From Publishers Weekly
Screenwriter Marlow's derivative, fast-paced debut, a near-future thriller, features the latest thing in tech menaces-nanotechnology. The assassination of billionaire Mitchell Swain, just as he's about to unveil microscopic robots that will solve all of humanity's problems, puts the inventor of Swain's revolution, the geeky John Marrek, in deadly peril. Agents of an evil U.S. government with their own nanobots try to stop Marrek from following through with Swain's program, but he finds supporters in a stereotypically beautiful female journalist, Jennifer Rayne, a virtuous president and an honest air force colonel. In chapter after cinematic chapter of dueling nanos, Marrek's disassembling nanobots wipe out whole teams of government hit men while the assembler bots cause redwoods to sprout in seconds to block pursuers. Along the way, Marrek delivers ethical and informational lectures to Jen, justifying high body counts and painting a nano-ified future in the brightest of colors as long as good guys like him are in control. Marrek and the government's nanos finally square off in the Bay Area, with the fate of the world at stake. If the politics or science were anything to take seriously, readers might have cause for alarm. As it is, the action is all that counts in this slick formula effort, which reads like a novelized screenplay.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Booklist
Mitchell Swain, richest man on Earth, is assassinated just before he can announce a revolutionary new technology, leaving developer John Marrek responsible for it now. While he is destroying evidence of his lab, reporter Jennifer Rayne, her journalistic instincts demanding she discover the motivation for the assassination, interrupts. Because she'll provide useful second opinions, and she is cute, John decides to take her with him as he flees those out to stop the release of nanotech. The chasers pursue, guns blazing, but John has a nanogun, and it disassembles them. Rogue elements in the U.S. government, some of them using everything the military has at hand, are after John and Jennifer, but then John's infant nanotech AI comes online and saves them by taking over military defenses. The baddies desperately release nanites that destroy San Francisco and, because of faulty programming, continue destroying. The AI saves the day, and eventually, John agrees to work with the government. This reads like a big-budget summer blockbuster with interesting but overgeneralizing afterwords. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
