Alfred Bester’s The Computer Connection evidently was nominated for a 1976 Hugo (but lost to The Forever War). It happened to be on the New Books shelf at the library in a 2004 ibooks edition, which for some reason doesn’t show up on their awful, unsearchable website, although Amazon has it. Anyway, it’s about what you might expect from 1976 specfic: lots of sex and drugs, but none of it particularly explicit or convincing, lots of wild futuristic stuff that now sounds boring and dead-end, lots of remnant-theology misanthropy and dystopianism. On the other hand, the book isn’t meant to be taken seriously, which is a big plus. The Indian reservation on the dry bed of what was once Lake Erie, which is an oasis of peace, prosperity and sanity and which is financed by selling super-pseudo-opiates to the outsiders, is preposterous fun.
My main complaint (other than the semi-techno-messianic exceptionalism, the Heinleinesque “politics” and the misogyny/misanthropy/Europhobia) is the plot device where a major character dies shockingly, and then turns out not to be really dead. I understand, it’s a valid device, but it bugs me. The writer gets to have it both ways, giving the reader the kick of the sudden plot twist without the discomfort of losing anybody likeable. In this case, the first time a major character died, I thought that she hadn’t really died, but she turned out to have. The second time a major character died, I though she hadn’t really died, and she turned out not to have. Then they cloned the one who died, so she could be not dead after all. Grrr. Of course, that bugs me less in a silly book than a serious one, and this is not a serious book.
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.