Synners is Pat Cadigan's second
novel. It was published in 1991. The novel won the Arthur C
Clarke Award in 1992, for the best science fiction novel of
1991. It is considered a true CyberPunk classic, by the elders.
Synopsis
The book plunges us into
a fast-moving, high-tech future -- exotic, exciting and very
dangerous. It's a world where new technology spawns new crime
even before it hits the streets. A world where computer viruses
appear all but human. A world of new drugs and even newer side-effects.
A world where the human mind and the external landscape have
fused to the point that reality is constantly being molded,
destroyed then re-created. And the greatest reality manipulators
of them all are the Synners...
Synners are synthesisers - not machines, but people. They take
images from the brains of performers and turn them into a form
which can be packaged, and sold, and consumed.
To be a Synner is to join the on-line hardcore, an outlaw band
of video hackers, simulation pirates, and reality synthesisers
- hot-wired socket-jockeys hooked on artificial reality and virtual
space. Now you can change yourself to suit the machines - jack
into cyberspace dreamworlds and leave the meat behind. All it
costs you is your freedom - and your humanity. But something new
is loose in the network, a wildfire virus with a mind of its own
that can crash the system and trash your brain. The Synners created
it. Now it's up to them to stop it.
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