The Atopia Chronicles (Atopia, 1) Paperback – January 7, 2014

It’s hard to imagine a world like Atopia which at first seems idyllic but under the surface so many warring ideas and desires are at play twisting things to get their own way until the shock of who wins.

This is the kind of book that will appeal to many but I found it a struggle to reach the end.1. While there were some interesting technical concepts, they weren't developed or sourced well. The technology could have been an interesting basis for exposition and/or fictional tech history. But it all ended up being hidden in a blizzard of buzzwords and 'explained' as the lifework of one of the main characters. She knew Turing!The most jarring thing about the tech angle, though, is the implicit assumption that the human brain is sense-starved. That is, if you could only provide it with more inputs then it could process them all concurrently and the person could virtually be in many places at once. But many people I know seem to have their hands full dealing with a single conversation at a time.Who else has noticed that most people prefer to hear rather than read and to speak rather than write? Hearing & speech are both slower than reading & writing. So it's hard for me to buy the idea that people in general have all the idle brain cycles needed to support multiple points of view.Still, it's an interesting idea. Possible to some, maybe.(Update: See the author's comment to this review for how the tech in Atopia would work.)(Update 2: Author's comment deleted. Oh well.)2. Likewise for using an artificial island with libertarian founders as the social setting. I have the impression the author just picked the idea of an Offshore Libertarian island because it's been in the pop culture recently. As you read the story, there's no sense of a loose, self-organizing libertarian society (as other authors have developed so well).Instead, there's an oligarchy governing this so-called libertarian society, an oligarchy founded by one corporation. This set up comes across as really more of a Corporatist government. I don't know many libertarians who'd be interested in living on an island governed by a Security Council -- no matter how cutting edge the tech is or how bad conditions are elsewhere.Atopia is also described as a rich man's retreat and that part *is* believable. But being a wealthy capitalist doesn't necessarily make you a libertarian. And having members of the oligarchy arrange sweet deals for their relatives isn't libertarian at all; that's Big Brother, brother.3. Beware of authors who tell you there'll be a rabbit coming out of the hat at the end. (Like a good magician, a good author won't mention it at all. S/he'll surprise you with the rabbit.) At the start of this book, Mather says he's going to start with individual stories and weave them together by the end. That can be a very interesting approach; I've seen it done well and enjoyed it. It's not done well in Atopia.Some good groundwork for this approach was laid but then was never developed. For example, the book opens with Olympia's self-exile-by-narcissism. There's an interesting possible consequence of virtual reality, eh? But it was summarized, way at the very end, in half a sentence as something that had been done to her, not as something she'd done to herself. Wait... what?4. I found the dialog and description very repetitive. And the character development, by and large, was unconvincing. Two of the characters had stories I found credible and interesting but the majority of them seemed like just so many decorations on High-Tech, Libertarian Island. Worse, much of the dialog seemed like it came from episodes of The Brady Bunch.5. The plot's pace was glacial. This is a moderately long book with, basically, two Global Events (affecting all characters). And there were only half-a-dozen personal threads to the plot. The plot development crawled because of the unnecessary dialog (those buzzword blizzards again) and from having different characters tell you the same story. It wasn't the same story from their POV; it was just basically the same story, only with (maybe) a little more detail this time.6. Finally - editing. The text editing in this book wasn't bad; better than usual, in fact. (Although reading "something happened to Jones and I" sets my teeth on edge.)But a good editor would have worked the story line over. If you cut this book by at least a third, it would be much more engaging and maybe even fun to read. So am I contradicting myself? I want more technical explanation but I want the book to be shorter too? Well, I'd be happy with the current length of the book if there were more tech details; but without those details I think it should be shorter.To sum up, there were a lot of interesting ideas in this book. In fact, I think there were too many and that Mather would have done better to pick one and develop it fully, rather than attempt to write an Epic Story incorporating them all.

