The Somniscient by Richard Levesque

When reformed dream hacker Nix Nighthawk's sleep chip malfunctions, he is forced to seek help from a world he is trying to avoid—his old friends in the pirate dream network. But that world has changed, and Nix soon finds himself at the center of a complex plot to overthrow the vast corporation that controls every aspect of society. Betrayed by his lover, his friends, and even the technology that defines him, he has to choose: go back to living his safe and controlled existence, or be the hero and join forces with the revolutionary known only as The Somniscient.

My first thought when I read the title was, "What the heck does 'somniscient' mean?" It's not listed in the dictionary, so I tried to break it down into its parts.

somni-: a combining form meaning “sleep”, used in the formation of compound words.

omniscient: having complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding; perceiving all things.

When I put both parts together, I get someone that has complete knowledge of the sleeping world. It's the screen name of one of the characters, a dream hacker, in the story. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Levesque has created a world that uses sleep as currency. Everyone needs to sleep, so people earn "Zs" in order to sleep. You also use the Zs to buy things, pay for services, food, water, filtered air. The story takes place in the 22nd century. There's been some geological and economic upheaval that has brought civilization to the brink of collapse. One tech company, enLIGHTen, has pretty much all the power as it was their idea to use sleep as currency. Their device, the Loop, is surgically attached behind one's ear and connects people to the internet 24/7. Imagine seeing your Facebook feed updating all day and night. It also runs the sleep app which prohibits people from sleeping if they don't have enough Zs in their accounts.

Being someone who prizes sleep more than money, I thought that this was a horrific idea, and I would think many others would too. But if you want to be part of society and enjoy the comforts of civilization, you have to get one. I would be one of the "unLooped", the people who live on the margins of society. They can sleep all they want, but don't have jobs, homes, food, or anything else. Nix gets caught up in the rat race. He's burned out trying to earn enough Zs so he can sleep, but paying for rent, utilities, and other bills comes first. He can never seem to get ahead. He's trapped, working for the very company that makes the Loop. He literally becomes an indentured servant.

When people do get to sleep, they can buy dreams that they run on their sleep app. But just as people buy apps that their phone makers don't want them to today, people in this future L.A. buy unsanctioned dreams. Unsanctioned dreams can have malware hidden in them that can screw up one's Loop or steal their Zs.

Most of this is explained in the backstory that Levesque pours on the reader at the beginning of the book. It takes a while for the story get moving as we're introduced to Nix and the world he lives in. While it's a fascinating concept to have sleep as currency, I couldn't help but think that these people were idiots for agreeing to this system, so it took me a while to become sympathetic to their plight. But it isn't Nix's fault; he was born into this world. As we come to feel sorry for his lot in life, something happens to him, and the story's pace picks up. Nix is now on the run, and we're rooting for him to succeed.

But one-third of the way into the book, just when we get hooked, Nix disappears from the narrative. The story resumes several years later with another character in charge of the narrative. I was completely thrown by this abrupt change. I felt as if I was starting over. It took me quite a while to start feeling sympathetic for this new character—she's a trophy wife—after getting invested in Nix, and the pace of the story slowed to a crawl while she reflected on her predicament in life. The story eventually returns to Nix—and the pace picks back up—but it isn't until the second half of the book.

Another interesting avenue Levesque explores is gender identity. Because the Loop digitizes thought, one can, in essence, upload one's personality to a host computer and then implant it into another Loop. Through this process, a man and a woman are forced to share a body. Each takes turns controlling the body. The visiting personality gets to experience life as a different gender, complete with different sensations that they're not used to. The host personality gets to experience the visiting person's feelings and actions after ceding control of their body, even when they run counter to their own.

As for the technicals, I only found a few typos. As far as I'm concerned, that's professional quality editing.

In The Somniscient, Richard Levesque has created a unique world where sleep is currency and certainly not free. While it is an intriguing concept and Levesque provides the framework and world building for such a society to exist, the introductory backstory weighs the story down. The characters that provide the narrative are so self-absorbed with their respective plights that they slow down the story, and the sudden switch from one to the other nearly derails it. Still, The Somniscient makes for an entertaining read as Levesque uniquely explores gender identity, the "have versus have not" divide, and the extent our digitally obsessed culture will go to get its internet fix.

