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Flash | 
| Manufacturer: Tor Books
Category: EBooks
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $5.69
You Save: $20.26 (78%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 32560
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 480
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
Publication Date: September 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Return to the future of Archform: Beauty. In the twenty-fourth century, Earth is vastly changed. Ecological and biological catastrophe have raged across the planet, but for the survivors, it is a world of plenty. Even the poorest live in abundance, and the upper class -- the ascendant -- command technological marvels.Ten years ago, Jonat deVrai was a rising star in the Marines. But he shocked his superiors by walking away from the Corps after witnessing atrocity and hypocrisy during the Reclamation of Guyana. Starting his life over, he established himself as the world's expert on the effectiveness of "prod"-- product placement, the only advertising which viewers will allow through the sophisticated filters they all use against unwanted intrusions on their electronic link networks. Prod, reinforced with sublims and the "res" -- resonant frequencies, a form of sonic branding -- is the wave of the future.Jonat now advises multinational corporations on their prod campaigns, his busy life only occasionally disturbed by vivid flashbacks to his military years. Then his comfortable world is upset when the Centre for Societal Research approaches him to study the effects of res and prod on political campaigns.After a res-heavy political rally for Laborite Republican Senatorial candidate Juan Carlismo, armed thugs jump deVrai in a parking garage. A day later, a sniper ambushes him. What looked like a safe, lucrative contract has suddenly turned dangerous. The stakes raise further when deVrai foils a remote-controlled cydroid assassination attempt on a Popular Democrat candidate. Cydroids built from deVrai's stolen DNA are turning up dead throughout NorAm.Suspicion and conspiracy race around Jonat. Who wants him dead? Candidate Juan Carlismo's use of prod is skirting the limits of legality. The Centre has its own obscure agenda and may want deVrai as a martyr. The terrorist group PAMD is targeting ascendents in deVrai's family. And one of his clients is known for holding legendary grudges - could he have gone over the edge?With his life on the line, deVrai must sort flash from fact before it's too late. Flash is a blend of all-out thriller and thoughtful social, political, and technological exploration that that gets into your mind in a way even res and prod could never match.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Tedious Dullness August 14, 2008
Borrring.
It almost got good a couple of times, but that quickly passed as we got back to the mundane life of answering the phone and writing a report.
 Pretty good for a free book July 14, 2008
I got this book on Kindle during a for free promotion. It was better than I expected and I am likely to try some other books by this author.
Opposing the Power Structure June 18, 2007
23 out of 25 found this review helpful
Flash (2004) is a standalone novel in the Archform: Beauty universe. In the twenty-fourth century, the ecology has collapsed and the population has been greatly reduced. The political environment has also changed, with the whole of North America united as one country.
In this novel, Jonat Charls deVrai is a former Marine Lieutenant Colonel who resigned because of his objections to the influence of multinational corporations on military operations. On several occasions, his men had died due to such influence and he just could not stand it any more. His resignation was accepted only with great reluctance.
DeVrai still has his enhancements due to an oversight during his outprocessing. He runs regularly and performs a limited set of combat-style exercises. He tries to keep himself as fit as possible, but he probably isn't as good as he was during his active duty days.
DeVrai is now a consultant in Denv -- the national capital -- doing product placement analysis for his industrial clients. Entertainment media has greatly changed due to the development of effective filtering algorithms. Advertising material is blocked or shunted aside. Now sponsors use embedded products and proprietary theme music -- including subliminals and resonance frequencies -- to sell their products.
Since there are not any direct relationships between prod placement and sales figures, effectiveness of specific campaigns cannot be readily determined. The algorithms he has designed, however, provide fairly accurate approximations. According to his clients, no other media analyst provides better correlations.
Then one day, Reya Decostas of PowerSwift recommends his services to the Centre for Societal Research. When deVrai links to the Centre, Executive Director Tan Uy-Smythe offers him an unspecified academic project, but asks him to personally sign a confidentiality agreement before discussing the study details. The project turns out to be a comparative study of the effectiveness of several political campaigns.
