Of course there’s more to “ Radio Freefall” than just rock n’ roll and science fiction there’s a bit of crime noir injected into the mix-Who’s Aqualung? What’s his story? Where did the Digital Carnivore come from?-and a compelling political statement regarding individuality / diversity. Besides the technological aspects, Jethro Tull, Buddy Holly, Les Paul, Kurt Cobain, Spin magazine, Woodstock, and so on are referenced song lyrics are prominently featured throughout the novel the fascination between rock stars & death is wittily explored and other music-related topics are incorporated. Jarpe’s futuristic music ideas were the most fascinating characteristics in the book, some of which included an underwater arena, Aqualung’s Machine which uses sound to manipulate the moods of a crowd during a live performance, a Feedback movement where bands give the people what they want by altering their music to match the peoples’ tastes & dispositions, an orbital concert, and gigs where individual band members from all across the globe can perform together through holographic projections. Partly because of that, but mainly because of my record industry background, I thought Mr. Clarke, and William Gibson just to name a few. Other characters and subplots include the band Snake Vendors and their meteoric rise to fame Molly, an illegal AI (artificial intelligence) who is Taber’s partner-in-crime Nationalists who oppose the Unification a sentient virus called the Digital Carnivore that controls the entire web crime lords & hitmen a superintelligence developed by a company on the Moon and Freefall, a massive space station that plays a key role in the overall story.Īll in all, the future Earth that inhabits “ Radio Freefall” is vividly rendered by Matthew Jarpe, especially the technologies-AIs, uplinking, reprogramming, holograms, memes that compel a human to commit suicide, engineered viruses used as recreational drugs, living on the Moon, Individual Identification Numbers, etc.-even though a lot of the concepts have already been explored in some variation or other by such authors as Robert A. Playing the part of ‘hero’, are a couple of unlikely protagonists: Aqualung, an overweight musician in his early-fifties who’s just as talented with a guitar as he is with technology and Quinn Taber, a brilliant computer nerd who is obsessed with getting revenge against Walter Cheeseman. Cheeseman’s ultimate goal though is world domination, and the first step towards realizing that dream is Unification-one government, one language, one currency, etc. In a nutshell, “ Radio Freefall” takes place in the early 2030s, revolving around Walter Cheeseman, head of WebCense which started out as a product to police the World Wide Web for parents and grew into Earth’s most ‘powerful transnational bureaucracy’ by controlling the flow of information. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how the author was going to make such a combination work, but he did, and “ Radio Freefall” could end up being one of my favorite SF novels of the year. So when I first heard about Matthew Jarpe’s debut novel “ Radio Freefall”, I was instantly intrigued by its proposed blend of rock n’ roll and science fiction. My passion for music is just as strong, if not stronger than my love for reading and writing. "The Accidental Time Machine" by Joe Haldeman.EXTRACT from Joe Haldeman's "The Accidental Time M."A Betrayal In Winter" by Daniel Abraham.
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