For more information about The Somniscient, please visit the author's website.

The Scottish Movie by Paul Collis

Legend has it that Shakespeare's play, Macbeth, is cursed. As such, the superstitious who work on the play will refer (and insist others do the same) to it as "The Scottish Play." Many have speculated as to the reason, but Harry Greenville writes a novel with his own explanation: the Bard stole the idea from someone else. Shakespeare's victim then sets out to exact revenge through sabotage.

Greenville, an aspiring actor living in L.A., makes the mistake of uploading it to a website where it is pilfered. When Greenville learns that his story is being made into a movie, he sets out to exact revenge of his own.

There's such a superb attention to detail here that I would swear that Collis worked on a movie set at one point in his life or he performed a mind meld with someone who did. Collis introduces us to the boredom of limo drivers, the humiliating subservience of runners, the brown nosing of the wannabes, and the egos of Hollywood's lords. But at no point does Collis resort to stereotypes. All of his characters, no matter if they're major or minor, felt real. And Greenville is a likable protagonist. While he's out for revenge, at no point does he turn dark. His antics are more of the prankster variety.

I do have two complaints though. Collis uses single quotes throughout the book for dialogue. When nested quotes arise, as in when there's speech within speech, Collis sticks with the single quotes so it becomes a bit confusing as to when the speaker stops. I realize that single quotes are preferred in the U.K., but then double quotes are required for quotes within quotes, no? There are also some POV shifts without any sort of transition so I got momentarily confused as to whose thoughts we were hearing.

I must admit that my favorite part of the book was the beginning when we're reading Greenville's story about how Shakespeare stole the idea for Macbeth. This section is a fantastic piece of historical fiction and showcases Collis's talent. I hope he considers writing something in this vein in the future.

For more information about The Scottish Movie, check out the author's website.

Strictly Analog by Richard Levesque

In Strictly Analog, author Richard Levesque introduces us to a future where California has seceded from a dying America. A corporation has been elected governor (Romney's "Corporations are people, my friend" comment taken to its ultimate extension) and isn't letting go. While some freedoms have been curtailed in the name of national security, the secret police won't bust you for smoking marijuana. Fear of being expelled to the surrounding wasteland keeps the population in check.

Technological innovation is still alive. Everyone has a pair of iyz, eyeglasses that let you seamlessly connect to the internet (You could say that the initial versions are almost here), essential in a near total digital world. Every facet of people's lives can be recorded and shared with their phriends. If you thought Facebook and You Tube were omnipresent in society today, Levesque shows you the next level.

Our guide to this dystopian future is Ted Lomax, private detective. Ted is a veteran of California's war for independence, where he lost an eye. Having lost said eye, he is unable to use iyz, which require both eyes to bring data into focus. Not being connected 24/7 means that Ted is excluded from society's online interactions, persona non grata, but in his business that's a plus. Not being connected means his investigations remain discreet. In a society where almost nothing is private anymore, secrets are priceless.

Ted's daughter has been arrested for the murder of her boyfriend, a member of the secret police. Ted has only a few days to crack the case before she is deported (the death penalty having been abolished). But clearing her name will require him to figure out who her boyfriend was investigating, a state secret in its own right. Analog skills won't be enough to solve this case. Ted will have to get help from hackers and gear-head rebels, provided they don't sell him out to save their own skins.

Levesque, an English teacher in Southern California, has provided us with a well-crafted story with realistic characters we can root for in a hard-boiled landscape. Told in first person POV, Ted is the perfect guide for the reader. His handicap renders him an outsider, much like we are in his world. While Ted lacks the tough as nails, hard-drinking attitude of typical noir fiction from the 50's, his down on his luck demeanor (he doesn't have an office; he lives in a storage facility) and soft cynicism are a perfect match for cyberpunk.

