Subject: Pat Cadigan: Fools

From: [email-masked] (Dani Zweig)
Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 23:46:06 GMT

"Fools" is placed in the same milieu as some of her earlier work.  The time
is the not too distant future.  The key technological advance has been the
cracking of the mental code:  Memories can be read, edited, and transfered,
personalities can be tailored, machine-mediated mental communication is
practical.  Society is still adjusting to these advances, and most of the
uses we seem them put to are petty:  Personalities are franchised, method
actors *really* become the people the portray, memory junkies become addicted
to other people's experiences.

"Fools" juggles a number of viewpoints, but in this case all the viewpoints
share the same skull -- and it becomes a matter of some importance to find
out which is the real personality and which are borrowed constructs.  Is
she a method actress upon whom the false memory of a murder has been 
imposed?  Is she a memory junky who thinks she's a method actress?  Has
an imposed personality taken on a life of its own?

The book is written with considerable skill.  The author juggles the
viewpoints without ever losing control.  For all that, I found the book
clever, rather than particularly enjoyable.  I can admire the craft that
Cadigan is displaying -- but a writer has lost half the battle when the
reader admires the craft, rather than the story.

-----
Dani Zweig
[email-masked]

   'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
   Go alike, yet each believes his own
		--Alexander Pope