Tea From An Empty Cup

This was my first Pat Cadigan book, and although I know its a teeneager now (first published 1998) I enjoyed it so much I felt I had to say something.

It felt 'old school', and in the best way possible. Even the physical book, which is quite slim, made me nostalgic for the days when books didn't all come in trilogies and you could hold them in one hand without flirting with tennis elbow.

Conceptually, the book was right up there with the best of Gibson's cyberpunk, but - perhaps in keeping with the Japanese theme - some of the more philosophical discussion in the book reminded me of Masamune Shirow's 'Ghost in the Shell'

With the basic outline of the story involving two individual but linked investigations inside a virtual environment, there was an option for the virtuality to be either ridigly policed or anarchic, and I'm glad to say Pat chose the anarchy, and the 'Alice Down the Rabbit Hole' mutable logic and reason of the place comes over really vividly.

Nice to see more of Pat's eariler works seem to be about to re-release, and I will be looking out for 'Synners' eagerly