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Mindplayers (Gollancz SF collectors' editions)
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Product Description
Product Description
Allie Haas only did it for a dare - the kind of dare you know is a mistake but you do it anyway because it's Mistake Yime. But putting on the madcap that Jerry Wirerammer has 'borrowed' was a very big mistake. The psychosis itself was quite conventional, a few paranoid delusions, but it didn't go away when she took the madcap off. Jerry did the decent thing and left her at an emergency room for dry-cleaning but then the Brain Police took over. Straightened out by a professional mindplayer, Allie thinks she's left mind games behind for good but then comes the fazer: she can either go to jail as mind criminal or she can train as a mindplayer herself...
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Author
First novel by Pat Cadigan, "Queen of Cyberpunk".
Pat Cadigan's first novel was Mindplayers, published in November 1987 by Bantam Spectra in the United States, and by Gollancz in the United Kingdom.
Pat Cadigan's first novel was Mindplayers, published in November 1987 by Bantam Spectra in the United States, and by Gollancz in the United Kingdom.
Mindplayers are tomorrow's psychoanlaysts, linked directly to their patients using sophisticated machinery attached to the optic nerve. In one-to-one Mindplay contact, you can be inside someone else's head, wandering the landscapes of their consciousness. Allie is a sensation-seeking young woman, obtaining illicit thrills from her shady friend Jerry Wirerammer. But Allie goes badly astray when Jerry suplies her with a "madcap" - a device that lets you temporarily and harmlessly experience psychosis. There's something wrong with Jerry's madcap, and the psychosis doesn't go away when it's disconnected. Allie ends up undergoing treatment at a "dry-cleaner", and she is faced with a stark choice - jail, for her illegal use of the madcap; or training to become a Mindplayer herself.
During training Allie becomes familiar with the Pool - a cohesive, though shifting mental landscape jointly constructed by a number of minds; and more disturbingly encounters McFloy, who has been mind-wiped, so that his adult body is inhabited by a mind only two hours old. And as a fully-fledged Mindplayer Allie has to choose between the many specialist options open to her - Reality Affixing or Pathsofinding; Thrillseeking or Dreamfeeding...
Mindplayers is a remarakably accomplished first novel, from an author who had already established a formidable reputation for her short stories. Written in a hard-edged modern style which will appeal to readers of William Gibson, Mindplayers "does a terrific job describing the interior landscapes of the minds we visit ... rich and imaginative"(Locus).
"Excellent stuff, perceptive, imaginative, subtle and penetrating. A pleasure to read, and a writer to admire" Analog
"Cadigan's novel is an energetic, intriguing, darkly humorous head-trip extravaganza" Fantasy Review
Mindplayers is being published by Gollancz in its classic yellow-jacket format, as a "C format" (trade) paperback. It has been unavailable for some years.
Mindplayers was Pat Cadigan's first novel. She went on to write Synners and Fools (both of which won the Arthur C Clarke Award for best science fiction novel of the year in the UK). She followed these novels with Tea from an Empty Cup (1998), and has a new novel from Macmillan entitled Dervish is Digital, due in October 2000.
Pat Cadigan is also the author of many short stories, some of which have been collected in Patterns, Dirty Work and Home by the Sea.
Pat lives and works in London. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This medium-sized 'sci-fi implosion' novel could give you a bit of a head-ache. But it will be a worthwhile one. It comments on our present, shared reality, through the wary portrayal of a different one. I had read 'Tea from an Empty Cup' and was expecting another wry Cadigan 'glimpse with insights' into a more credible VR future, where young kids and cyberpunks mess around with technology and come up gasping....and where negative aspects of technology (abuse?) are encountered and (if somewhat slightly) dramatised....I was aware of her weaknesses with this other book; that she sacrfices truly involving/unsettling story-telling with a reliance on a cynical observational style which also thins her other characters....Although, this she counters with some great ideas and unexpected surprises (two more vital ingredients for sci-fi?)....plus clever humour, weaned from the exclusive use of such a style.
