Roo'd

Roo'd
A Cyberpunk Novel

By

4.5
(6 Reviews)
Roo'd by Joshua Klein

Published:

2004

Pages:

425

Downloads:

4,376

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Roo'd
A Cyberpunk Novel

By

4.5
(6 Reviews)
Fed was 18 when Tony got roo'd. He'd been prepping for early college admission with late-night com-classes, goggled in and finger-cramped over nasty circa-2009 C++ code examples while longing to toss it in for time to scan some flashy Java virii. Tony had been gone from his life for at least a couple years, five years his senior and a failure, as far as their folks saw it. Bailing out of a prestigious single-course curriculum at MIT, the rumor was that he'd crashed and burned on Pakistani kraft; carefully engineered cold cells delivering a prolonged payload of top-flight methamphetamines directly to the spongy flanges of his right hemisphere.

Book Excerpt

fairing on a device that could go twenty miles an hour.

A few minutes later he had followed the little blinking cursor in his eye to a tight alley off the main shopping street. The end of the alley had a car garage in it, two three foot long red plastic dragons framing the door. As Fed entered the alley the doors opened and a battered mini came roaring out at him, the cold glare of a thousand white LEDs suddenly blazing from the headlights that unfolded from its blunt nose. Fed skipped backwards and out of the way, and as the mini slowed to join the foot traffic he noticed that the alley was covered with some sort of plastic dome, and that the dome had some sort of mold on it. He pushed his goggles back as he walked into the alley, neck straining to make out the green clouds that seemed to be floating motionless above him.

"Algae tanks" a female voice informed him. "The building's owners skim off the fuel cells from the cars to feed them. But we like it for the color."

Fed lowered his hea

Readers reviews

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4
As social fiction (definition of cyberpunk by Gibson himself) this action-filled story may indeed work. Body mods subculture is what could come out of DIYbio grass roots efforts, and this happens now. What does not work, sadly, is that throwing CPU at biochem problems will get you an unquestionable result---it's always lab work that gives you the feedback from reality. But who knows? Maybe quantum computing can exactly simulate chemistry? Maybe this book will lead to an interest in biochem in a computer geek?
This book was a great read. I loved the universe the author created, it truly seemed like a possible future. I wish there were more books available in this genre. If you are slightly geeky action fan, this is a must read.
4
A fun and fast paced book. Not everyone will like it, but if you're a fan of Gibson or Stephenson you'll probably enjoy it. As a software engineer I really appreciated how much effort the author put towards making the virus aspects as real-world as possible, without becoming too technical.
Excellent read! Learned about it on BoingBoing, as noted minor spelling and editing issues, but w/o a doubt an excellent story. I read it in two sittings. A testament to its quality. i was surprised to learn of it's completion date, it's a cutting edge piece, not at all dated, makes me wonderful if i am.... Anyone know of any other works by this gentleman, he's deserving of a successful scifi career and i'd like to buy more of his works.

HK 11-21-07
4
Excellent e-book!! Well done CyberPunk. Minor spelling and editing errors but they may only be present on the iphone version. I hope to read more by this author.