- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; paperback / softback edition (13 Dec 1984)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140073426
- ISBN-13: 978-0140073423
- Product Dimensions: 18 x 11.2 x 1.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,835,009 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Product Description
AT this very moment... a new entity is being born. Its cells are microprocessors, its soul lives in data banks from Wall Street to Red Square. It is neither good nor evil. But it is very dangerous. The Angra Oil Corporation thinks it is just another resource to be used up... "Coils" The story of a man and woman trapped in the battle between a soulless corporation and the soul of a new machine.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This has to be one of the cleverest ideas for a novel in ages. The idea, most likely Saberhagen's, centres on a series of ideas unseen in other science fiction when this book was published. The story centres on a man with the psychic power to "read" computers, much like a mind reader can enter the human mind. Our story, much as in Nine Princes in Amber, starts with the realization that he has no idea who he is. Thus we begin a roller-coaster ride that includes conspiracy theory, false memories and an international corporation's hit team composed entirely of people with ESP and other mental abilities. Not the best book in its genre, but certainly a ground breaker.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This thoughtfully illustrated little book will provide anyone with a fine day's entertainment. For Zelazny fans, it is something more - even a mediocre Zelazny is better than most writers' best. Fred Saberhagen's contribution was not so obvious to me, although no doubt it had to do with the "conscious computer" aspect of the plot.
The action moves right along from the start, in a version of the "Wait a minute - I don't know who I am!" scenario that appears in Edward Dmytryk's movie "Mirage", Heinlein's short story "The Strange Profession of Janathan Hoag", A.E. van Vogt's "The World of Null-A" and Desmond Bagley's fine thriller "The Tightrope Men".
Challenged by his new girlfriend Cora, Don BelPatri begins to wonder about his idyllic existence. Living in Florida, comfortably well off, enjoying life day to day, he has only vague recollections of his earlier life. But when he takes Cora to see his parents, he finds that he has never before seen the town he thought of as home. When he has himself examined by a psychologist, the man is found dead the very next morning. Then Don discovers that his mind can reach out and "see" the internal states of computers - and even change them.
The tension is built up skilfully as more and more of the truth is revealed, and Don finds himself up against formidable and ruthless enemies. Although his growing ability to control all kinds of electronic equipment gives him a huge advantage, in the end he needs all the help he can get from his friends - and even some of his enemies.
Don's ability to exercise direct mental control over computer circuitry remotely is a mixture of inspiration and naivete that only a handful of authors could pull off. "Coils" was published four years before William Gibson's first novel, "Neuromancer" appeared in 1986, but Alfred Bester had explored similar ideas in "The Computer Connection" (1973) and subsequent work. Bester's thinking seems to have paralleled Zelazny's, as can be seen from their later collaboration on "Psychoshop".
Zelazny was to take the theme much further, for instance in "24 Views of Mt Fuji, by Hokusai" (in "The Last Defender of Camelot") and his last, unfinished, novel, the magisterial "Donnerjack"...
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Excellent S-F intrigue
20 Jun 2001
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Having met a new love, Don decides, on an impulse, to return home and have her meet his family. Imagine his surprise when he realizes that he has never been to his hometown! Apparently his entire past has been implanted, and he is determined to discover the truth of his life.
What follows is a VERY well-written tale in a very classic style. He meets up with former associates who were happy with his amnesiac state. They of course object most strenuously to his recovering memory, and they try to arrest his progress in increasingly lethal degrees. Eventually they resort to kidnapping the only loved one Don has, and that is beyond tolerance.
This novel is not very long, taking just a couple hours to read, but there are moany things that the authors foresaw (in 1982) that have more or less come to be, like universal access to facilities like banking from any computer outlet (one of the minor such cases). He is aided by a very unique ability, the reason his associates fear him, that of a sort of machine telepathy. He is able to send his consciousness into any electronic device. This you can bet comes in very handy in such a technological (1994!) setting.
I have only recently begun tracking down all of Zelazny's books, this being the third I have read, and I consider this to be a great novel. There is good character advancement, well-written first-person perspective, and action without excessive gratuitous violence.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Good but not great Zelazny, with a dash of Saberhagen
13 Feb 2005
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This thoughtfully illustrated little book will provide anyone with a fine day's entertainment. For Zelazny fans, it is something more - even a mediocre Zelazny is better than most writers' best. Fred Saberhagen's contribution was not so obvious to me, although no doubt it had to do with the "conscious computer" aspect of the plot.
The action moves right along from the start, in a version of the "Wait a minute - I don't know who I am!" scenario that appears in Edward Dmytryk's movie "Mirage", Heinlein's short story "The Strange Profession of Jonathan Hoag", A.E. van Vogt's "The World of Null-A" and Desmond Bagley's fine thriller "The Tightrope Men".
Challenged by his new girlfriend Cora, Don BelPatri begins to wonder about his idyllic existence. Living in Florida, comfortably well off, enjoying life day to day, he has only vague recollections of his earlier life. But when he takes Cora to see his parents, he finds that he has never before seen the town he thought of as home. When he has himself examined by a psychologist, the man is found dead the very next morning. Then Don discovers that his mind can reach out and "see" the internal states of computers - and even change them.
The tension is built up skilfully as more and more of the truth is revealed, and Don finds himself up against formidable and ruthless enemies. Although his growing ability to control all kinds of electronic equipment gives him a huge advantage, in the end he needs all the help he can get from his friends - and even some of his enemies.
