Memory Wire

R.C.W.'s second novel starts out slowly but the pace picks up once the main characters leave California to search for an alien artifact in Brazil. Character development throughout the novel builds to where you care what happens to the protagonists and hope for a fitting end for the main antagonist. A fitting ending that sneaks up on you shows the talent of Wilson which has only increased with subsequent novels.

One of the things I've come to love about Wilson's books is the way he takes profound, complex ideas and seamlessly integrates them into very human stories that manage somehow to be both epic in scope and yet very personal in feel. Memory Wire, an early offering from Wilson, shows signs of these tendencies, but in the end it becomes a pretty uninvolving story that occasionally plays with the ideas that Wilson's known for. Memory Wire centers around a veteran who's wired to be an impartial, human camera struggling to come to grips with his own memories and his desire to be outside of his own emotions; over the course of the story, he and a young woman end up looking for an alien artifact that may change the way humanity deals with its own memories. There are some neat ideas here, but the story never really feels like it has any high stakes; it mimics the case-driven narrative and feel of Neuromancer, but while that book felt dangerous and alive, Memory Wire ends up feeling mopey and slow, with even the big showdown never really bringing much excitement. There are still neat ideas working in here, and I wish Wilson would basically "remake" his own book now that he has more talent and experience under his belt, because this could have been a really excellent tale. As it is, it's a decidedly lesser work from an author whose other work has really floored me.

[***** = breathtaking, **** = excellent, *** = good, ** = flawed, * = bad]Raymond is hard-wired as a human "black-box" to record dispassionately whatever happens during combat. After his military service, he accepts a mission to Brazil to recover some extraterrestrial memory-stones encoded with the technology of an advanced race. Exciting novel; worth seeking out.