Subject: REVIEW: This Side of Judgment -- J.R. Dunn

From: [email-masked] (Mark Takacs)
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 1994 01:06:26 GMT

THIS SIDE OF JUDGMENT
			       J.R. Dunn
			       Sept  1994
			A review by Mark Takacs

	I liked this book a lot.

	THIS SIDE OF JUDGMENT is a different twist on the typical
cyberpunk theme.  First of all, the world seems real.  Much of the
"fantasy feel" of other books in this genre is gone -- replaced by a
crime thriller, set only slightly in the future.  There's hardly any
techno jargon.  There's no punks with fingernail blades.  No
half-man/half-machine cyborgs.  No replacement body parts.  All they
have it "implants", a vaguely described chip that integrated itself into
it's host.

	So where's the twist?  Well, the implants were a *mistake*.
They worked fine for awhile, providing enhanced capabilities unique to
each implant.  The programs on the chips became a part of your "natural"
abilities, much like learning a language.  You don't have to "run" it,
it's just there when you want it.  But after awhile, all the "implants"
began to go insane, some violently so, victims of a mysterious condition
known only as Pelton's Syndrome.  And that's where the story starts.

	Almost all the implants are dead, the rest scattered and a
hair's breath from insanity -- hunted out and killed by members of a
federal task force created specifically for that purpose.  The implants,
once typical crackpot hippie dreamers out for the ultimate consciousness
expansion, are feared, misunderstood, and trusted by no one.  

	The story is told from four main perspectives.  There's Bohlen
-- the COSSF's best (and least liked by all sides) implant "specialist".
There Page -- a completely over-the-edge implant, and Telford -- an
"late model" implant who has tried to stay sane to care for the others
who weren't so lucky.  And caught in the middle of it all is Nast -- a
deputy in the Montana town where all the action takes place.

	I found no major flaws to detract from my enjoyment of the
story.  The dialog flowed well, and the different perspectives gave a
rich background for the story.  The ending seemed abrupt, and exactly
what happens at the end is never spelled out.  Otherwise, things do come
together nicely. Like the Frankenstein story, you end up feeling a sense
of lost potential as the implants are slowly destroyed by their own
infighting as well as by the fearful, ignorant society.

%A Dunn, J.R.
%T This Side of Judgment
%I Harcourt Brace and Company.
%C New York
%D September 1994
%G ISBN 0-15-100076-X
%P 322pp
%O hardcover, $21.95

----
Mark Takacs	[email-masked]
Pasadena,CA 	"Fear is for the Enemy.  Fear and Bullets." THE CROW
WWW <A HREF="http://stargate.jpl.nasa.gov/~tak/">HomePage</A>