Set as a link between Hardwired and Voice of the Whirlwind novels, this short story shows how was dominance of the Orbitals brought down,

In Hardwired novel Orbitals are for all means and purposes controlling the Earth. All the elites and powers are concentrated in the orbital stations while the unwashed masses are placed exclusively on Earth. Orbitals are running all profit businesses on Earth after they have broken the planet based resistance during the so called Rock War.

In main novel (Hardwired) our protagonists managed to fight off the Orbitals for at least a while by launching the crippling blow using their friend Reno, hacker and programmer, living as an AI after barely surviving the assassination attempt, by uploading his saved personality together with the deadly Black Mind program/virus into the body of the novel antagonist, leader of Temple Pharmaceuticals corporation, Roon. This is where novel ends and this short story starts.

What follows is Reno sowing chaos amongst Orbitals, managing to put them all into collision course with each other with final goal of basically igniting equivalent of civil war between the elites that will weaken them sufficiently to make Earth important again.

Author manages to present in a very interesting way what old people would call possession. If someone's conscience is uploaded to a body what happens with the original persona? As story goes on and Reno gets hold of intrigues and ruthlessly manages to take over and then bring into conflict one Orbital corporation after another, he also becomes aware of changes in himself, the way he behaves. Soon (especially after interacting with the Roon's protege's - this is horror story on its own, if you read Hardwired you know what this is about) he will recognize that Roon is not gone but just lurking below the surface. And this will complicate things a bit...

Very interesting story, highly recommended to fans of cyberpunk and shady corporations bent on world control and domination. ( )

I believe this novella was written as an afterthought to attempt to bridge a gap between Hardwired and Voice of the Whirlwind, thus creating a trilogy once a few things got ironed out in Voice of the Whirlwind.

Which i think is a bit bad because this book is a very much needed sequel to Hardwired whether or not there was another book to follow.

I'm definitely pleased it was written as it does finish off Hardwired and Nero's escapades as Roon rather nicely.

Brilliant novella, and now i dive straight into Voice of the Whirlwind. ( )

This copy is one of the 500 Trade Paperback copies produced. It's signed by the author, on the title page. There were 900 total copies published (originally). I see that it's part of a series, and want to point out that this is really a short story, done up to look larger. No matter, though.

It's a strange one, even for Williams, and he can be pretty strange, oh my children. His introduction is illuminating. I enjoy WJW, and yet I keep very few of his works, and I cannot say why. This one is too strange to ever give up. So it goes. ( )