It feels weird for me, a former tech guy who basically had to re-learn creative writing, to critique the work of an English teacher, but I can definitely say Levesque brings the goods. I really enjoyed reading Strictly Analog. It's a story that should appeal to fans of early Gibson or Sterling. And now that our world is much closer to the cyberpunk vision of tomorrow that was forecast decades ago, the story should appeal to contemporary detective fiction fans too. Strictly Analog is highly recommended.

Strictly Analog is available on the Kindle and in print from Amazon. Visit his website to learn more.

Lunch Bucket Paradise by Fred Setterberg

If, like me, you're a Baby Boomer, the suburbs probably played a role in your early life, either as the culmination of your parents' postwar material dreams, or as a green-lawned magical oasis that you could only visit. Cheap suburban real estate was a boon to the working class of the 50's and early 60's, though, as with any new enthusiasm, personal problems did not disappear, and an increasingly unstable economy gave the lie to the concept of easy modern living.

But many books have been written about life in the suburbs (Michael Cunningham's Flesh and Blood comes to mind), and many go unread. Fred Setterberg's sparkling prose and ear for dialog power this autobiographical novel like a vintage T-bird. Setterberg's book has brief, serious (they must be serious; they're in sans-serif) intros to the chapters, which then unleash crackling dialog between the protagonist's autodidact father and his war-hero brother, Win, as well as between the aforementioned older man and the protagonist, called “Little Slick.” The Dad is quite a character: “Too often on Sunday mornings, my mother and I would return home from Mass to find Dad cooking breakfast for the Jehovah's Witnesses, fattening them up for debate.” The Dad and uncle have no illusions and take no prisoners. The Mom is also quite independent, working for political candidates of her own choosing and putting campaign signs up on the lawn over her husband's objections. These are people who know they work for the man and are determined to express their disdain and their heretical ideas when out of the workplace. Of course, some express better than others; another father, a pompous Scoutmaster, gets his comeuppance, but his son pays the price.

The younger generation, playing rock 'n roll and Motown while residing in all-white neighborhoods, of course grow up confused, admiring their parents' resourcefulness but desiring more individuality, living under the shadow of the Vietnam war (which, if you were a teen and time passed slowly, seemed infinitely longer than our longest conflict in Afghanistan seems now), arguing its appropriateness, thinking about going on to college, wondering about their place in what is slowly becoming a service economy. There are dates with girls, hiding extra people in the trunk at drive-in movies, moments of homoeroticism. At the end, our protagonist quits the job his uncle obtained for him (in a ketchup factory) and sets out on a quest for something more. Of course, like the rest of us Boomers, there will be revelations and disappointments, and white-collar work will turn out to be the same as blue-collar toiling for management. The flower beds and barbecue grills will cease to be bourgeois trappings and become for a new generation small avenues for self-expression as the country lurches from one conflict to the next and the economy swings wildly up and down. Though settling down into middle age, the children of the working-class suburbs remember their quarrelsome roots.

For more information, check out the author's website.

Book Review: This Unhappy Planet by Marc Horne

Reviewed for The New Podler Review of Books by Libby Cone.

An elementary schoolteacher, a ravenous entrepreneur, and a New Age drifter form a company in Southern California to offer one-stop shopping for any kind of spirituality their well-off clientèle might wish. This sounds like the beginning of a joke, as well it should, but this book is awfully unfunny. Instead of jokes about messed-up kids really being “Indigo” and the language of beemers, we get odd metaphors and similes like “A bad vibe was bubbling up in the lava of the day” and “Her lips moved a little, like bananas full of maggots.” Most of the characters are not very likable, which is no sin; although I wasn't crazy about “The Kindly Ones,” you can bet I read it through to the end to see what its sick-pup protagonist would do next. But this isn't the Southern California of Didion or DeLillo; the characters and the plot are pretty predictable. The men are snarky and misogynist, the women neurotic and needy. We feel the economy tiptoeing towards the cliff, and see the unsurprising panic when it crashes. I'd love to see more character variety and depth, or at least more humor. The topic has the potential to be extremely humorous.

Gotta go adjust my aura!

The book is available at Smashwords.