M M Buckner Books In Order

Hyperthought

Hyperthought recounts the adventures of a young man who trusts an unscrupulous doctor to enhance his brain function, and of a young woman who tries to save him. The year is 2125, and the Earth has undergone drastic climate change due to global warming. People crowd in sealed underground habitats to avoid the stormy, toxic surface. Feisty little Jolie Sauvage leads extreme surface adventure tours for rich executives. Jolie’s friend, Dr. Judith Merida, is peddling a new cosmetic neurosurgery, which she claims will wake the brain’s latent, unconscious senses. Jolie introduces Dr. Merida to one of her wealthy tour group clients, Jin Sura, an arrogant but troubled young man with a terrible desire for knowledge. That will prove to be a disastrous mistake.

War Surf

What would you do if you were rich, bright, vigorous, virtually immortal and nearly bored to death? You d invent a thrill sport It’s the 23rd century and Nasir Deepra is 248 years old, wealthy, kept young by all pervasive nanotechnology, a corporate executive and bored with life. To spice things up he has become an Agonist, dipping into war zones many of them in satellites orbiting the Earth and filming his daredevil antics. Agonists have a large fan base who watch them on the Net and they revel in the attention. A War Surf goes badly and the Agonists lose their top ranking amongst surfers, so they decide to up the ante and go to Heaven, a class 10 difficulty war zone, the toughest, in order to get back on top. Nasir is reluctant to go since he’s on the board of directors that controls Heaven and he knows why it’s a class 10. His younger girlfriend, Sheeba, talks him into it and disaster strikes: Nasir and Sheeba are captured by workers who control Heaven. Nasir has to come to terms with the brutal exploitation he has been a part of and avoid the ‘disease’ that runs rampant amongst Heaven’s workers. ‘An Innovative and exciting read. A treat.’ C.J. Cherryh ‘Buckner hits another homerun…
action, character, drama, and great science it’s all here in the latest from the hottest author in this or any other star system.’ Robert J. Sawyer Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award

Watermind

From storm drains, illegal dumps, and flooded landfills, all of North America’s most advanced technology flows down the Mississippi river microchips, nano devices, pharmaceuticals, genetically modified seed and lodges in the Louisiana delta. Out of this mire emerges a self organized neural net, drifting in the water: the Watermind. It can freeze, boil, condense, and move seemingly at will. CJ Reilly is a brilliant, sexy, self destructive MIT dropout running away from Cambridge and the suicide of her ironic, emotionally distant father. She is both infuriating and sympathetic. She is working as a laborer in Devil’s Swamp near Baton Rouge, cleaning up a small pollution spill when she and her new lover, Max, discover the mysterious Watermind. Reilly’s more interested in investigating it than containing it, but when it kills someone and escapes into the Mississippi, corporations, governments, protesters, the coast guard, and a really wacky underground journalist get involved. And there’s no longer any question that it must be destroyed before it reaches the ocean. Watermind is Philip K. Dick meets The Blob, a postmodern combination of camp SF motifs and writerly ambition attacking serious subjects. M.M. Buckner s Watermind is powered by a lean, reaching prose, a protagonist so real you can practically reach out and touch her, and a tight techno savvy plot that will leave you exhausted! The best book I ve read in years. William C. Dietz, author of Legion of the Damned

The Coin Giver

In the 23rd century, the Earth’s surface is devastated by global warming, and corporations exploit billions of poverty stricken employees whose lifetime contracts they own Richter Jedes, the rich powerful CEO of ZahlenBank, wants to live forever so he makes two copies of himself. One is an evolved Artificial Intelligence imprinted with his personality. The other is a perfect clone named Dominic, whom he raises as his son. When Richter suddenly dies, his son Dominic is left to deal with a terrible crisis which threatens ZahlenBank. And though Dominic loathes the egotistical A.I. masquerading as his father, they need each other s help to save the bank. Which of them is the true copy, and which is fake? Do they have free will, or are their destinies programmed in their source code? And, most important of all, does individual identity still have any meaning? This book was originally published under the title Neurolink.

The Gravity Pilot

It is the polluted and gritty future, saved, sort of, by technofixes. Young skydiver Orr Sitka wants no more from life in future Alaska than he already has: a woman he loves and the chance to dive. When he makes a reckless, record-breaking jump that catapults him into celebrity, he’s courted by corporations that want to exploit his talent to make him a sports media star.

The dangerous jump that wins Orr infamy turns out to be a breaking point for his loving girlfriend, Dyce, who is wooed away by a promising job in the thriving underground city of Seattle, a world media center in a crumbling civilization. Separately, Orr and Dyce are sucked into nightmare lives that take a terrible toll on each of them. When Orr learns that Dyce has become addicted to virtual reality, controlled by an eccentric media billionaire and his decadent daughter, he does everything in his power to rescue her. But is Orr strong enough to get through to Dyce and break them both out of hell?