Don's ability to exercise direct mental control over computer circuitry remotely is a mixture of inspiration and naivete that only a handful of authors could pull off. "Coils" was published four years before William Gibson's first novel, "Neuromancer" appeared in 1986, but Alfred Bester had explored similar ideas in "The Computer Connection" (1973) and subsequent work. Bester's thinking seems to have paralleled Zelazny's, as can be seen from their later collaboration on "Psychoshop".
Zelazny was to take the theme much further, for instance in "24 Views of Mt Fuji, by Hokusai" (in "The Last Defender of Camelot") and his last, unfinished, novel, the magisterial "Donnerjack"...
The action moves right along from the start, in a version of the "Wait a minute - I don't know who I am!" scenario that appears in Edward Dmytryk's movie "Mirage", Heinlein's short story "The Strange Profession of Jonathan Hoag", A.E. van Vogt's "The World of Null-A" and Desmond Bagley's fine thriller "The Tightrope Men".
Challenged by his new girlfriend Cora, Don BelPatri begins to wonder about his idyllic existence. Living in Florida, comfortably well off, enjoying life day to day, he has only vague recollections of his earlier life. But when he takes Cora to see his parents, he finds that he has never before seen the town he thought of as home. When he has himself examined by a psychologist, the man is found dead the very next morning. Then Don discovers that his mind can reach out and "see" the internal states of computers - and even change them.
The tension is built up skilfully as more and more of the truth is revealed, and Don finds himself up against formidable and ruthless enemies. Although his growing ability to control all kinds of electronic equipment gives him a huge advantage, in the end he needs all the help he can get from his friends - and even some of his enemies.
Don's ability to exercise direct mental control over computer circuitry remotely is a mixture of inspiration and naivete that only a handful of authors could pull off. "Coils" was published four years before William Gibson's first novel, "Neuromancer" appeared in 1986, but Alfred Bester had explored similar ideas in "The Computer Connection" (1973) and subsequent work. Bester's thinking seems to have paralleled Zelazny's, as can be seen from their later collaboration on "Psychoshop".
Zelazny was to take the theme much further, for instance in "24 Views of Mt Fuji, by Hokusai" (in "The Last Defender of Camelot") and his last, unfinished, novel, the magisterial "Donnerjack"...
A science fiction thriller
10 Feb 2011
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The beginning of this 1982 novel seems familiar. Donald lives a carefree life. Money is transferred into his account every month. When he tries to remember why, he gets a headache, so he stops trying. Taking his girlfriend to see his childhood home, he discovers that the town in which he grew up isn't there ... or at least it isn't the town he remembers. When he sees a shrink to get help, the doctor dies. Then his girlfriend disappears. But thanks to the one session of hypnosis he experienced before the doctor's death, he starts to remember things ....
Missing memories, implanted memories, new life, flashbacks to a forgotten life ... it all sounds like a Ludlum novel. Yet Zelazny and Saberhagen give the story a unique twist. Donald BelPatri has the ability to interface with computers, mind to machine; thus the story gains its science-fictional aspect. This, too, seems like a familiar story, but remember that the novel was published in 1982, two years before William Gibson's "ground-breaking" Neuromancer. The notion of mind-computer interfacing was still fresh when Coils was written (in Coils, the interface is telepathic, as opposed to the wired interface contemplated by other writers, although Zelazny and Saberhagen provide a halfway plausible explanation for that ability toward the novel's end). The ability to move mentally within circuitry is an integral part of the novel, and it works well, providing an interesting framework for a novel that would otherwise be fairly ordinary.
Coils is one of the better examples of the marriage of a science fiction story to a thriller. The pace is relentless, the action scenes are vivid, yet the relationship between man and machine elevates the novel to a level of intellectual intrigue that many mainstream thrillers can't manage. The main characters are well conceived, although some of the minor characters (like a televangelist who happens to have telekinetic powers) are a bit stereotypical (well, except for the telekinetic powers). And while it was more fashionable to make an evil corporation the villain in 1982 than it is today (after Enron, Halliburton, and their ilk, the reality of the evil corporation has supplanted fiction), it makes for an engaging plot device. The storytelling is smart but straightforward, making Coils an easy, entertaining read. A solid 4 stars for Coils.
Missing memories, implanted memories, new life, flashbacks to a forgotten life ... it all sounds like a Ludlum novel. Yet Zelazny and Saberhagen give the story a unique twist. Donald BelPatri has the ability to interface with computers, mind to machine; thus the story gains its science-fictional aspect. This, too, seems like a familiar story, but remember that the novel was published in 1982, two years before William Gibson's "ground-breaking" Neuromancer. The notion of mind-computer interfacing was still fresh when Coils was written (in Coils, the interface is telepathic, as opposed to the wired interface contemplated by other writers, although Zelazny and Saberhagen provide a halfway plausible explanation for that ability toward the novel's end). The ability to move mentally within circuitry is an integral part of the novel, and it works well, providing an interesting framework for a novel that would otherwise be fairly ordinary.
Coils is one of the better examples of the marriage of a science fiction story to a thriller. The pace is relentless, the action scenes are vivid, yet the relationship between man and machine elevates the novel to a level of intellectual intrigue that many mainstream thrillers can't manage. The main characters are well conceived, although some of the minor characters (like a televangelist who happens to have telekinetic powers) are a bit stereotypical (well, except for the telekinetic powers). And while it was more fashionable to make an evil corporation the villain in 1982 than it is today (after Enron, Halliburton, and their ilk, the reality of the evil corporation has supplanted fiction), it makes for an engaging plot device. The storytelling is smart but straightforward, making Coils an easy, entertaining read. A solid 4 stars for Coils.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
