Headcrash

I think some coworkers recommended this book back when it was first published, but I refused to read it being a Gibson snob at the time. Im glad I finally read it. It immediately moved onto my short list of favorite books. The world & sense of humor kind of resemble early Shadowrun (without magic), or the Cyberpunk 2020 pen-&-paper RPG, or the Steve Jackson GURPS Cyberpunk rules.

If you like sarcastic comedy then Headcrash is the book for you. I must say at times the comedy got a little annoying, but it kept me chuckling. Bethke did a great job of keeping his audience entertained. I thought the book was very interesting, and one of the best cyberpunk books I have ever read. Headcrash was one of the more believable futuristic novels if you dont count the talking bears, and dolls at the end. Headcrash can be compared to Snowcrash only in Snowcrash the characters could die in virtual reality, and in Headcrash virtual reality is what it was meant to be, a place to escape with out really getting hurt, or was it? The protagonist in Headcrash, Jack, a.k.a Pyle, alias MAX_KOOL, was fired from his job, and was hired in virtual reality to steal files for another virtual user, Amber. The plot takes an exciting twist when Eliza, the assumed bad guy suddenly isnt so horrible. Through out the whole book you are left wondering who are these virtual characters in real reality? If you want to know, you have to read the whole book to find out. I must say the ending was very surprising, and kept me hoping there would be a sequel coming soon. On a scale of 1 to 5 stars, one being the lowest, five being the highest I would give Headcrash 4 stars. I didnt give this book the full five stars because some parts of the book I found to be a little predictable and some parts were a little idiotic, but over all it was very entertaining, and you didnt have to sit down with a dictionary to get through the book. It was written in a very clear manner, as was Bethkes short story Cyberpunk. Unlike many other cyberpunk books that jump from scene to scene, and have too many characters to keep track of, such as Slant, Headcrash flowed nicely, and the characters were well developed, and clearly separable.

One of my favorite books ever. I keep hoping they put it on the Kindle marketplace but they havent yet.

This is the funniest cyberpunk novel I have ever read. This book takes a crack at evrything from political correctness to whacked out religion. Some parts are so funny you have to stop reading because of the tears in your eyes!

Bruce Bethke managed to write a mostly unfunny novelization of three or four Dilbert strips. The book was relevant for some two weeks, I guess, and they were gone before the hardcover edition saw the light of day (perhaps the reviewers at the publishing house read the manuscript at that time?). The protagonist is an unmitigated, weapons-grade J.E.R.K. with the declared IQ of two million and the tested one around minus ten. Other characters rustle when moving around - theyre paper, not even cardboard. The reality of 2005 is more like June 3, 1994, with snazzy car names. All in all, forget you saw this book. Buy something else, a Coke, a burger, anything would be healthier - even a pack of untipped Gauloises. The environmental impact would be smaller, too.

Headcrash is a very good Cyberpunk-style book, especially considering that it is his first effort. The style is straightforward and much easier to ingest than Gibsons novels, which tend more towards the artsy end of things. I preferred Stephensons books Snowcrash and especially The Diamond Age, but Diamond Age and this book suffered the same problem: a weak ending. I dont know if it is something about this subgenre that demands obtuse/confusing endings, but I get the feeling that it is the ride, not the destination that is the point. I will certainly read any other efforts by this author-- the ride is good enough to keep me interested.

In a massive sea of cyberpunk books that take themselves way too seriously, HeadCrash is a shining example of how humor can turn an ordinary novel into a piece of literature that everyone should read. Bruce Bethke has created a book that is truly engaging for the reader. One way he accomplished this is through an interesting plot line with numerous twists that kept me constantly on guard. HeadCrash follows the story of :cybergeek Jack Burroughs; a.k.a. Pyle; a.k.a. MAX_KOOL. The story starts with Jack going through a management shake up at MDE, Monolithic Diversified Enterprises. Later on, after Jack suddenly finds himself in a sticky situation, the reader watches as Jack uses his cyberspace alter ego, MAX_KOOL, and an embarrassing way to interface with the internet, to do a hack job for a mysterious woman known only as Amber. Saying anymore about the plot would lessen the amazing experience that any reader would have reading this book. The engaging plot and Bethkes outrageously funny style of writing made reading this book a truly positive experience.

