Radio Freefall

Rock and roll and old-school hard SF go together like peanut butter and jelly in Jarpe's debut novel. At 53, Aqualung is an old man on the rock scene, but his voice and the Machine, a device that uses low energy sound waves to tweak the emotions of the audience, have made the Snake Vendors an overnight sensation. Brilliant Web guru and computer architect Quin Taber is determined to discover the origins of the Digital Carnivore, an AI virus Taber calls “the Robin Hood of file-sharing daemons”; the Sheriff of Nottingham part is played by megalomaniacal Walter Cheeseman, head of the all-powerful information purveyor WebCense. When Quin learns that Aqualung is one of the Digital Carnivore's original designers, the rock star becomes a target. Running for his life, Aqualung finds sanctuary on the orbital space station Freefall, which becomes the front line in the battle between Cheeseman's forces and the independent-minded folks of Freefall and the moon colony Luna. Fans of Nirvana, Buddy Holly and Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress will gladly soak up the Spandex and Doc Martens atmosphere. (Aug.)