Rating: 
Summary: A Technological Ghost Story
Review: Dead Lines is a ghost story. Sometime in the near future, a new form of communications -- Trans -- has been developed. Using analog technology over an extremely broadband channel, it provides exceptionally clear sound and promises to allow an almost unlimited number of concurrent conversations without any crosstalk. The only drawback is that this medium is shared with the dead!Peter Russell was a producer of low budget softcore sexploitation films. He got out the business just as the hardcore stuff began to flood the market. Now he is an agent for Joseph Adrian Benoliel, a Hollywood investor and former business partner during his film producing days. In this novel, Peter receives a message stating that his best friend, Phil Richards, has died. Phil's ex-wife Lydia had left a note in the house and Carla Wyss, an old friend, had found the note and called Peter. The note said that Phil had died of a stroke or heart attack. Peter has an appointment with Joseph. After briefly returning home, he drives out to the Salammbo estate in Malibu. When he knocks on the door, a young man named Stanley Weinstein admits him and immediately offers him a Trans phone. After Peter concludes his business with Joseph, Weinstein walks out with Peter; he describes the communications service, offers Peter ten thousand dollars to convince Joseph to invest, and gives Peter the remaining phones in the box to hand out to others. Phil's memorial service will be held at his house in Tiburon. Peter had not been previously aware that Phil had a house in Marin county. After the memorial service, he goes looking for the Phil's old motor home that they had dreamed of using to travel around together on the World's Longest Old Farts Cross-country Hot Dog Escapade and Tour. From the amount of yellow police tape on vehicle and the fingerprint dust, Peter finally knows where Phil had died: behind the wheel of the motor home. Since Lydia had taken the five hundred he had received for running Joseph's errand, Peter is down to his last ten bucks. He calls Trans and discovers that they are located in the old San Andreas prison complex (which is being converted into an office park) and receives an invitation to come by the next day. There Peter gets a tour to the facility built into the old death row building as well as an advance on his commission. During his perambulations, Peter has been having strange experiences. In Peter's house, he sees a translucent image of Lydia having an emotional crisis. After sleeping in his car by the beach while waiting for his appointment with Trans, he is visited by a crystal clear vision of an old man and three children. Moreover, he has weird dreams. Peter learns that he has been seeing wraiths -- visualizations of the living -- and specters -- appearances of the dead -- and realizes that these visions and the dreams have occurred only when a Trans unit is near. He tries to gain more information from the company, but Weinstein denies any connection. However, the inventor of the device, Arpad Kreisler, is beginning to suspect otherwise. In this story, Peter is faced with the spiritual realm underlying ordinary reality. Trans is providing an interface with this realm which allows the dead to manifest in everyday life. Peter is probably the only one that can stop the intrusions. This story is being marketed as a mainstream novel, but it is really science fiction with a fantastic premise. As with Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction, the souls of the dead have come back to confront and possess the living. If Trans is not terminated, the whole world could be taken over by the dead. Highly recommended for Bear fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of supernatural presences in the ordinary world. -Arthur W. Jordin
Rating:
Summary: A Technological Ghost Story
Review: Dead Lines is a ghost story. Sometime in the near future, a new form of communications -- Trans -- has been developed. Using analog technology over an extremely broadband channel, it provides exceptionally clear sound and promises to allow an almost unlimited number of concurrent conversations without any crosstalk. The only drawback is that this medium is shared with the dead! Peter Russell was a producer of low budget softcore sexploitation films. He got out the business just as the hardcore stuff began to flood the market. Now he is an agent for Joseph Adrian Benoliel, a Hollywood investor and former business partner during his film producing days. In this novel, Peter receives a message stating that his best friend, Phil Richards, has died. Phil's ex-wife Lydia had left a note in the house and Carla Wyss, an old friend, had found the note and called Peter. The note said that Phil had died of a stroke or heart attack. Peter has an appointment with Joseph. After briefly returning home, he drives out to the Salammbo estate in Malibu. When he knocks on the door, a young man named Stanley Weinstein admits him and immediately offers him a Trans phone. After Peter concludes his business with Joseph, Weinstein walks out with Peter; he describes the communications service, offers Peter ten thousand dollars to convince Joseph to invest, and gives Peter the remaining phones in the box to hand out to others. Phil's memorial service will be held at his house in Tiburon. Peter had not been previously aware that Phil had a house in Marin county. After the memorial service, he goes