Paintwork
By Tim Maughan
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
“In our hothouse present, where technology is little more than vapour, Tim Maughan catches those fleeting moments of possibility in stories that ought to have no shelf-life whatsoever – and which, regardless, linger in the mind. I don’t know how he does this. I don’t know whether he is very naive, or very clever. One thing I do know: these stories are very, very good.” – Simon Ings, author of Hot Head, The Weight of Numbers and Dead Water.
“Hip, cutting-edge cyberpunk with a techno rave attitude. Tim Maughan is definitely a writer to watch.” - Gareth L. Powell, author of The Recollection.
Augmented reality street artist 3Cube wants to break into the mainstream, and as one of the best in the graffiti mecca of Bristol he stands a real chance. Except that someone, some unseen rival, seems set on using even the most old-fashioned of methods to stop him from succeeding.
John Smith was successful once, if only for a fleeting moment. Now the documentary film maker is broke and jobless, and finds himself putting his life on the line as one of the new-breed of paparazzi - snapping celebrity video gamers in virtual worlds.
And on the sun-bleached streets of Havana two young Cubans find themselves locked in a fierce struggle with one of the world's most powerful organisations, as a seemingly innocent video game tournament becomes a fight for both personal and national pride.
Augmented reality, celebrity gamers and global rivalries - Paintwork is a collection of three stories from our imminent future by British science fiction author Tim Maughan, including the 2010 BSFA Short Fiction Award nominated 'Havana Augmented'.
About the Author
Tim Maughan lives in Bristol in the South West of England, and when he's not writing science fiction he writes about Japanese animation and comics for websites like Anime News Network and Tor. He also daydreams about being a techno DJ and spends far too much time on Twitter.
Tim Maughan
Tim Maughan is an author, a journalist, and a features writer who uses both fiction and nonfiction to explore issues around cities, class, culture, globalization, technology, and the future. His work regularly appears on the BBC and in Vice and New Scientist.
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Reviews for Paintwork
15 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Set in a tantalizingly attainable urban world of the near-future, the three somewhat related stories in Tim Maughan's Paintwork shimmer with the retinally-rendered pixels of a less dystopian cyberpunk.
And yes, I did say "tantalizing" -- to read "Paintwork" and "Paparazzi" and "Havana Augmented" is to all but ache to play the games,* see the sights, watch the action (especially, if one has predilections like mine, that of the robotic beetles who generate and maintain billboard QR codes by secreting weirdly indelible nano-pigments "in both colors", ink-jet style. I mean, who wouldn't want to watch that?), hang out with the graffiti writers, pro gamer stalkers and digital-culture heroes of Maughan's world.
"Paintwork" is a sci-fi/mystery genre mash of a tale of an Augmented Reality graffiti writer of rising reputation who is fending off a weird series of attacks on his work, attacks that don't obliterate it (just hours after it goes up) so much as riff on it in a viciously warped way. As an introduction to a world of Google glass-esque experiences of "consensual hallucination" that turn ordinary urban landscapes into overwhelming three-dimensional marketing sense-bombs, it's first rate. 3Cube isn't just a guy with a spray can in the night; he's a guy with a spray can and a QR code stencil that hijacks dumb marketing art and turns it into stunningly detailed pop art with lessons about his city's past and its potential. However one may feel about graffiti and street culture, a reader is likely to share his puzzlement and outrage when he discovers someone else is hijacking his hijacking.
In "Paparazzi" a post-post-postmodern filmmaker who specializes in turning hours and hours of recordings of immersive in-game experience into memorable and usually critical documentaries is seduced into trying his hand at celebrity stalking. A world-famous professional gamer is beta testing new content for the world's most popular MMORPG; John Smith's mission is to infiltrate the playtest sessions and catch in-game footage of the master at "work." Maughan has here not only imagined a highly plausible new artform for a new fully-immersive digital age, but has already imagined a way its finest practitioners can be induced to whore out their talent.
And in "Havana Augmented" two young residents of the world's last Communist regime find themselves at the forefront of Cuba's half-assed attempts at developing its economy beyond that of a tourist haven, via exploiting the pair's intricate and exciting hack of yet another popular game. Our heroes, pretty much cut off from global gaming culture by their country's policies and firewalls, have nonetheless managed to take a run-of-the-mill giant robot battling game and scale it up and make it mobile, the better turn it loose on the streets of the capital city. When word leaks out on how these guys and their friends are duking it out, mecha-style, in the actual virtual streets of Havana, corporate/gaming culture comes calling, and Cuba welcomes its promise of economic development -- though the government is ignorant of what these powers will do to Havana's virtual landscape and thus to its newly "spex" toting citizenry. Hard to indoctrinate people to hate the free markets of global capitalism when they're busy admiring the latest city-dominating Coca Cola ad via their augmented reality glasses. The resulting conflict finally and more effectively than I've ever seen realizes the idea that video games can be more than just video games. Take that, Last Starfighter.
Author Tim Maughan is also a quality follow on Twitter, funny, urbane and an entertaining speculator on where our technology is taking us. He is thus definitely someone to watch, if this debut book is any indicator. And I think it is.
Just the right mix of thought-provoking and fun.
*And this coming from someone who sucks at video games and who avoids MMORPGs like the time-stealing plague. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I’m coming to this a bit late, but I only have an ebook copy and I’m still not quite comfortable reading ebooks. All the same, I took my Nook with me on a business trip to the South Coast as I’ve been reading an ebook of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden on and off for a couple of months, but I read Paintwork instead. ‘Havana Augmented’ I thought the best of the three in the collection, with its VR mecha combat on the streets of Havana, but all are good near-future sf of a type that few people seem to be writing at the moment.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/53 long short stories or short novellas set in the near future – Paintwork, Paparazzi & Havana Augmented 2 of these stories are set in Bristol and the third in Havana. In the first we follow 3Cube the street artist as he performs some art over 3 consecutive nights, the second story follows John Smith as he is hired for his documentary film skills to get an inside look on a new AR game and the last is the prize winning look into the future gaming industry in Cuba with giant virtual battling robots. Although the stories are different they’re somewhat linked stylistically, thematically (dedication to art) and with some recurring characters. We are in a future of brand domination, where gamer guilds are as powerful (if not more so) as the corporations of today, where augmented reality is viewed through branded “spex”, where the Nano revolution has occurred. Maughan covers all the techno with aplomb and uses it with a light touch with just enough explanation to bring you into the stories which are at heart about people. It’s hard to choose a favourite here as each story stands alone. As a Bristolian I feel more connection with the first two stories although as a gamer I liked the last story a lot too.Overall - This is cool SF with Maughan taking our current world and spinning it faster to see what happens. Highly recommended to those who like [moxyland]