Synopses & Reviews
The place is the United States. The time, the near-future, 2020-2040. Here, justice is blind and the ranks of the disenfranchised have swollen to a toxic level. High-tech rules the day while human nature, for better or worse, remains constant.
In nine interwoven tales, Mosley paints a keen if fictional portrait of what the future could hold if our own political climate continues. From Ptolemy Bent, the child genius whose act of mercy lands him in the world's first privatized prison, to Fera Jones, a heavyweight champ who gives up the ring for a political career, characters appear and reappear in different storylines as everyone tries to survive a fast and furious Futureland.
Review
"Mosley uses stylish characters and technobabble to navigate an intricate, grimy, technologically baroque urban landscape....A vivid, exciting and, on the whole, well-executed take on cyberpunk that measures up to the work done 15 years ago by the Gibson and Bruce Sterling but will Mosley's mystery fans go for them?" Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Unfortunately, heavy-handed plotting and unconvincing extrapolation weaken the collection's earnest social message....Although packaged as SF, this book is likely to disappoint readers of that genre who've already seen Mosley's themes...more convincingly handled by authors like Octavia Butler." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Mosley's first foray into writing science fiction since Blue Light, these interrelated stories...read as a natural but chilling extension of our present....Mosley's reputation...may entice a number of his regular readers to pick up this book, where they will find some of the same bleak outlook, flashes of insight, and true-to-life African American characters [as in his Easy Rawlins series]." Library Journal
Review
"Mystery star Mosley tries his hand at science fiction again, to better effect than in the novel Blue Light....Ably slinging the technobabble to explain the odd wonder-gadget in his tales, and greasing them with plenty of 'oh-baby' sex, Mosley creates sf in which Shaft and Superfly would feel at home. Can ya dig it?" Ray Olson, Booklist