After digging deeper into the material provided by the Centre and viewing additional data on the worldlink, deVrai begins to see a pattern. In two cases -- the Senate campaign of Juan Carlismo in the west Tejas district and the House race of Helen Kagnar in Fargo within the Dakota subdistrict -- the candidates are making significant usage of the marketing techniques used by his industrial clients.
National laws strictly limit the funding and advertising techniques of election campaigns. Obviously these new techniques are legal only because no one has yet noticed their effectiveness in political races. Someone must want him to excite public awareness of these techniques and thus generate new laws forbidding them.
In this story, deVrai finds himself opposing the Pan-Social Trust, a power group that includes many multinational corporations. The PST is using his study for the Centre to manipulate North American politics. DeVrai later learns that PST has a great deal of influence in military operations and in the administration of space colonies.
DeVrai also finds himself targeted by someone in the prod placement business. He submits a report to a client that recommends against the use of prod placing for their product and soon afterward a sniper takes a shot at him. Searching the worldlink, he finds that the man behind the prod placement offer -- Abe Vorhees -- has been asssociated with several deaths, including one resulting from a sniper attack, but the Privacy Laws blank out all details.
DeVrai finds himself under attack by enemies high and low. As a true hero, deVrai outmaneuvers and outwits his opponents and trades blow for blow. Although he worries about doing the right thing, he is the type of officer who leads from the front rather than staying in the rear area and issuing orders. Some of the bad guys end up very dead.
This story tells of the close relationships between deVrai and his sister's family, especially with his niece Charis. Aliora accuses him of spoiling her daughter, but Jonat claims that is the function and privilege of uncles. His brother-in-law Dierk always enforces any necessary restrictions on Claris, yet still defends Jonat's behavior. After all, every girl needs someone to manipulate. Naturally, even Jonat sets certain limits on Claris.
This story also introduces Central Four, a system intelligence who is incapable of using the first person singular pronoun, but still has a mind of its own. To deVrai, it definitely seems to be feminine and later he uses the name Minerva for her. DeVrai comes to know one Central Four agent -- Paula Athene -- very well.
The space colonies are an important, but seldom shown, background in this story. The relationship between Earth and these colonies is very common in both history and SF, with the colonies being exploited by rich companies from the mother country. Even the US had economic colonies in Latin America where the Marines were sent to protect the exploiting companies. And the similarities with The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress are very obvious.
The title of this novel refers to false appearances, particularly alternative forms of humanity: clones, cydroids and servie units. Clones, of course, are copies of human beings, but can be based on modified genetic material and induced personas. Cydroids are basically clones with cybernetic minds; that is, implants that direct their behavior. Servie units are programmed personas that are superimposed on existing human minds. All these forms have limited mental freedom at first, but are capable of learning.
Highly recommended for Modesitt fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of political intrigue, covert operations and close relationships.
-Arthur W. Jordin
Sweet Cyberpunk January 18, 2007
Long periods of what can only be described as real life, punctuated by moments of violence that are, to most of us, unreal, made this book for me.
What I thought was a bit stilted and slow at first rapidly developed into a storyline that I could not put down. From increased media intrusion, to far more user-friendly computers, to AIs with attitude, this book covered the "is the future better or worse" spectrum. Along the way there are some ideas about the nature of sentience and tech that are echos of William Gibson's work. Add to that the specter of sudden parental responsibility, major conspiracy among MultiCorp and the main character has more than he needs to deal with.
The stlye is a bit wooden, but once I was into the flow of the work, I saw that as the way that we all describe our lives to ourselves. I really enjoyed reading this, as I have much of Modesitt's works.
Reads like a diary September 30, 2005
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
In this tome, Modesitt demonstrates a real talent for putting words down on the page without advancing the plot one whit. The story's OK, when it's moving, but in the meantime we get so much detail about the protagonist's workday at his consulting practice that we could easily write his invoices for him. Do we really need to know about every single time the character gets up to make a pot of tea, or what he had for lunch and what he thought about the quality of the food?
If Modesitt had cut out half the pages, this book would've been a solid 80's-style cyberpunk yarn. As it stands, perhaps he should've gone for stylistic novelty by presenting the novel as a LiveJournal circa 2100, since that's what the content basically amounts to.
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