Freedom Incorporated
Book Excerpt
"Hands on the wall."
The skin on the back of Adam's hands looked like tissue paper, ready to tear at a moment's notice.
The air reeked - an acrid combination of vomit and excrement that the drizzle only aggravated. Adam spread his legs and let Dan pat his sides for weapons.
Dan pressed the muzzle of his automatic into the small of Adam's back, hard enough to bruise. He grappled with his handcuffs and slapped them around Adam's left wrist. Then, with a twist to the cruel metal that would ensure compliance through pain, he wrenched Adam's arm behind his back and fastened the other half of the cuffs. It was never easy; Dan felt vulnerable working alone. He'd never grown accustomed to it after leaving the force. Only the reassuring click-click-click of secured handcuffs released the tension pent within.
"You're American aren't you?" - Silence - "Aren't you going to read me my rights?" Adam turned to search his captor's face when the tension eased on h
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While the story idea wasn't unique in itself, it was done well enough to overlook it, although the 'extra ending' seemed to be more of a "throw it in there and let the reader's imagination do the majority of the work", even though the foreshadowing made it obvious where it was leading.
But all said, a solid enjoyable read.
The geek in me loved how Tylee depicts computer networks and the efforts to hack them in the year 2066. As a computer programmer myself, I found Tylee's descriptions of corporate security measures to almost be believable. Most of all, I loved the depiction of people who hack the technology to promote their anti-corporate message of freedom.
Tylee's depiction of how corporations control the planet through the "World Economic Forum" is frighteningly prescient, if we project from current trends. Likewise, his projections about electronic surveillance, toxic pollution and the privatization of water are not far fetched, considering the malfeasance of corporations at present. Everything that Tylee describes is a logical extension of what is already happening, which is what makes Freedom Incorporated such an outstanding work of science fiction. Following in the tradition of 1984 and Brave New World, Tylee constructs a frightening dystopia which is really a commentary on the problems of our present society.
There are a few areas where Tylee falls short in his projections of future dystopia. First of all, the characters live in a world of abundant energy and food, but global climate change and peak oil make these scenarios very unlikely. Just as Tylee describes the brutal control over clean water, I would have liked to read how people would live in a world of brutal rationing of food and energy, where the wealthy take the lion's share and the poor are left with the scraps.
The protagonists in Tylee's dystopia are flawed in ways which make them real. Some of the corporate bad guys are a little too cookie-cutter and one dimensional to be believable. I much preferred Tylee's sympathetic depiction of the corporate network admin to the unexplainable sadism of the lead corporate assassin.
If I have one gripe about the book, it is the unrealistic corporate takeover at the end. Yes, shareholders can be gullible, but Tylee skips over the details as if he knows it is implausible. The happy vision of the female protagonist getting her own plot of land and sailing in her boat on the sea was also not very plausible, but her decision to continue her environmental activism and working to create a democratic social movement against corporate malfeasance was a refreshing ending to the book.
This version could do with some serious editorial attention, however.
I am a big fan of dystopian-future literature and disagree with just about everything the previous reviewer wrote.
I will agree that the book would benefit from a solid edit. There are quite a few typos.
I also agree that some of the main villains of the piece make some stupid moves. But it didn't require a great suspension of disbelief to accept that ruthlessness could trump intelligence in a corporate-controlled culture and that scum could rise to the top of the swamp -- that happens often enough in real life.
Overall, I found the quality to be as good as or better than most of what's commercially available today in this genre of fiction.
It worked for me on two levels, as an action story and as a warning of what could happen if people let convenience in commerce mutate into surveillance and control of their lives.
I think there's an app for that.
Oh, and the part where the universe is in danger? Everyone pretty much ignores this until they get their ducks in a row.