====== Cyber Seed (quadrilogy) by Craig Falconer ====== ISBN: 9781482704396, 9781508599838, 9781522948063, 9781541201897\\ Amazon ID: [[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07ZKR5XG5|B07ZKR5XG5]] It's a quadrilogy: - [[Sycamore]] - The oh-so-inventively-named [[Sycamore 2]] - The slightly-more inventively-named [[Sycamore X]] - The less-again inventively-named [[Sycamore XL]] Leaving aside for a moment (or indeed for the entire series of books, since the presumed science and/or engineering behind this is never even discussed) the fact that we're dealing with devices which can transmit and receive high-resolution images wirelessly (and not just to/from a local network access point, this is outdoor cellular GSM capability) with no possible source of power (they're contact lenses which just sit in your eyes, and can be inserted / removed at least as trivially as standard contact lenses), the premise of the story is that some geek has come up with a way to implant a tiny chip (small enought to be injectable by syringe) into your hand, which then acts as a touchpad using the surface of your skin - again without any source of power, and also communicating wirelessly to the cellular GSM network. Provided you can suspend this much technical disbelief (and if you were happy with [[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00EODUWQ6|The Circle]], you'll be happy with this), the story is not bad. The characters develop pretty slowly, and there are no time warps in the storyline to cope with, so it's not a difficult story to get into (more like [[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06XTJ2DH8|Colony Mars]] or [[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0845W45HN|The Martian]] than [[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07R1Z64PB|Impossible Times]], which is an excellent, although rather convoluted, story, or (don't follow this link, you'll hate me for it) [[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002VHI8J0|Cloud Atlas]], which is just plain incomprehensible), and the books are nicely different from each other - it's not just as case of "oh, here's more of the story you've already been reading"; the second book takes off in (literally) a completely different direction from the first, and although it follows on well, it gives you a whole new situation to think about and get involved in. All in all the first two books tell quite a good story. The [[Sycamore X|third]] and [[Sycamore XL|fourth]] books in the quadrilogy are distinctly different. ---- [[.:|Go up]]\\ Return to [[:|main index]].