Well, I was right and wrong with Mindplayers. It is her usual tone; a smartass narrator that enables her to be world-weary towards advanced technology that is threatening our precious ideas about personal identity and humanity, and is full of addictive undertones and dependencies (proper, relevant sci-fiction and 'Cyberpunk'). For 1987, this automatically makes it interesting and ensures it an important, accessible (and more realistic than others) position in the canon....But what was really impressive was the way, in Mindplayers, she actually side-steps technology by using the conceit of hooking up mind to mind, and presenting a new future where this form of telepathy (albeit machine-enabled) is changing things. She is thus free in the book, to focus her attentions on the freedom of being perfectly lucid in other people's mental lives, and showing off her clearly knowledgable understanding of psychology.....Cadigan then achieves this thoroughly, convincingly and entertainingly.... She therefore explores virtual reality but in an intimate and psychological way, with warnings and suggestions about our identities and realities, and the way they are influenced and shaped. Her character is someone who is attempting to directly heal other people's internal lives or psychoses, although carrying the weight of her own, and this produces interesting results with relevance for how actual psychologists attempt this. Her well-honed use of a 'deadpan', emotionless tone becomes highly suited, but can still occasionally do little justice to some of the ideas, that become revelations more to herself as a writer than to us as readers. Much less so however in this work.
Ultimately, we are shown the dangers of influence, of identities altered for survival, of too much dependence on others eroding our own identity...and this is the strength of the book, along with other sci-fi assets, such as good background features and settings such as the Park and the concept of 'reality affixing', and such as mindplaying with a dead mind. This latter case is one of the more scary warnings of the imagined technology allowing for such a strong level of intrusion.
Revelations come through experiences, and those shown to us in this book, and in the rather quick crescendo at the end, which leaves us strongly reminded about the difference between reality and our 'state of existence'. The book resonates as its own mental experience, and is highly stimulating and great for meditation, for assisting us in imagining the reality - or future - it portrays. And it's a very possible future, although perhaps more indirectly.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
12 reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Cutting edge cyberpunk, 20 years ahead of its time.
26 Sep 2000
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This is Pat Cadigan's first novel, featuring Deadpan Allie (love that pun! - rock on, Cadigan). Cadigan had developed the character in stories written in the eighties. The book was published in 1987.
Seen the film The Cell, where Jennifer Lopez is inside the head of a psycho? Well, Cadigan got there over 20 years ago with Deadpan Allie, who goes into the heads of various people with some pretty crazy things going on in there, and tries to heal them.
Cadigan does a great job of knitting together the stories she wrote earlier in the eighties about Allie, and giving the whole novel a structure and an overall story arc. Allie is another of those street-smart, tough and funny women characters that Cadigan does better than anyone else. If you ran into her 'tec, Dore Konstantin in Tea from an Emtpy Cup, you'll know what I'm talking about.
This book has been out of print for quite a while, and this new trade paperback edition from Gollancz is a nice looking piece of work. It's great to see the book back in the bookstores, and I for one will be going out to replace my battered and well-read Bantam paperback copy with one of these nice yellow-jacket jobs.
Pat Cadigan is right up there with William Gibson and Bruce Sterling among the founders of cyberpunk. Is cyberpunk dead? No way! Read Mindplayers and find out how alive and kicking it is.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Excellent reading!
15 Mar 2002
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Pat Cadigan's MindPlayers was one of the first "sci-fi" books I read, and I fell in love with it. All the characters have their own unique quirks and personality traits, but my favorite two characters were the twins, Dolby and Dolan. Each time I read Mindplayers, I find something that I missed the last time I read the book. The creative aspects of the characters is the best part of the story. It is noteworthy that almost every character within the book has an altered appearance; no one seems to be as they were at birth. Onionheads are especially interesting, although they get only a mention. Pat Cadigan has had to endure television and movie ripoffs of some of the details within Mindplayers, but this book remains a classic and the first of its kind.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Pat Cadigan is Awesome
28 July 2004
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Mindplayers is one of the best books I have ever read, sci-fi or otherwise. Pat Cadigan has a brilliant imagination. She tries her best to keep up with it. Her writing is a bit haphazard, but very good overall. Mindplayers is set in the future, where Mindplay has changed society for better or worse. Differing degrees of Mindplay require professionals to assist those engaging in it. One of these professionals is Deadpan Allie (love that play on words). Allie is a former layabout who has been recruited to become a professional Mindplayer. The strange characters she meets and weird situations she is in mesmerize the reader. There is also a lot of philosophy for the reader to chew on.
Recommended for sci-fi/fantasy fans. No graphic sex or violence. I also recommend Dervish is Digital, another sci-fi treasure by Cadigan.
Recommended for sci-fi/fantasy fans. No graphic sex or violence. I also recommend Dervish is Digital, another sci-fi treasure by Cadigan.
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