Beautiful Red
4/5
()
About this ebook
The future is boring. Technology has solved the world's most pressing problems, leaving people with tedious work and mundane play. Jack is a Security Officer Class 5, which sounds important, but isn't. However, her banal life as a cubicle worker by day and tinkerer by night is interrupted when she discovers that her employer's computer system has been invaded.
Jack enlists the help of her only friends - her co-worker, Gilles and Adrian, an online friend she's never met - to help her track down the source of the invasion. Her investigation leads her to a shadowy group called the Red, where Jack learns that not everyone lives a life of quiet servitude.
Even though she believes that the Red are responsible for a series of gruesome attacks, Jack begins to become attracted to their worldview. In her search for the people responsible for the attacks, she confronts the leaders of the group as well as her own burgeoning sense of self-awareness.
M Darusha Wehm
M. DARUSHA WEHM is the Nebula Award-nominated and Sir Julius Vogel Award-winning author of the interactive fiction game The Martian Job, as well as the science fiction novels Beautiful Red, Children of Arkadia, The Voyage of the White Cloud, and the Andersson Dexter cyberpunk detective series. Their mainstream books include the Devi Jones’ Locker YA series and the humorous coming-of-age novel The Home for Wayward Parrots. Darusha’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in many venues, including Terraform and Nature. Originally from Canada, Darusha lives in Wellington, New Zealand after spending several years sailing the Pacific.
Read more from M Darusha Wehm
The Stars Beyond: A Twilight Imperium Anthology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHamlet, Prince of Robots Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Qubit Zirconium: A KeyForge Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5KeyForge: Tales From the Crucible: A KeyForge Anthology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Children of Arkadia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsModern Love and other stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Beautiful Red
Related ebooks
Clouds and Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eclipse 1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red Snow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One More Kill Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsshoreline of Infinity 23: Shoreline of Infinity science fiction magazine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDaughter of Mars Box Set: Daughter of Mars, #0 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVossoff and Nimmitz Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Searching for the Fleet: A Diving Novel: The Diving Series, #9 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pulp Literature Spring 2020: Issue 26 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBridge to Elsewhere Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRealms of Light Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBrain Thief Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Neodymium Exodus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Broken Land Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe House of Storms Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInterzone 239 Mar: Apr 2012 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuantum of Nightmares Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Resilient Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nethers: Frontiers of Hinterland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDoubt the Stars: Shakespeare In Space, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJunction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wonder City Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Zookeeper's Tales of Interstellar Oddities Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And The House Lights Dim Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEternals: The Unmaking of Heaven Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRanshio Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Interchange Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLightspeed Magazine, Issue 127 (December 2020): Lightspeed Magazine, #127 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Skyfall Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Science Fiction For You
The Silo Series Collection: Wool, Shift, Dust, and Silo Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wool: Book One of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Psalm for the Wild-Built Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Institute: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England: Secret Projects, #2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Troop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sarah J. Maas: Series Reading Order - with Summaries & Checklist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How High We Go in the Dark: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shift: Book Two of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm And 1984 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frankenstein: Original 1818 Uncensored Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Authority: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dust: Book Three of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Contact Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rendezvous with Rama Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5That Hideous Strength: (Space Trilogy, Book Three) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oona Out of Order: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Am Legend Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Beautiful Red
15 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It is a fast and fun read. It is very character driven, which is unusual and refreshing for the genre. The protagonist is driven by boredom and some vague sense of maybe getting somewhere in the world, which is realistic and atypical for sci-fi. You can relate to her, if not her world.As a mystery, the story plays fast and loose with incredible coincidences and sloppy guess work. The central mystery is shallow. If the connections were drawn in a different order, with different explanations it might have been more believable and intriguing. As it is, Jake sees relationships between isolated events that seem to incredible. There are no real red herrings or detective work. As sci-fi, it is half and half. I appreciate hard sci-fi, where the writer creates a plausible technology, or no-sci-fi, where the writer just accepts the technology with no explanation and little fanfare, because it is just available in their world. Like fiction writers don't explain television, it just is.Wehm jumps between incredible fantasy technology that is implausible (how does Jake's custom 3D UI know how to simulate the contents of a strangers mind and extrapolate her face) with no explanation, but will spend paragraphs explaining magnetic levitation.As an ending though, that was wonderful. It brought things to a very human level and I found it satisfying and a little unnerving.As a novel it was very enjoyable and the flaws were only mildly distracting. I would love to read more about Jake and her world.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A good book with likeable characters and a decent story plot. I felt it was sort of a mixture of the movies Strange Days, Total Recall, and Minority Report. The ending was not what I had expected it to be.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5If you like your sci-fi full of cyber-tech, intrigue, moral questions and just that slight touch of nihilism, then you should read Beautiful Red by M. Darusha Wehm. It is a well-written, well-crafted and engaging novel.It is the story of Jack, who works as a security officer in a world where corporations run the show and most human interaction takes place in a virtual environment. One day she stumbles on some anomalous security breaches which lead her into the path of a radical protest group that may be engaging in sinister and criminal activities.The author, M. Darusha Wehm, knows how to write credible characters and how to create a realistic, potential society. She shapes a complete civilization where you feel the characters could exist comfortably. As a reader I felt her postulated world could easily come in to existence as a possible future.I enjoyed Ms. Wehm’s point of view and her plot was both interesting and provocative. Many of the themes woven into the novel’s structure tackle compelling societal questions. I highly recommend this book.