looking for the Phil's old motor home that they had dreamed of using to travel around together on the World's Longest Old Farts Cross-country Hot Dog Escapade and Tour. From the amount of yellow police tape on vehicle and the fingerprint dust, Peter finally knows where Phil had died: behind the wheel of the motor home. Since Lydia had taken the five hundred he had received for running Joseph's errand, Peter is down to his last ten bucks. He calls Trans and discovers that they are located in the old San Andreas prison complex (which is being converted into an office park) and receives an invitation to come by the next day. There Peter gets a tour to the facility built into the old death row building as well as an advance on his commission. During his perambulations, Peter has been having strange experiences. In Peter's house, he sees a translucent image of Lydia having an emotional crisis. After sleeping in his car by the beach while waiting for his appointment with Trans, he is visited by a crystal clear vision of an old man and three children. Moreover, he has weird dreams. Peter learns that he has been seeing wraiths -- visualizations of the living -- and specters -- appearances of the dead -- and realizes that these visions and the dreams have occurred only when a Trans unit is near. He tries to gain more information from the company, but Weinstein denies any connection. However, the inventor of the device, Arpad Kreisler, is beginning to suspect otherwise. In this story, Peter is faced with the spiritual realm underlying ordinary reality. Trans is providing an interface with this realm which allows the dead to manifest in everyday life. Peter is probably the only one that can stop the intrusions. This story is being marketed as a mainstream novel, but it is really science fiction with a fantastic premise. As with Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction, the souls of the dead have come back to confront and possess the living. If Trans is not terminated, the whole world could be taken over by the dead. Highly recommended for Bear fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of supernatural presences in the ordinary world. -Arthur W. Jordin
Rating: 
Summary: Creepy near-future story of death and telecom
Review: From the moment his best friend dies, sexploitation filmmaker Peter Russell's life is changed. His mentor asks him to see a wise woman with a question about whether someone can continue without a soul--and Peter starts to see ghosts. A strange new telecommunications company offers to hire Peter to come up with an ad campaign for their service but he is so distracted by the ghosts and his friend's death that he has a hard time dealing with even his best job offer in years.
The ghost of his dead daughter is the final blow. Murdered two years earlier, Daniella suddenly appears to him, talks to him. Peter gradually learns that others are seeing the ghosts. Something has changed, the way that ghosts normally operate has been disrupted. And it's up to Peter to figure out how to put things right.
Author Greg Bear weaves a compelling story of a man's disintegration. Peter makes an interesting character with his history with women, the loss of his murdered daughter, his battle with alcohol, and his tangential relationship with reality. But even a disturbed man can see the truth and Peter is gradually forced to believe that the ghosts he sees are real--and are created by something under human control. But the ghosts are only part of the problem. Because a soulless body can be a danger to itself and everyone around it.
DEAD LINES is a creepy near-future SF story as fresh as the telecom meltdown headlines and with the type of atmosphere that will leave you thinking for days.
Rating: 
Summary: From Darwin's Radio to infernal cellphones
Review: I've been a Greg Bear fan from 'The Wind from a Burning Woman" right on up to "Darwin's Children." So I was eager to read this horror tale, described on the book jacket as "spine-tingling, provocative, and heart-wrenching." Unfortunately, the book is none of these. Rather, it's an uneasy mix - not blend - of modern technology and old-fashioned haunting, with a little possession thrown in on the side. There's even a murky hint of Stephen King's "The Langoliers" - the suggestion of supernatural entities cleaning up behind the scenes. It takes major suspension of disbelief to buy into the story's premise: new cellphone technology taps into a previously undiscovered source of energy which somehow involves the afterlife. Then Bear tries to tie together three story lines connected only by forced coincidence: the protagonist's chance involvement with the new technology; the recent murder of his daughter; and the dark past of his enigmatic employer. The result is unconvincing. Most importantly, the book just isn't scary. The characters never become fully realized people we care about. Though strange and frightening things happen to them, we're not involved enough to be scared for, or with, them. At one point, the protagonist, Peter Russell, fails to recognize a familiar person at a key moment in the story - a failure not believable by any stretch of the imagination. A real person would never have done this. Much as I'd like to, I can't recommend this book. For good horror, read Peter Straub or Owl Goingback. For quality Bear, read 'Darwin's Radio" and "Darwin's Children', or even his older works such as 'Blood Music." But stay away from this one.
