I don't know how I've managed to get into a trend of books that are a bit net-obsessed, but having recently enjoyed Sleep Over, with its pop-culture heavy identity, it now feels a little excessive in this.
Matthew's dad works for the CIA and is trying to prevent a nuclear war between the USA and Russia, by any means necessary. Since he's a programmer, the approach he's taken is software heavy, specifically Bucky, an AI. Bucky can enhance human cognition (via headphones, ala Dollhouse) and is simulataneously spreading VR goggles, in order to manipulate them into a fully immersive gaming environment. This usefully distracts them from everything horrible going on, which with a bit of mind control might just drag the world back from the edge of total destruction.
At least, I'm pretty sure that's what's going on. The structure of this is a mess. It bounces around between the teaching of the AI (via Bash Bash Revolution - more on this later), the slow failing of society as people disengage and Matthew's failed romance with someone who is generally more interested in his dad (though thankfully not like that).
The book is painfully up to date, with references to Trump, Twitter, and the manipulation of public opinion by algorithmic systems featuring heavily. This is quite an important topic, and very timely, but the book does not pick the best way of expressing it, by suggesting the possibility that people can be controlled by rewarding superstition. The example given for this is manipulating "dubs".
If, like me, you know what a dub is, feel free to laugh at the painful nature of that reference. No one ever said they were cool. If you don't understand any of the previous three sentences, don't worry about it. It honestly doesn't matter. I assume Lain was aiming for something akin to The Machine (or maybe Samaritan), from the frankly brilliant Person of Interest, but he missed.
(As an aside, Person of Interest is probably one of the best TV series of the last decade. I will never stop recommending it. It also featured Amy Acker as the spectacular Root, a character type that would have greatly improved this book.)
Other weird references include the title. Super Smash Bros is a videogame with a very active tournament scene, in which people get together and indulge in battles. It has a thriving metagame, with different characters and movesets each having their own fans. Which is why I don't understand why Lain felt the need to come up with a generic version, when so many other things are left unchanged. There's so many terms ripped straight from the Smash scene. Perhaps it's so he can make the pun in the title. The book does include a revolution, but no dancing.
Honestly, it's mostly just disappointing. A few neat ideas, but none of them delivered with any great style (even if I do enjoy the visuals of people running around a city in VR, dodging troublesome reality with the aid of AI), and an ending lacking significant punch.
Tagged: Book Science fiction Techno-thriller Novel Print