I’ve been meaning to read this one forever, as it’s one of the SF Classics. It’s recently been reprinted in paperback.
It’s no Iron Dream, but I enjoyed it. It’s one of the novels of the “New Wave” of SF, and it shows; at times the prose is very stream-of-consciousness, hip wordplay, irritating. Jack Barron runs a video equivalent of a talk radio show, where the average person can call in to “Bug Jack Barron” with whatever’s bugging them, and then Jack, on air, places a call. And God help you if you’re the person he calls–Congressman, corporate honcho–and you’re not there to be served up as entertainment. Jack’s no hero, and the slide from his and his friends’ youthful idealism to cynical and powerful adulthood is particularly relevant and interesting now when you look at what the Boomers are up to. It’s far from a simple morality play.
That said, the book was written in 1969, and boy does it show. The slang isn’t very far at all from the ’60s (“cool it” and “dig” are common), and where the book takes two steps forward in its awareness of racial issues, it takes about six steps back in terms of gender. The female characters don’t do much but take up spac, mainly in bed. Sarah, the heroine, is whiny, wispy and ineffectual. It’s hard to see why she and Jack are each others’ great loves except that, you know, she’s the chick. His chick.
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