Machine Man (Vintage Contemporaries)

When Charlie Neumann, an utterly unremarkable and unsocial scientist at the bio-engineering company Better Future loses his leg in an industrial accident and gets a top-of-the-line artificial one, he reacts as anyone naturally would.He tears it apart and builds an even better one, of course, with the sort of motors, wheels, multiple core processors, shifting multidimensional axis, data storage, GPS and wi-fi (for automatic pathfinding) that evolution probably would have gotten around to providing eventually if it wasn't so slow and inefficient. Who said legs need to be leg-shaped, anyway?In fact, the more he develops and enhances his new titanium appendage, the more he realizes that his "good" leg -- i.e. the one he was born with -- is really holding him back. And the clamping machine that took off his first one is still there..."Machine Man" is pure Max Barry, which means it's heavy on the corporate dystopia, the odd personalities, the funny lines, and, above all, the perfectly normal ideas taken to their logical, marketable extremes. In his previous books, "Syrup" took advertising into entirely new levels, "Company" was a blueprint company-hell nightmare, and "Jennifer Government" was a brilliant (and hilarious) look at a not-unlikely world run by corporations.In comparison, "Machine Man" is more of a study of humanity and social interactions, although the omnipresent corporate world is there every 2-ton, highly profitable step of the way. Charlie approaches everything in life with the analytical mind of an engineer, and reality rarely measures up to any reasonable metric. Why not improve it? And why stop with legs?"I just want to upgrade," he tells Lola Shank, the woman who provides his first prosthetic and, not coincidentally, the woman he falls in love with. "That's not weird. People go to the gym to do that. The only difference is I have access to better technology."Far from being horrified at their employee's alarming new interest in self-mutilation, Better Futures welcomes Charlie back with open arms and a huge staff of scientists eager to improve every body part they can for the suddenly-realized human optimization market. Optional bodily upgrades that able-bodied people might choose to buy? Forget body jewelry and Botox, Better Future sees a gold mine in Charlie, especially if they can figure out how to weaponize him."But what's the problem with medical?" Cassandra Cautery, Better Future middle manager, explains to Charlie. "The market is limited to sick people. Imagine: you sink thirty million into developing the world's greatest artery valve and someone goes and cures heart disease. It would be a disaster. Not for the... not for the people obviously. I mean for the company. Financially. I mean this is the kind of business risk that makes people upstairs nervous about signing off on major capital investment."But Charlie gradually becomes unsettled at the speed at which he's losing control over his life. His team is cheerfully testing their own inventions on themselves and each other. The newly-enhanced security guard Carl gets Charlie's artificial arms and goes rogue. Charlie's increasingly sinister employers might have implanted something bad inside his girlfriend. And his legs might have an agenda of their own.What makes a human? When you tinker with the brain-body interface and chemical hormonal balance, does it change the personality? When you begin to identify a fake limb as "yours," what happens when your company takes control of it? "Machine Man" looks at all of these questions and more as Charlie dives deeper into his own twisted style of personal growth. In an odd progression, the fewer human parts he possesses, the more human Charlie becomes."Machine Man" itself was created and improved on the fly. Barry began writing it in 2009, a page at a time, and posted the pages to his website where readers could follow along in a variety of ways. The first draft -- which you can still read at his site -- is very different from this revised and expanded version since he was putting in cliffhangers for his daily readers and the structure needed to be changed. Also, the comments and discussions each page prompted gave him more ideas to improve the final copy.Geeky, deeply cynical, perceptive and funny, "Machine Man" is for every person who ever found more joy in gadgets than in other people.

I like Max Barry. I loved Jennifer Government. But make no mistake - this is no Jennifer Government. It could have been. It had the potential. But, in the end, it was a fan-driven book full of compromise and crazy ideas that could only come from the internet. It was kind of like reading a source-written novella on 4chan.That being said, it was still fun to read. Essentially, an otherwise wholly uninteresting scientist has an industrial accident that results in the loss of his leg. He finds the standard mechanical replacement legs unsatisfactory, and that awakens his inner scientist and tinkerer. And then he's off - realizing that a better leg can be made not by imitating tissue and bone, but by embracing electronics and steel. Before you know it, he's chopping of legs, fingers, and anything else he can stick in a machine, all in order to "upgrade" himself to his better image. Eventually, the company he works for takes over the project and turns him into something he never wanted. There's an epic battle between two supermen, and then it goes completely off the tracks. The ending is at once predictable and completely insane. I can't say that Max Barry did it again, because he didn't. While Jennifer Government was something really new and original, Machine Man is an old story with a new twist. And not a particularly surprising twist at that. Sooner or later someone was going to write this book. I suppose we should be grateful it was Max Barry instead of some hack like Steve Alten or Ron Hubbard... (That's a compliment to Max Barry, by the way.)

Grade: B+L/C Ratio: 20% Literary / 80% CommercialThematic Breakdown:25% - Engineering20% - Love15% - Action thriller15% - Humor15% - Corporate America10% - Medical proceduresAddictiveness: MediumMovie Potential: 2 Thumbs Up (Darren Aronofsky will direct it)Re-readability: LowThe scope of Machine Man expands at a wildly fast pace, yet somehow that acceleration doesn't ruin the book's literary merit. Even as the novel leaps from a workplace satire into a pseudo-superhero action thriller, it never feels like the story is out of control. Max Barry's plot is strong enough to make outrageous developments within scenes and characters seem natural.Machine Man is told from an engineer's mindset, and although the narrator's wry humor and binary outlook on the world hampers the descriptions in action-heavy chapters, his character arc is madly entertaining to follow. Barry dares to intersect the worlds of technology and love, and the result is a novel with plenty of laughs, adventurous ideas, and surprising depth.Noteworthy Quote:I hesitated. Is anyone really perfect? You can't be mostly perfect. You can't be perfect some of the time. You are either perfect or not. And I don't think biology does perfect. Biology is about efficient approximation. It's about good enough. A vacuum is perfect. Pi is perfect. Life is not.

Read the acknowledgement at the end and you will understand why this book has no sub plot, it goes in a straight line from start to finish. The characters are intentionally shallow and the whole experience is dull and unengaging. Mr Barry has written brilliant books but this ain't one of them. Leave the serialisation to Dickens this was an experiment that went wrong (which basically sums up the whole plot).

Yes, please ignore the one star review. Machine man is a fast paced thriller which I cannot recommend highly enough. I was drawn to this after finding out Darren aronovsky had purchased the rights. If you like his style, it's not so far removed from this novel. A dark, twisted love story which begs you to keep reading.

Full of action and a strong philosophical Consideration, I highly recommend this book to anyone that likes sic-fi, philosophy or action

different and compelling read I enjoyed it will read more by this author

A interesting idea and subject matter, wonderfully and addictively written; as with all his books! Definitely worth a read. In fact, try them all!