On my trip to Paris I lost the book that my boss loaned me, On Intelligence. Not too bright, eh? It was written by Jeff Hawkins, the guy who invented the PalmPilot, and was all about his thoughts on how the mind worked. I read a good portion of it on the train into Philly, and my opinion is that he really hasn’t thought it through well enough yet. From what I read, there’s no proof that any of what he says is true.
So after I lost that book (I forgot to pick it up after I laid it down at the currency exchange counter), I bought a new book to wait out the time. A novel called Reflex by Stephen Gould. It wasn’t too bad.
Reflex is about a guy who has the power to teleport himself. He does some work for the NSA after they found him and basically threatened him into it. But what could they really do to him if he can teleport?
It turns out that for some reason he can’t teleport if he’s chained down. And his captors take advantage of this knowledge to keep him contained. Yes, he is kidnapped.
His wife spends every other chpater of the book trying to find him. I thought that the book might get dull after a bit because, after all, it seems that the interesting character - the one who can “jump” - is trapped, and the wife is just a mundane hunting for him. But it actually turns out to be quite the opposite. The chapters with the wife are interesting, and the chapters where he’s chained up and forced to do things by his captors are kind of dull.
Nevertheless, it’s interesting to think about the reprocussions of such an ability. If you could suddenly be anywhere you had ever been before, where would you go? Where would you try to get to so that you could go there again whenever you wanted?
One thing that annoyed me about the book the the constant sexual teasing. The author would keep hinting at some sexual tension, and then nothing would come of it. Even in the end, it’s unsatisfying.
Also, I would have preferred if some of the bad guys could have been redeemed. I kept thinking through the reading that some weren’t beyond redemption, alas this was not to be. Don’t worry - retribution in this novel is a bit more innovative than the typical death scene.
Plus, some of the pseudo-science was kind of neat. Usually I don’t like when books try to posture themselves like they know the future of technology, especially when it comes to technology that is so close to what is available today that you can tell they don’t know what they’re talking about. Reflex doesn’t come off that way, so much, which is a bonus. The description of the science behind the teleportation goes a long way toward explaining how certain things happen in the book. No, none of it is based in reality, but it’s less grating in terms of plausibility.
Anyway, if you get the opportunity to read it, do so. It’s a light read - it didn’t take me very long at all. I might consider picking up another book by this author.
