Machine Man
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4.2 • 81 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Scientist Charles Neumann loses a leg in an industrial accident. It's not a tragedy. It's an opportunity. Charlie always thought his body could be better. He begins to explore a few ideas. To build parts. Better parts.
Prosthetist Lola Shanks loves a good artificial limb. In Charlie, she sees a man on his way to becoming artificial everything. But others see a madman. Or a product. Or a weapon.
A story for the age of pervasive technology, Machine Man is a gruesomely funny unraveling of one man's quest for ultimate self-improvement.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
RoboCop meets Nathanael West's A Cool Million in Barry's cautionary satire of the future of bio-augmentation. Dr. Charlie Neumann (get it?), an employee at the bioengineering company Better Future, loses his leg in an industrial accident and has it replaced with a prosthesis. After tinkering with and improving his artificial leg, Charlie loses his remaining good leg, but this time it's no accident; he likes being able to make artificial upgrades to his body. So do his employers, who see the military applications of Charlie's fixation and put him in charge of a project to modify the human body with mil-spec prostheses. When one of the other test subjects, a security guard who has had his arms replaced, goes rogue and kidnaps Lola Shanks, the prosthetics expert who has become the object of Charlie's affection, Charlie sets off to hunt down the monster he has helped to create. Like Mary Shelley's famous creation, this story and character are rather stitched together, and doesn't achieve a life or identity of its own. The result is a pastiche that, like Charlie, stays too wrapped up in its own head to grip the reader on a more emotional level.
Customer Reviews
Gripping... Full of twists
Very polished and I could stop reading it. I really enjoy the first person perspective that he writes the novel. There are subtleties of satire that you will catch when you reread pages. It felt like a combination of Animal Farm and Bicentennial man, will an ending that both surprises and seems inevitable.
Amazing
I don't ever write book reviews but this book in particular was one I definitely had to write because it was that good.. Your definitely doing yourself a favor by reading this, amazing storyline
MECHINE MAN
Wondering how it would end gave me reason to continue reading.
It appeared that someone should have proofread the text.
Many thoughts or ideas seemed to be disjointed or unrelated to the prior text.
Time to perform a change or function seemed way to short.
Changes from one situation to another seemed completely illogical, probably that is what you wanted to do.
Unfinished or half sentences or just on word may have had meaning for you but was distracting to me.
One good thing that can be said is you did give good feeling of the personality of your characters. You do have a lot of crazy ideas which may have made this novel interesting to others.
I would not buy another one of your books or recommend this one.
May your future efforts make many happy.
Richard