Rating:
Summary: Big disappointment for this Greg Bear fan
Review: My recommendation is, don't waste your time or money. The best thing about this book was the dedication where Bear lists a number of very successful writers of fanatasy and horror that he (presumably) respects. I agree with lhis list -great (and scary) writers all. This was a run-of-the-mill ghost story (as in - "I see dead people") that had as its SF-like hook a new kind of communication device that accessed the Bell continuum, the same one that Bear used as the centerpiece of his tremendous novel, "Moving Mars". The novel is uncharacteristically (but perhaps mercifully) short, about 250 pages, there is little character development except for the protagonist, and the plot is very, very thin. The SF link is not developed, and there is no slowly developing feeling of horror and dread, or fear for the main character. He uses new phone, sees ghosts (so does everyone else), end of story. Who cares? How very boring and disappointing for a tremendously gifted writer who is one of my favorites.
Rating:
Summary: Big disappointment for this Greg Bear fan
Review: My recommendation is, don't waste your time or money. The best thing about this book was the dedication where Bear lists a number of very successful writers of fanatasy and horror that he (presumably) respects. I agree with lhis list -great (and scary) writers all. This was a run-of-the-mill ghost story (as in - "I see dead people") that had as its SF-like hook a new kind of communication device that accessed the Bell continuum, the same one that Bear used as the centerpiece of his tremendous novel, "Moving Mars". The novel is uncharacteristically (but perhaps mercifully) short, about 250 pages, there is little character development except for the protagonist, and the plot is very, very thin. The SF link is not developed, and there is no slowly developing feeling of horror and dread, or fear for the main character. He uses new phone, sees ghosts (so does everyone else), end of story. Who cares? How very boring and disappointing for a tremendously gifted writer who is one of my favorites.
Rating:
Summary: From Darwin's Radio to infernal cellphones
Review: Peter Russell's life turned out much different than he expected. He wanted to write books but instead made a living taking picture and making movies of naked people when the soft porn industry flat-lined. Now he is a little more than an errand boy for movie producer and real estate executive Joseph Benoliel, dependant on him for cash. A consortium is trying to get Joseph to invest in Trans, a wireless telephone that uses a broad bandwidth so that people can communicate with each other almost instantaneously. The people making the Trans are giving them away as a promotional gimmick and folks all over the world have one. The transponder that is heart of the Trans is located in the bowels of San Andrea Prison. The investors of the new means of communication didn't know that it interferes with the ghosts of the dead moving on. Earth is populated with ghosts and nobody knows how to get rid of them except Peter. Fans of Peter Straub and Stephen King will love this old fashioned ghost story. From the very beginning of DEAD LINES, there is a sense of foreboding and of anticipation as readers wait for events to reveal themselves. Some might think that the protagonist wasted his life but in reality he experienced life as few people can and accepts the consequences. Greg Bear has written a horror novel that has the audience keeping the lights on at night to keep the ghosts away. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: terrific old fashioned ghost story
Review: Peter Russell's life turned out much different than he expected. He wanted to write books but instead made a living taking picture and making movies of naked people when the soft porn industry flat-lined. Now he is a little more than an errand boy for movie producer and real estate executive Joseph Benoliel, dependant on him for cash. A consortium is trying to get Joseph to invest in Trans, a wireless telephone that uses a broad bandwidth so that people can communicate with each other almost instantaneously. The people making the Trans are giving them away as a promotional gimmick and folks all over the world have one. The transponder that is heart of the Trans is located in the bowels of San Andrea Prison. The investors of the new means of communication didn't know that it interferes with the ghosts of the dead moving on. Earth is populated with ghosts and nobody knows how to get rid of them except Peter. Fans of Peter Straub and Stephen King will love this old fashioned ghost story. From the very beginning of DEAD LINES, there is a sense of foreboding and of anticipation as readers wait for events to reveal themselves. Some might think that the protagonist wasted his life but in reality he experienced life as few people can and accepts the consequences. Greg Bear has written a horror novel that has the audience keeping the lights on at night to keep the ghosts away. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: 3 1/2 stars
Review: See storyline above. This came over as a disappointment. This somewhat short novel lacked believability as well as having characters I didn't much care for. Hopefully Greg Bear's next effort will be more like his previous novels.
Rating: 
Summary: Wait for a used copy of the paperback edition.
Review: The book is dreary and shallow and certainly not up to the level of his previous book about the living dealing with the dead: Psychlone. Additionally, this book gives no hint of how good Greg Bear can be, and was in Eon, Eternity, Blood Music, Moving Mars, The Forge of God, and Anvil of Stars. It was a waste of my time and money, though I've read everything Greg Bear has written and will continue to do so hoping for a return of the storytelling skill he showed in his early works. If this is your first exposure to Greg Bear and you were disappointed try one of the books mentioned previously. He was a good storyteller once but seems to have lost it lately.
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