| Title | : | Hot Head |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0586214968 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780586214961 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1992 |
Hot Head Reviews
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Ahoy there me mateys! This be the thirteenth book in me Ports for Plunder – 19 Books in 2019 list. When I went to read this book, I realized that there was a problem. The library had unloaded this book from their catalogue! Not a good sign. I currently have a self-imposed rule that I can only buy books that I know I will reread (library book sales being the exception). So I decided to download an Amazon sample to see if it be good enough to spend me loot. Usually Amazon samples be dangerous because I read, fall in love, and immediately buy the book. Sadly the answer was no to this book. I didn’t like what I read at all. In fact I am not even including this book in the tally of reads for the year. The only reason this post is being written is because of it was on the 19 in 2019 list. If this writing style is indicative of all of the author’s works then I likely won’t read any more of it. Sorry Simon! No offense meant. The rest of the crew does seem to like this book though. Arrrr!
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An elegant, bizarre, and very post-modern and literate book. Using tarot, cyberpunk, character study, metafiction, hard science, hints of horror in a surreal fractured narrative. A beautiful trick ending justifies the structures and games. This book reminded me a little of Jeff Noon but more coherent and urgent as I made it all the way through. Needs a re-read at some point. An added bonus is the title kept putting the Captain Beefheart song in my head, which is a good thing.
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considering i never drop books, i was upset to finally drop one. i read about 70 pages, can’t seem to find a plot and what i read seemed choppy
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Raw and brilliant. Ings is one of the few writers in cyberpunk who does not stand in Gibson's shadow. His plotting is not as elegant - the first half of the book is all over the place - but when he gets going he takes you into a gnarly and glittering world all of his own. There is a kind of meticulous nastiness in the world he describes, but he conveys it with a dispassionate and detached precision that chills the heat just enough to make it work. His account of the visit to the decayed and ravaged habitat C-LEDGE - a spaceship literally transformed into meat- is a tour de force. Although this is a disjointed and unfocused book, the sheer power of Ings's vision - feral, brutal, implacable and delicate, makes this book, in my view, a disregarded classic.
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I am disappointed. I tried to read it to completion, but it was so difficult to follow that I kept thinking about other things while superficially scanning the lines. I give this book 2 stars simply because I thought the idea was good. That idea being only the bizarre brain computer things. Unfortunately, a book needs to have far more interesting aspects to it for me to actually finish it.
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Awful. Struggled to follow the story, which read like the author had written it while tripping on acid. Kept trying, though, and made it to the end. I feel like I should be getting a medal. Really hard work for not much reward.
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Extremely 1992, from the postcyberpunk SF trappings to the bizarre "end of history" era worldbuilding that has aged like milk. The book is a mess with occasional moments of brilliance (one particularly good sequence sees the protagonist and her crew exploring a space colony full of overgrown meat-tech). Unfortunately the pieces don't fit together very well, with only two? three? interestingly-written characters, random acts of violence and trauma, and a tarot card theme that barely pays off. Also the printing I read had some really bad typos and missing punctuation all over the place. Overall a disappointing and frustrating experience that had some scenes that I enjoyed a lot - but only some.
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Not an easy read and the thought of putting it down certainly crossed my mind. Within the first 100 pages, I was (as so many others) also trying to figure out what the plot was but the second half of the book does get better.
The genre-typical techno babble is a bit much to digest but overall, once you get to the last 50 pages or so the idea behind the story makes you think and stays with you for a while. For me, that's always a sign that the book achieved something with me as its reader.
Would I read it again? Probably not in the near future. -
Een raar boek dat je alle kanten op slingert. Een meisje is de sleutel tot de redding van de wereld. Maar de weg erheen zit zo vol gekke dingen dat je het niet zo kunt zien. Zelfs aan het eind was ik niet overtuigd. Sciencefiction, maar soms een brug te ver naar mijn smaak.
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First couple of pages can be ignored, the history and culture really aren't that important in the rest of the book. Enjoyed the café by the sea and the gypsy section, and the meat planet was well done.
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Great example of cyber punk. Good read. Been a while to be honest but I remember enjoying it mostly.
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Ugg
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Some great imagery, but Ings repeatedly truncates a thrilling sequence or idea to instead focus on something uninteresting or tedious.
