Traitor to the Living

Rating:
Summary: Great idea, good story, terrible ending
Review: Society is transformed by a device that allows communication with the souls of the dead in this science fiction/detective thriller by Phil Farmer. The so-called "Medium" is putatively the invention of entrepreneur Raymond Western, who has become extremely wealthy by guarding the secret of Medium's design, and charging exorbitant prices for its unique services. There are many skeptics, of course, especially in the religious and scientific communities, and one of the leaders of the opposition is Gordon Carfax, a hard-boiled private detective-turned-history professor who, for reasons of his own, suspects that the forces contacted through Medium might be something other than what is advertised. He is contacted by a beautiful young woman who claims that her deceased father was the real inventor of Medium, and the two set off on a desperate attempt to find the truth about what Medium is and who really developed it, before Western's men can silence them.

Farmer balances this far-out plot (the unlikely technological development of after-death communication is only the beginning) with down-to-earth characters whose actions display a day-to-day ordinariness and sometimes gritty realism that lends some much needed credibility. The story features sufficient action and plenty of wild new revelations to keep up the reader's interest, and surely fans of Farmer and the sci-fi/detective sub-genre will have fun reading this suspenseful novel.

On the down side, the ending is bitterly disappointing, and pretty much ruined the book for this reviewer. While Farmer's conclusion leaves the reader with some things to think about, the book neatly avoids most of the theosophical issues that a writer like Heinlein, say, would have mined 24-carat gold from. Perhaps what Farmer needs to do is sit down and write a good sequel, picking up from this book's clever, portentous, but thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion, and bringing the story to the kind of resolution that readers of this book deserve. Until he does, this novel really doesn't quite merit a recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: Great idea, good story, terrible ending
Review: Society is transformed by a device that allows communication with the souls of the dead in this science fiction/detective thriller by Phil Farmer. The so-called "Medium" is putatively the invention of entrepreneur Raymond Western, who has become extremely wealthy by guarding the secret of Medium's design, and charging exorbitant prices for its unique services. There are many skeptics, of course, especially in the religious and scientific communities, and one of the leaders of the opposition is Gordon Carfax, a hard-boiled private detective-turned-history professor who, for reasons of his own, suspects that the forces contacted through Medium might be something other than what is advertised. He is contacted by a beautiful young woman who claims that her deceased father was the real inventor of Medium, and the two set off on a desperate attempt to find the truth about what Medium is and who really developed it, before Western's men can silence them.

Farmer balances this far-out plot (the unlikely technological development of after-death communication is only the beginning) with down-to-earth characters whose actions display a day-to-day ordinariness and sometimes gritty realism that lends some much needed credibility. The story features sufficient action and plenty of wild new revelations to keep up the reader's interest, and surely fans of Farmer and the sci-fi/detective sub-genre will have fun reading this suspenseful novel.

On the down side, the ending is bitterly disappointing, and pretty much ruined the book for this reviewer. While Farmer's conclusion leaves the reader with some things to think about, the book neatly avoids most of the theosophical issues that a writer like Heinlein, say, would have mined 24-carat gold from. Perhaps what Farmer needs to do is sit down and write a good sequel, picking up from this book's clever, portentous, but thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion, and bringing the story to the kind of resolution that readers of this book deserve. Until he does, this novel really doesn't quite merit a recommendation.