"Action-packed science fiction thriller"

By 2033, biomech research scientist Samantha Bryton tasted success with the development of "forma" androids, but has fled to Northern California to reconsider her values as the wealth and fame she has accrued feels wrong. A badly injured male washes up onto Sam's beachfront property. She helps this humanoid flotsam as he heals. Turner Pascal explains that renegade scientist Charon converted him from a dying human into a forma with unique powers. He can slightly modify his appearance and he can communicate directly with machines hooked to the world wide "mesh".

As Sam ponders the rights of this unique soul, Charon and his thugs come to repossess his property. The only hope for this duo on the run from a brilliant criminal and his minions as well as the military and Feds lies in Sunrise Alley, legendary home of free AI androids. If they succeed, will a human and a former human be accepted especially since Charon's reach runs deep into Sunrise Alley and just think of what he may have planted inside Turner before the humanoid android washed ashore.

Though Charon's reach seems mighty far, readers will appreciate this action-packed science fiction thriller that crosses Frankenstein with Philip Dick asking the same question of what is essentially a human. Sam is a terrific heroine and Charon a wonderful villain, but the tale belongs to Turner. When he was a purebred human he lazily loped through life without a care, but his resurrection as a forma includes powers that can either be abused or be responsibly and accountably used for bettering society. Still the bottom line remains does a former human turned android dream of real sheep or forma sheep?

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted September 7, 2004

DOI:0743488407 - eBook

Summary

SHE WAS RUNNING FROM A RUTHLESS CRIMINAL ACCOMPANIED BY SOMEONE MORE THAN HUMAN . . .

When the shipwrecked stranger washed up, nearly drowned, on the beach near research scientist Samantha Bryton's home, she was unaware that he was something more than human: an experiment conducted by Charon, a notorious criminal and practitioner of illegal robotics and android research. The man said his name was Turner Pascal—but Pascal was dead, killed in a car wreck. Then she found that Charon was experimenting with copying the minds of humans into android brains, implanted in human bodies to escape detection, planning to make his own army of slaves that will follow his orders without question.

Samantha and Turner quickly found themselves on the run across the country, pursued by the most ruthless criminal of the twenty-first century. In desperation, Samantha decided to seek help from Sunrise Alley, an underground organization of AIs that had gone rogue. But these cybernetic outlaws were rumored to have their own hidden agenda, not necessarily congruent with humanity's welfare, and Samantha feared that her only hope would prove forlorn. . . .