Book Review: Free Radical

Source: SmashWords.com

Free Radical, by Shamus Young

From the book’s cover:

A fan-made novel drawing from ideas and characters which appeared in the 1994 classic System Shock from Looking Glass games. A cyberpunk story which explores the nature of intelligence and AI. (Note: This synopsis does not come from the book's cover, as the book does not have a cover. Instead, I took this from an online review of the novel from SmashWords.com

The Review:

Free Radical is an online novel based on the mid-1990s (wow - as I type that date, I felt old) PC game System Shock. System Shock had the distinction of riding the coat tails of the Doom craze. You remember Doom, right? No? Well, back before PCs got all fancy and truly 3D, there were games where everything was in 2D. Then somebody got the bright idea to make games that appeared three-dimensional, even though they were just what is referred to as "2.5D." The programming is flat, but displayed on the screen in a pseudo-3D way. It's cooler than it sounds. You really don't remember Doom? Hmmm....

The author, Shamus Young / Source: ThisIsMyJam.com

Well anyway, this was way before fast processors and video cards that could practically do your taxes for you. Doom was one of the revolutionary games to use this design, and it spawned a lot of spin-offs and such. Including a somewhat forgettable third sequel - modernized and everything - Doom 3. They based a Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson film on that game. You really don't remember? Sheesh.

Anyway, the game System Shock took the Doom model and put a real meaty story around it. Comparatively speaking, that is. Doom had about as much story as a 10 year old would come up with to describe his idea of a great action movie. But System Shock... now that was some game play. You took the role of a computer hacker, who was caught breaking into the TriOptimum Corporation's computer systems. In this future, Earth is run by big conglomerates, and data is the most powerful weapon around (not too far off, yeah?). Anyway, in the backstory, the company makes you do a job for them, and in return, you get a neural interface that allows you to have a computer in your head. And all this before you actually start playing the game. That was just the intro movie! Yes, the neural implant part of the plot was basically just a nifty way to make the traditional Heads Up Display and associated gadgets in first-person shooter video games make some sort of logical sense, but it was pretty advanced thinking for the time.

You really don't remember Doom? / Source: CheatCC.com

So the game actually begins when your character awakens aboard the Citadel space station where the TriOptimum doctors did the surgery, only to discover Citadel has been taken over by the artificial intelligence computer that ran the place before you went down for your surgery-induced nap. And now you have to fight, hack computers, navigate a primitive (compared to now) but ingenious form of 3D cyberspace, and survive your way through some grueling tasks and challenges until you can finally defeat the computer responsible for all the mayhem. Her name (the computer's) is SHODAN.

Well, Shamus Young took this basic idea and made a novel out of it. It sounds silly, since most video game adaptations (or "toy" adaptations in general; anybody see Battleship or the Transformers movie sequels?) come out poorly. Not so in this case. Young really has a sense of what makes System Shock such a good idea, and then he runs with it.

The cover of the original PC game, System Shock.  In the late '90s or early 2000s, a sequel, appropriately named System Shock 2, was released.  It was nearly as good as the original (some would argue better, but I am not of that camp).  Since then, the game's rights have been divided up and the chance of a true third sequel is pretty much null and void.  Some say Bioshock is a spiritual successor, but since I haven't actually played that, I couldn't say. / Source: Wikipedia.com

Not to spoil the story too much, but it is loosely based on the story line I have described above, but yet is different enough to keep even people who never played the game enthralled. The plot and pacing, especially in the first two-thirds of the book, are frantic and well-crafted. Even folks who have played the game will find themselves on the edge of their seats from time to time. This is because Young wrote the novel in a semi-serial format. He describes the whole process himself on the first page of the book's introduction, so I won't go through it completely, but basically the book was written over the period of some months, back around the turn of the millennium. I happened to be one of the readers who caught on to the story while it was in progress, and watched anxiously for the next part of the story on a weekly to monthly basis.

The book has been done for some time, and is freely available on Shamus Young's website (see the link). As it is based on a PC game that has been out of print for some time, and is unplayable on most modern systems (too much change between then and now, which is sad for those of us who like old games and wish they ran better without using work-arounds like DosBox and such), Free Radical is the closest most people will get to enjoying the phenomenon that was System Shock.

An actual screenshot from the first few moments of play of System Shock. The nice thing about this game was how immersive it was, for the time.  Young does a good job of capturing the excitement that you felt, playing this one. / Source: Wikipedia.com

Now I'd be lying if I said I thought the book was perfect. Free Radical goes like crazy through the first 2/3rds, but it starts to lag by the end. Don't get me wrong, the story stays good throughout, but it isn't as good by the conclusion. Then again, this may be personal bias. If you have played the game, you'll be a bit surprised by how the plot proceeds in the concluding acts. For me, the way Young ended it was both good, and a bit of a letdown too. It's different enough from the game's ending (and yes, I beat the game when I played it way back when - and all but ignored my then-girlfriend for almost two weeks straight while doing it) that it doesn't feel right to a purist such as myself.

But the ending is good, and it does take an interesting and rather believable direction. The game's ending is predictable: you beat the computer system, SHODAN, and go off to become the world's coolest hacker with the help of your new in-brain computer device. And getting there, you kill almost everything in sight and wade on through like a digital John Wayne crossed with John Rambo and a dash of Arnold Swartzenaegger thrown in. But the book takes this idea and turns it just enough to be both more "realistic" and also less satisfying to those of us who killed every last cyborg and mutant in our relentless quest to bring SHODAN to her electronic knees.

A piece of fan-art depicting the hacker facing off against SHODAN.  The only problem is that SHODAN is clearly female, and this image seems a bit more on the male side to me. / Source: Wikia.Nocookie.net

I can also say that the book seemed to lose track of itself a little bit when it passed a pivotal point, and spent a bit to much time going into the main character's backstory in the later parts of the book. It feels like the brakes get applied, and this after Young has really put on the adrenaline-pumping action with last-second escapes and harrowing battles with monsters and such for the first half. The switch hurts a bit. At least it did me. You may feel differently.

Well, even having said this, I can still wholeheartedly endorse Free Radical. It's a sci-fi techy action thriller, well written and executed with style (for the most part). And its free! The best part, some would say. Check it out, and enjoy.

 See what GoodReads says about Free Radical

Read the actual Shamus Young novel, Free Radical, here.


The parting comment:

As some advance warning, THIS VIDEO CONTAINS SOME PRETTY HARSH LANGUAGE AND SCATHINGLY SHARP/CRUDE HUMOR.  And yes, it is about System Shock's sequel, so it's not directly related to the previous review, but more sort of grandfathered in, so to speak.  On the other hand, "Yahtzee" Croshaw has an innate talent for hitting the nail on the proverbial head when it comes to video games, and despite the bluntness of his prose, I always get a kick out of his stuff.  If you don't mind adult language and such, then by all means, proceed.