Book Review: 'Headcrash' by Bruce Bethke
3 / 5 Stars
‘Headcrash’(344 pp) was published by Warner Books in September 1995. The cover is by Dennis Galant and Sandra Lewin.
Bruce Bethke gained sci-fi immortality in 1983 when his short story ‘Cyberpunk’ (which he composed in 1980) was published in the November issue of Amazing Science Fiction.
Despite being a seminal figure in the genre, save for some short stories, his writing was focused on articles and manuals for the computer user market, and thus it was not until 1989 that he submitted 'Headcrash' to a publisher. According to Bethke, his refusal to change the novel’s ending led to a protracted legal battle that prevented the book from being published until 1995. 'Headcrash' won the Philip K. Dick award for 1995.
A 2005 interview with Bethke is available here. It has some interesting observations on sci-fi writing and other topics:
In terms of pure writing, the current state is better than it's ever been before. Compare any current issue of any major magazine to the clunky prose produced by the Grand Masters during the Golden Age or the psychotic fugues whipped out by the Young Turks during the New Wave, and I think you'll agree that for sheer literary quality, there are more highly skilled writers working now than ever before.
If you wanted to, say, launch an e-zine devoted exclusively to publishing stories about promiscuous centaurs living in trailer parks in Alabama, you could do it, and do a very professional-looking job of it. Not only that, but thanks to the Internet, you would actually stand a pretty fair chance of reaching the 500 people in the world who want to read nothing but stories about promiscuous centaurs living in trailer parks in Alabama.
I've observed that those who believe in global warming do so with an almost cultlike intensity and that trying to discuss it with them is not unlike trying to discuss Darwinian evolution with a Southern Baptist. The one thing I do know for certain is that I work with supercomputers and atmospheric and oceanographic modeling codes on a daily basis, and anyone who believes it's possible to make credible centuries-in-advance extrapolations from small and incomplete data sets is putting an unreasonable faith in hardware, software, and Fourier transformations.
To read ‘Headcrash’ is to return to 1995, and the era of Windows 95; Hypercards (‘Headcrash’ integrates several of these into its pages); the movie Disclosure, with Michael Douglas donning VR gear and pawing at file stacks hanging in the air in front of his face; and multi-user domains / dimensions / dungeons (MUDs) where a small core of aficionados paved the way for the coming PC gaming revolution.
Headcrash is set in 2005, in the greater Minneapolis - St. Paul area; the protagonist is Jack Burroughs, a college dropout who lives in the basement of his mother's house, and works as a Sysadmin for the Monolithic Diversified Enterprises corporation. 'Real life' isn't exactly exciting, nor full of promise, for Jack.
In his spare time, however, Jack dons VR gear and, as an avatar named MAX KOOL, roams a MUD called 'Heaven'. There, Burroughs - in his persona as a Harley-riding, longhaired, rock-n-roll Rebel - hangs out with a variety of oddball fellow avatars and enjoys the acclaim that comes with being a known cyberspace cowboy.
Things start to get complicated when a seductive, raven-haired bombshell named Amber comes to MAX KOOL with a request: hack into a secure corporate database and retrieve vital information.............all for a good cause, of course. But it helps matters that Amber is also offering a million dollars for the deed.
Teaming up with his gun-nut friend and fellow hacker Joseph LeMat (aka 'Gunnar Savage'), Burroughs obtains the latest in VR gear (including a high-tech suppository - ?!) and sets out to fulfill Amber's wish. But in the world of Heaven, not everyone, and everything, is what they seem.........
Bethke is a major fan of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, so it isn't a big surprise that 'Headcrash' also adopts a humorous attitude, one that takes the style of Ron Goulart or Robert Sheckley and fuses it with cyberpunk tropes. Despite the passage of a quarter-century, many of the novel's satirical musings remain relevant (although they probably will resonate less with those under 40, to whom the tech tropes littering the book's pages will seem like artifacts from a distant past).
Where the novel fails is in its closing chapters. While I don't fault Bethke for avoiding the happy ending his original publishers sought, the onrush of coincidences that occupies the closing chapters of 'Headcrash' are so contrived that their sheer facetiousness undermines the narrative.
The verdict ? If you are a devotee of comedic sf, then you likely will find 'Headcrash' entertaining, as will devotees of the cyberpunk novels of Rudy Rucker.