The last time I felt awed in that way was when I read Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen for the first time. The Atopia Chronicles is not just a good book, it's not even just an excellent book. Every sentence is a big sentence. Every idea is an important, seminal idea. It's science fiction at its best, with something of Ghost in the Shell, only clearer to understand. Technology is at the core of Matthew Mather's work, and he manages to envision evolutions (in communications, business, video games, social networks, information, medicine,...) that are both amazing and totally imaginable. But it is only a starting point to go much further and explore many facets of human behaviour. Each book offers a new and fresh point of view, like some kind of variation on the same theme, to better understand what Life with a capital L is about. This book is deeply philosophical and metaphysical, as it deals with the meaning of Life, escapism, estrangement and alienation, existentialism and absurdism.Escapism is what humans have always craved and feared at the same time. This very book is a form of escapism, after all... We've always coped with reality thanks to fiction, stories, entertainment, sports, alcohol, drugs... It can't just be eating, working and sleeping (actually, even those three things are a form of escape from the Human Condition if you push them a little more than is usually done...) Knowing Life is finite and basically meaningless is technically unbearable, therefore we need as many things as we can find to divert these thoughts from coming too close. However, there can never be any real "solution", and whatever we try just ends up recreating the same form of limitation and frustration. It's difficult to cope with this absurd position when you're not Albert Camus and can't picture Sisyphus happy. Atopia offers the possibility to escape from reality and embrace multiple attractive alternatives, but living by proxy like that (or by "proxxi", I should say) can make you lose sense of who you are in a dangerous way, and lead to a lethal form of alienation from which you can never come back. You can never leave your chains, you can only go from one kind to another (Freud).What is real? Something you've really done, or something your brain thinks you've really done? These are questions quite close to what Philip K. Dick obsessed about, in his books and, sadly, in real life. On Atopia, you have two options: get bored to death in a cramped space leaving little hope of any satisfying activity, or adopt the digital way of life that can take you virtually anywhere you like. As the latter alienates you more than any other thing, you're trapped either way.The future envisioned in this novel is both attractive and repelling for the characters. It's probably the case for the author himself, and for his readers. It is my case at any rate, just the same way I marvel at today's evolutions while fearing them at the same time (I read the book on a tablet, and am posting a comment on a social cloud; but what if all this disappears or gets erased one day?). Which is not to say that Matthew Mather's work is only a compilation of prophetic ideas for geeks or a guilt-inducing cautionary tale. This is literary science-fiction that quotes Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll here, and Arthur C. Clarke and Chuang Tzu there, and fleetingly winks at Orwell's newspeak; this is intellectual entertainment written with style, styles even, as the narrative voice adapts itself to each character and therefore changes for each story (take Bob, for example: he sounds like a digitalized Bret Easton Ellis character!). And it's a coherent series whose individual installments all pack the punch of a short story, with a breathtaking final twist preceded by a mind-blowing narrative. And if this wasn't enough, the final book completes the puzzle while cleverly reusing all the former pieces and leaving enough space to hope for a sequel to the series (which I would jump on right away, needless to say). This is the book of the "phuture", and one of your "splinters" should already have bought it (or even started reading it!) as you're finishing this review...

Another post apocalypse tale? No, not quite. More like apocalypse in the making.A brilliant idea to save the planet aims to reduce hedonistic waste by creating the tools to allow virtual hedonism in your mind while enabling you to splinter your attention to tens or even thousands of simultaneous events, promising all the fun you can cope with and no negative side effects.But human nature being what it is the first use made by the brightest (and best?) of our fellow beings is to speculate on the future, controll others, and just generally to take care of number one. And one by one the side effects become apparent.So the world seems set to go to hell in a hand basket anyway, in spite of - or because of - the technology.The sensation of being able to sit in on other peoples' subjective awareness is conveyed through multi-narrator versions of the same events. Confusing at first but surprisingly easy to get the hang of.There are sequels. But best start at the beginning!And fasten your seat belts, it’s a hectic ride!

Follow the day to day lives of various inhabitants of Atopia - a futuristic, technologically advanced floating colony - as they face the upcoming release of their simulated reality technology, "pssi", and try to avoid destruction from unprecedented natural disaster, in a world on the brink of spiralling toward destruction. Is "pssi" the answer to mankind's growing population depleting the Earth's dwindling resources? Is it the key to avoiding all-out Nuclear War? Is it the key to attaining ultimate happiness, when all you desire is synthetically available in the multi-verse that opens up with pssi? Or is there something much darker going on behind the scenes that could make the Apocalypse seem preferable? Well written, with an interesting structural flow that sees all key characters' paths converge at different points, culminating in a shocking twist and leaving you wanting to know how things continue to play out, and will have you scrambling to read the sequel, The Dystopia Chronicles. The Atopia Chronicles is one of the best technological fantasy books I've ever read, looking at the human psyche and the possible effects of artificial reality and the various ways it can be utilised by individuals. Definitely a recommended read.

First off I emphasise I am a massive sci-fi fan (all genres) and have devoured many such books both on kindle and hard copy.I thought this one sounded right up my street, great concept, an artificial island in a disturbed future world. Perhaps I should have read some of the reviews more carefully. I really lost the will to live trying to get through this. Repetitive, boring, poor characterisation, disjointed and disappointing. Despite continually persevering and forcing myself to continue I only made up to 54% of the book. I will give it 2 stars as the first chapter was not bad, downhill all the way from there for me.I really do not like giving negative reviews on anything, and never do, however I feel it is best to advise folk to read the reviews carefully and consider before giving up time to read this. I certainly regret wasting my time on it.

I started reading this on a whim nut very quickly got entirely engrossed. The descriptions of pssi interactions are so entirely believable that even began to experience almost physical reactions when characters dipped in and out and moved from one "reality" to the next. The advance in neural science in recent years and what we know about nano-technology make the plot so real to me that it's almost as if it us happening already - who knows, maybe it is.I thoroughly enjoyed this and can't wait to get reading the next in the trilogy. Thank-you Matthew Mather for such an exciting introduction into the world of Atopia!

The story runs with short chapters, viewed from the point to person. So each chapter jumps to a different a person and then later on back to somebody we have already read about. It's a writing style that some people may find annoying but I like it. However towards the end of the book it gets very jumpy and feels like the author was getting tired of writing and just wanted to get the book finished. That said there was no real end to the book. The last 15% or so of the book I was getting bored and wanted it to end. I mostly enjoyed it but wont be buying any further books from this author.