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Simon sent me this, his first novel, over six months ago. My taking so long to get to is should be no reflection on the work, which is quite good, but just my general slowdown. Hot Head is post-cyberpunk fiction, like
Neil Stephenson's
Snow Crash. Both novels deal in themes raised by
William Gibson, et al., but in here Simon takes the mileu and stretches it out onto a third world political canvas while Stephenson poked at it with the satire stick. The novel sputters a bit in the front as Simon info dumps the background of his protagonist, Malise. But as he warms up to his subject, and as the novel moves into the "present" line of the story rather than Malise's past, Simon hits stride. Many writers have toyed with the human/software implant (best done in
George Alec Effinger's
When Gravity Fails, I feel), but Simon's able to make it new here. Possibly it's because he realizes that it (the technology) is not the story (even though the novel is named after it), but a part of the story. This novel could as easily have been titled Moonwolf (but, then, that sounds slightly like a horror or fantasy novel, doesn't it?). I was thrown off a bit by the sudden impact of the ending, but I think that was due more to my start-n-stop reading method than any fault of Simon's.
I did have one other comment. I ran across something early in the book-- I think it was about walking and falling--that reminded me of Laurie Anderson. I thought it mere coincidence until I came across:"Do you want to go home?" they said, "Do you want to go home now?"
Which I can't place, but it's somewhere in United States Live ("Walk the Dog"?). Given this novel, and the fact that he quotes Laurie Anderson, how can I help but look for Simon's next?
Postscript 30 October 2014: As I was reviewing this commentary 20 years later, I finally notice yet another Laurie Anderson reference in the title itself. The song is on her album Mister Heartbreak and is about Adam, Eve, and the snake, with Eve falling for the snake hard. Why? "Because she was a hot head...she was a woman in love." -
Simon Ings' novel is somewhere in the sphere of cyberpunk. Fortunately, it manages to avoid at least one the main problems I've had with the genre, completely flat characters. The protagonist Malise is an interesting if damaged character that seems more than I writer's tool for displaying the nihilism of the world around her. This fact helps keep the reader interested in the route from the description of the childhood in a different world with an inner realism to the embodied 2001 Space Odyssey encounter with an conscious machine in the end.
The beginning of the novel paints a picture of a world changed. It depicts a world where most of the cyberpunk dreams or nightmares have come through: nations states have mostly fallen and nee powers have risen, among them massives; conglomerated of intellegent machines that are at least close to singularity. However, among these element Ings is more interested in writing the story of Malise withing the world instead of dwelling on the dystopian vision. This gives the story strength that carries it through episodes and acquaintances that sometimes seem irrelevant, and especially keeps the conciousness of the reader more concise ones the actions starts accelarating and the world becomes a more confusing place.
For a cyberpunk novel written in the early nineties, the world has been kind to Hot Head. While the world has not exactly come to pass and it is unlikely it will, there is still something fascinating and relatable about. Also, while technological world has yet to take the cyberpunkish turn (hope it never does) and the more fantastical aspects sometimes seem overboard, the questions about humanity still retain their relevance. One of the better cyberpunk novels I have read. -
It is a pity I did not read this book back in 1992, it would have blown my mind.
It has aged relatively well, however, with several predictions that have scored quite well, from the weather change to the impact of muslim refugees in Europe, but of course it is impossible to hit everything. It mixes near future prediction with a post-cyberpunk vibe and a part of real space/real science thrown in. So action is mostly limited to our star system, and the mind of our heroine, who is the best part of the book.
The ending reads a bit like a rehash of 2001 and Alice in Wonderland, and weakens overall a very solid book, and a good show of how we saw the future twenty five years ago.
I will be reading more recent books from Ings to see how if his futurism is still strong. -
This is from one of the writers from the later group of people associated with cyberpunk and it approaches it from a slightly different angle. Whereas a lot of the writers in this genre basically use the tropes of cyberpunk as a backdrop to the usual science fiction tale here it seems more integral. It looks at how the technology affects the humanity of those who embrace it and does so in a real and affecting way.
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Refreshing take on cyberpunk themes and an excellent first novel. I enjoyed the effort made to depict the near future (e.g. post AI and climate change) and the main character in much more intimate tones than most books in the genre. The book easily lends itself to visual imagination and at least in my head it turned into a great movie.
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"A bit opaque to get into, but ultimately satisfying. Greater depth than first appears. Very impressive that a first-time, male author has chosen to use female leads almost exclusively. Another to reread at some point."
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Hm. Despite all the Hype, I am disappointed. This novel is just sexual romps with not much direction that skips time. The writing tries to copy William Gibson's Sprawl far too much. Not much plot either.
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En jaksanut lukea kun puoleenväliin. Kun ei muutu paremmaksi siihen mennessä, niin antaa olla. Sekoileva juoni. Virtuaalitodellisuutta.
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I decided that if I kept reading this book I would spark a spiraling descent into my own depression, so I make the wise choice to stop reading. My friends and family applaud my decision.
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Interesting ideas speckled with spicy prose, but cursed with insufferable Cyberpunk/hard SF technobabble and a thoroughly incomprehensible plot.
