There ’s already been a lot of buzz about fantast Ramez Naam ’s first science fabrication novel , Nexus , because it offers such a persuasively realistic portrait of human enhancement . A few ten into the future , a drug / bioengineering called Nexus is make its way through the underground . When ingested , it creates a impermanent computing machine connection in your brain — which appropriate you to be “ programmed ” with anything from emotions to info about what vocal are recreate at the club where you ’re dancing . The government has outlawed Nexus , just as it criminalize any form of “ emerging ” engineering for human enhancement that could be a threat .
When the novel open , a group of postgraduate students in San Francisco have reckon out how to tweak Nexus so that it can in reality escape software just like a computer operating system would . They ’ve develop a suite of broadcast for it which can take control of your soundbox , guiding you through everything from fighting like Bruce Lee to coquette like a pro . It can also allow you to “ meet ” other people ’s thoughts , allowing people to merge into a hive mind where the individual self falls away . It ’s a nifty drug for dancing parties , but it ’s already being used for dark purposes : mind controlled assassinator , for example . At the same time , anti - war activists have found another manner to practice it , fuse minds with American soldiers to show them first - paw what it ’s like to be the victims of warfare atrociousness . One soldier has wholly transformed from a cold - blooded slayer to a political revolutionist as a result .
But all that alumnus pupil Kaden Lane really wants to do is finish his dissertation on Nexus , and maybe get a job working in a top lab in China on the engineering . Unfortunately , the US administration snap a Nexus company host by him and his biotech geek pals , forcing Kaden to work underground for them . His mission is to uncloak a prominent Chinese scientist whom the US politics suspects of using Nexus to make brainwashed supersoldiers . If he does n’t do it , his friends and all the mass at the party will be sent to prison . So , reluctantly , Kaden joins up with government agent Samantha Cataranes to go undercover to a biotech conference in Thailand where Kaden will prove to entice the scientist fair game into revealing her supposedly villainous plan .
It ’s a playfulness game of quat - and - mouse , involving head control , mind - wiping , extreme bio - modification , and fascinate nigh - future geopolitics . What I found most interesting about the novel , however , was n’t the post - human technology or the neurocomputing interface . It was Naam ’s usage of Buddhism as a cast of biotechnology . When Kaden catch to Thailand , he discovers that Buddhist leaders and Thelonious Sphere Monk have been in secret hack Nexus themselves — not with computers , but using the power of meditation . Because of their apparitional training , they ’ve figured out how to expend the engineering science to rewire their own minds and generate unbelievable collective speculation experiences . There is really a scientific basis for this idea , as neuroscientist have hear that meditation actually does affect the neuroanatomy of people ’s brains .
The addition of Buddhism as a kind of socio - scientific force makes link more than your average futurist techno - thriller . It ’s a smart thought experimentation about how a individual technology might be used by dissimilar cultures and political group in radically dissimilar agency . Ultimately , the rule book is about why no single group — whether internal or scientific — should be allowed to control a technology that could at long last change humanity for the practiced . We can never predict exactly how a lifespan - altering engineering will be used , and erasing it before multitude have a luck to tinker with it is more destructive than any of the possible ill effects it might yield .
Also , I should add that there are several fight vista that will remind you ( in a good way ) of ninja movies . Which is always a addition .
Certainly there are defect in Naam ’s novel — from time to time scenes drag on far too long , or the prose has the kind of jumpy , rough stream of a first novel . But overall it ’s a profligate , fun read which is both emotionally engaging and mentation - provoking . You ’ll be mulling over the implications of Nexus — the script and the drug — long after you put the record down .
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