Author : Dani and Eytan Kollin
Genre : Science fiction
Publisher : Tor Books
Pages : 496
Rating : 3/5
A futuristic society in which people are incorporated just like other assets, cars fly and walls are permeable. Sound intriguing? I thought so, which is why I picked up this book. And just like the jacket blurb promised, Justin Cord, our hero, wakes up from his 300 year long cryogenic sleep into a futuristic world, where the sickness he was dying of, has been cured. Thus restored to health and “reanimated” he is ready to assimilate into modern day society. There are many good things about this modern world, which he is ready to embrace, but there is one thing he isn’t kosher with – and that is incorporation of the self.
Everyone in the present day world is incorporated. Each individual has stocks of himself/herself bought and sold in the financial market , and the goal is to achieve majority to gain economic independence. The better a person does in his career, the more his stock rises. Justin, with his notions of slavery (which he likens to incorporation) doesn’t want to be incorporated, and is thus the only un-incorporated man in the world. Since he is a wealthy and popular man, the fight is on to force him into the system, and own his stock. Will Justin be able to stand his ground?
I was eager to read this book, because it looked like an interesting premise wrapped up in hard science fiction. Unfortunately, that illusion broke very quickly. This book is fairly shallow science fiction, because although it has futuristic gadgetry and niftily named inventions, there is not much “science” to back it up. The entire story is propped up by one idea and one idea alone – incorporation, and the book, it seems, is but an exercise to project that idea. The sci-fi angle seems an afterthought to the whole process.
I’m put off that this is not the sci-fi read I was hoping for, but am willing to overlook that fact, if the book by itself was engrossing enough. Unfortunately, it fails on that count too. The writing is bad (and I doubt the book had an editor). The style is clunky, and the authors have a tendency to harp over and over explain every thought and event, putting an end to any semblance of mystery or intrigue. The narrative breaks every so often with the authors taking little segue-ways to explain the new fangled technology. Thus the pace is lackadaisical, and the characters underdeveloped. As such, although I do like the main protagonists Justin and Neela, I do not know too much about their inner selves and am hard pressed to feel more than perfunctory warmth for them.
“The unincoporated man” tries to do many things. It is situated in a futuristic world, so it has the trappings of science fiction. There is a social and financial theme, as well as a budding (forbidden) romance. There are also wordy scenes in a court of law. All this is tied up in its over-arching theme of incorporation. Although I appreciate this book for its novel premise (really, what is better than a great big new idea ?), I do think that many facets of good storytelling were sacrificed to propagate it. Better written, and with adequate emphasis on character development and story this might have been a great book. As it is now, I had trouble finishing it up, although I did finish it.
