The Terminal Experiment (1995)

This book is in clear violation of the Writ of Banning against the use of Pop Psych in otherwise readable sci-fi novels.  Half of the first 100 pages of the book are absolutely murdered by the unveiling of the protagonist's wife's affair, which occurs because she's trying to push him away, because she can't believe a man could unconditionally love her, because she had a cold and distant father.  Is there a bigger yawn than a paint-by-numbers female character with low self-esteem and daddy issues?


The protagonist's Muslim friend is enough of a stereotype to make me uncomfortable, but he's also the most appealing character because of "crisp".  From the novel:

"Crisp" was his favorite word; he used it to mean anything from well-defined to delicate to appealing to complex.

Sawyer then has Sarkar use "crisp" about once every scene he's in.  Its regular appearance gives us a very human trait to cling to, but it's not so overused that it becomes annoying.


Chapter 17: future imagination fail.  In Sawyer's 1995 imagining of 2011, we have voice-activated computers and can perfectly simulate someone's brain, but we're still using VCRs to record shows?  Really?  It's not something you tell the house computer to take care of?


More imagination fail: a character picks up a phone and hears the modem noise.  That was cool when Matthew Broderick did it in 1983; it would be slightly dated in a sci-fi novel written and set in 1995; it's ludicrous in a sci-fi novel written in 1995 and set in 2011


Once we get past the preliminaries and into the meat of the novel, the story picks up and I don't even mind that the "mystery" is really not very mysterious, because it's obvious practically from the start who the murderer is.  Ultimately, I'm a little disappointed that Ambrotos is simply dropped from the story at some point and never appears again.  


--spoilers-- 
I also don't think that we're given sufficient evidence that Sandra's "spirit" sim would necessarily let Peter go, much less go through the effort of covering up for him.  I think that would require more humanity than is left in the "spirit" sim, but that Sawyer wants the Sandra sim to let Peter go, so it does.  
--end spoilers--


Overall, this was enjoyable, but looking at the list of Nebula winners, I have to disagree strongly with the choice of this novel over Metropolitan, or even Mother of Storms.  (and I have not read the other three finalists)