pages faster and faster in order to find what happens next? If your reading interests coincide with mine, the most likely case is that you are reading either science fiction, spy or fast-paced action thrillers, or good and old adventure stories filled with espionage and politics in the background.
Well, that was before. Nowadays, if I wanted all that combined in a single novel, there's a new sub-genre called technothrillers, and with some of them, especially with new authors in the self-publishing realm, and on almost all occasions, I found myself turning pages even faster. Three of those great technothrillers you could find presented in this blog post. The premises are extraordinary, and all of them borrowed from science fiction: smart robotic nanoparticles enhancing human bodies, evil artificial intelligence operating Darknet, and one extraordinary idea of a teleportation based on time travel.
Let's start with a nanoscaled interface between the human brain and computers. It was always a holly grail to make this efficient ever since the invention of the first computer. Even now to create this post I am using the old-fashioned keyboard to type the letters, checking for typos, taking care of the grammar, and rolling the mouse around the table for lots of other commanding purposes. "Interface" by Tony Batton is giving us all the potential outcomes of the system without all those helping gadgets only by using nanoparticles with remote access to everything with CPU and with the thriller plot that is, in one word, outstanding. I will only add that I touched the icon for the sequel purchase just a couple of moments after I finish the book.
For the next technothriller in line, these three reasons were enough for me to hit the download button: Dark Web&Net layers of the internet, villain AI, and automated corporations. It was amazing how all this, not so hard to imagine, near future inspired Matthew Mather to create this astonishing novel named "Darknet". Simply put, I felt that all that's happening in this techno adventure was as real as in any ordinary thriller. This reality in one way or another is really knocking our doors, especially the part with automated corporations with no need for humans in roles of CEOs, CMOs, CTOs, and all the other C?Os. The scary part is that we even don't need supreme AI to take over, just advanced automation. The thriller part of the book is as perfect as the premise itself. Enough said.
Last, but not least, comes the boldest sci-fi premise in Douglas E. Richards' "Split Second". While at first it is not immediately comprehensible how time travel can be used for teleportation and then for the entire thriller story, it is quite simple really. I don't really like to spoil the book here, especially since the author kept the details from the reader for a big portion of the pages, but I have to say that it is an ingenious idea. I will just give you a hint to think about it: we are living in a universe with four dimensions by its nature, three spatial ones, and time as the fourth. If we move along one dimension, i.e., up and down, we are not really moving left or right or forward or backward. We would be only using one spatial dimension and traveling forward in time. The other two spatial coordinates would stay the same. Similarly, the question from the book was, what if we were able to use only the time dimension and move just a fraction of the second forward or backward in time, and NOT using spatial dimensions by doing so? Where exactly would our spatial coordinates be AFTER the time travel? Where would everything else be after our arrival? If you are intrigued, this book is definitely for you.
To summarize this spoil-less review, even though I liked and enjoyed all the stories the same, the plausibility of the background science fiction is always important to me, and with these three, "Darknet" is maybe something we could witness within our lifespans, and just for that fact, if I had to rate these three technothrillers, it would be my first choice of recommendation. As much as I would love to see something similar to the nano-sized robots floating our bloodstreams, the "Interface" premise is still going to wait for better understanding our own intelligence and brain activity. The wait must also include significant nano-scaling of the CPUs as well. As for the time travel, if you ask me, this might stay in the fiction only for a very long time, perhaps even to stay in the realm of the impossible, but who knows, we might witness one-day time travel of the information data somehow if sending any mass back in time proves to be unfeasible.
Nevertheless, I truly enjoyed all the twists in stories, all the characters and their interactions and development, writing styles, and how everything unfolded at the end of all three novels. A warm recommendation goes without saying.
Books:
http://www.tonybatton.com/interface/
http://matthewmather.com/books/darknet/
http://www.douglaserichards.com/split-second
More thriller reviews:
https://www.milanzivic.com/2017/04/cotton-alex-will-travis-and-david.html
Well, that was before. Nowadays, if I wanted all that combined in a single novel, there's a new sub-genre called technothrillers, and with some of them, especially with new authors in the self-publishing realm, and on almost all occasions, I found myself turning pages even faster. Three of those great technothrillers you could find presented in this blog post. The premises are extraordinary, and all of them borrowed from science fiction: smart robotic nanoparticles enhancing human bodies, evil artificial intelligence operating Darknet, and one extraordinary idea of a teleportation based on time travel.
Let's start with a nanoscaled interface between the human brain and computers. It was always a holly grail to make this efficient ever since the invention of the first computer. Even now to create this post I am using the old-fashioned keyboard to type the letters, checking for typos, taking care of the grammar, and rolling the mouse around the table for lots of other commanding purposes. "Interface" by Tony Batton is giving us all the potential outcomes of the system without all those helping gadgets only by using nanoparticles with remote access to everything with CPU and with the thriller plot that is, in one word, outstanding. I will only add that I touched the icon for the sequel purchase just a couple of moments after I finish the book.
For the next technothriller in line, these three reasons were enough for me to hit the download button: Dark Web&Net layers of the internet, villain AI, and automated corporations. It was amazing how all this, not so hard to imagine, near future inspired Matthew Mather to create this astonishing novel named "Darknet". Simply put, I felt that all that's happening in this techno adventure was as real as in any ordinary thriller. This reality in one way or another is really knocking our doors, especially the part with automated corporations with no need for humans in roles of CEOs, CMOs, CTOs, and all the other C?Os. The scary part is that we even don't need supreme AI to take over, just advanced automation. The thriller part of the book is as perfect as the premise itself. Enough said.
Last, but not least, comes the boldest sci-fi premise in Douglas E. Richards' "Split Second". While at first it is not immediately comprehensible how time travel can be used for teleportation and then for the entire thriller story, it is quite simple really. I don't really like to spoil the book here, especially since the author kept the details from the reader for a big portion of the pages, but I have to say that it is an ingenious idea. I will just give you a hint to think about it: we are living in a universe with four dimensions by its nature, three spatial ones, and time as the fourth. If we move along one dimension, i.e., up and down, we are not really moving left or right or forward or backward. We would be only using one spatial dimension and traveling forward in time. The other two spatial coordinates would stay the same. Similarly, the question from the book was, what if we were able to use only the time dimension and move just a fraction of the second forward or backward in time, and NOT using spatial dimensions by doing so? Where exactly would our spatial coordinates be AFTER the time travel? Where would everything else be after our arrival? If you are intrigued, this book is definitely for you.
To summarize this spoil-less review, even though I liked and enjoyed all the stories the same, the plausibility of the background science fiction is always important to me, and with these three, "Darknet" is maybe something we could witness within our lifespans, and just for that fact, if I had to rate these three technothrillers, it would be my first choice of recommendation. As much as I would love to see something similar to the nano-sized robots floating our bloodstreams, the "Interface" premise is still going to wait for better understanding our own intelligence and brain activity. The wait must also include significant nano-scaling of the CPUs as well. As for the time travel, if you ask me, this might stay in the fiction only for a very long time, perhaps even to stay in the realm of the impossible, but who knows, we might witness one-day time travel of the information data somehow if sending any mass back in time proves to be unfeasible.
Nevertheless, I truly enjoyed all the twists in stories, all the characters and their interactions and development, writing styles, and how everything unfolded at the end of all three novels. A warm recommendation goes without saying.
Books:
http://www.tonybatton.com/interface/
http://matthewmather.com/books/darknet/
http://www.douglaserichards.com/split-second
More thriller reviews:
https://www.milanzivic.com/2017/04/cotton-alex-will-travis-and-david.html