What more can I add about this super cool and classic novel? Im very happy I read this.

I found this piece simply, delightfully dapper! Rather than wankering around trying to re-invent the wheel of cyber-noir (read: high tech hard boiled hard/soft sci-fi techno mysticism add water have story gumbo), this book introduces a level of cultural and technical extrapolation that simply doesnt occure elsewhere as brilliantly. For example, William Gibson, albeit a genious on an even playing field, gets very fuzzy around the edges on the technical front. Thats fine, sure, but when you pick up a book and personally HAVE an understanding of current technology, and additionally, know a bit about how that came to be, fuzzy doesnt work. Fingers need to be stuck into the proverbial stigmatas, the deeper the better, and this book delivers all the wonderful techno-babble derived from all the real nick-knacks that are and have been. Bethke has an understanding of the corporate atmosphere rivalling Scott Adams, a verve for banter similar to ol guru Douglas Adams, a perception of how artificial intelligence might actually play out that envokes Rudy Ruckers works, and an understanding of dual existence (of real geek versus virtual glam). He constructs actions, reprocutions and most of all consiquences as subtle and deep as a Haruki Murakami short story, but also makes a point of tying in all the contrived gimics (while similtaneously satiring) that have made Critin and Speilberg such wealthy men indeed. He scribes rich descriptions of settings and manages to work them into the narrative without destroying the pace (something Bruce Sterling could stand to work on). Bethke unabashedly looks at trends, gender issues, cultures (contrived and otherwise), political correctness, decades worth of ridicule vs. acceptance, Orwellian beurocracy (no one gets fired anymore, he he), Artistic derevations, HTML scripting/hotpoints (one click to nowhere)/java-esque applets vs. linear text, generational memory, musical persistency, pop/pulp mass media entertainment, coloquialisms (new and old, like quoting Star Wars/Trek without knowing where the utterance origionally came from, or caring), network games on the LAN during business hours, all this and a singing coffee maker, too. There is a lot of little things going on here, snippets of jibe and awareness that the casual tourist might easily pass by. Honestly, as a jaded, cynical reader who makes PC video games for a living, it has been truely refreshing to read a book that was so dead on target about how things are and could easily be, a book that doesnt curb bets or hide away flaws behind mystical shaman-come-author drivel. I can understand why he won his award. Phillip K. Dick had, above all else, a sense of irony. Like Phillip, Max Headroom, Jeff Noon or Neal Stephenson, Bethke has presented a piece that depicts said irony. The delightful surprise here is that Bethke (like a technogeek Hunter S. Thomson or William S. Burroughs) bothers to pull away all the curtains and pull off all the scabs to present all the oxymoronic, intermingled, ever mutating elements that create the great ironies of the world at large, now and to be. He even comments on all the resolution issues plagueing multi-player games today: to 3dfx or not to 3dfx, optimized build vs. debug, even to cache texture memory or to just run wireframe (he, of course, makes all that quit amusing, as if it werent already amusing enough). Makes for one hell of a ride, and I can only hope for more to come. Cheers!

This is the book that Snow Crash should have been. Now, before I am attacked as a heretic, let me say that Id be the first to admite that Neal Stephenson is a much better writer than Bethke. Its just that Stephenson has a tin ear when it comes to humor, whereas Bethke is spot-on. As good as Stephensons writing is, I found much of the humor in Snow Crash (which was another attempt at a send-up of the cyberpunk genre) to be slightly funnier than a dumb Saturday Night Live skit. Bethkes parody is much more inspired. It helps to be familiar with the shopworn cliches of cyberpunk before you read this. All the elements of your standard-issue cyberpunk thriller are mercilessly skewered in this book: characters who are so impossibly cool that they have to drink antifreeze, the ritualistic scenes of suiting up in incredibly cool cyber-equipment, hopelessly optimistic portrayals of the future of virtual reality, pointless fads of the present extrapolated into earth-shaking trends of the future, and the Incredibly Greedy and Faceless Corporate-Government Cartel that Controls the World. Tom Clancy, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Crichton are also spoofed. Once again, Bethkes writing style is only marginally better than what youd expect from a bright college sophomore, but it does the job. Now, if only we could have a novel with Stephensons gifted writing and Bethkes sense of humor, we might really have something.