Nexus

I breezed through a copy of Ramez Naam's techno-thriller at the suggestion of a local bookstore hooligan.  They claimed it was such a gripping and fast paced read that I would surely want to move right on to the other two books in the series.  Since I agree completely with the first part of this assessment, it's somewhat surprising that the second half breaks down; while I thoroughly enjoyed Nexus, I have no plans read Crux or Apex.  The trouble is that Naam writes good but quite generic sci-fi, and seems above all to be auditioning a script for the next Bourne franchise film -- his creative motto is apparently, "always be blowing up".  But while it was certainly a quick and engrossing read, there's something inherently unsatisfying about a story that takes all kinds of themes I'm interested in -- drugs, meditation, AI, neuroscience, geopolitics -- and mashes them together in the least surprising and interesting ways.  

The main plot device is solid idea.  Imagine if you could take a programmable psychedelic, as in, a drug that actually consisted of chips that stayed in your brain and could be used to send signals in and out of it.  Theoretically, this would let you change your perception in more fine grained and functional ways that simply flooding your system with serotonin.  It would also provide a sort of weigh station between normal human experience and the experience of that great staple of modern sci-fi -- the fully digital being.  Naturally, once we became able to program individual brains like this, we would surely want to start networking these analog-digital hybrids.  Which then makes each hybrid computer a potential hacking target, and etc ... You can imagine where it goes from here.  This is a fine premise that affords connection to a bunch of interesting questions, each of which is represented by Naam's well-drawn if slightly predictable and cardboard characters.  The trouble is that Naam is so prisoner to his screenplay that he doesn't have time to delve too far into any of these from an intellectual perspective.  The reader apparently cannot be counted on to wait more than about 10 pages between either tense near misses or gory combat scenes.  Eventually, this makes the plot feel kinda predictable and paint-by-number, and gives it that Hollywood sheen that leaves every movie looking like every other.  Will the good guys win in the end?  I'll admit that I'm kinda curious what happens.  I guess I'll just watch the Netflix series to find out.  But that too will take material suited for a 90 min film and, using suitably timed explosions and faux-epic grandeur, scatter it over 600 minutes of television.  And sometimes, you should just write a single novel, not a trilogy.