36 Streets

Having read, and enjoyed, Napper's short story collection (Neon Leviathan) I was looking forward to reading his first novel. Could the promise of the shorts stories be carried over to a full length novel? The answer is a resounding “yes”. 36 Streets is one of the finest science fiction novels of the past decade.

Set in an alternate-future Chinese-occupied Viet Nam, where China has almost singled-handedly solved climate change, the Western economies have collapsed, and the Chinese Empire is expanding, this is a high-octane cyberpunk/gangster thriller from the outset.

Our protagonist is Lin Vu (The Silent One), a gangster in occupied Hà Nội in a gang led by the enigmatic Bao Nguyen, an outsider born in Viet Nam but raised in Australia. A trained fighter of lethal skills she becomes embroiled in an investigation into who killed the developers of an immersive video game, Fat Victory, where people can fight the Viet Nam war all over again. But the whole story is much bigger than Lin realises and she must deal with loss, her own insecurities and decide where her loyalties lie.

The action scenes are intense and bloody (and the flashbacks to Lin's training under a Japanese master brutal in their intensity and single-mindedness), but there is also emotional heft here. Lin's feelings of not belonging anywhere, alienated from her sister and adoptive mother, drug and drink addicted to numb the pain of isolation make her story arc compelling.

Napper has created a whole future world where people have exo memory pins, genetic enhancements - a high-tech world dominated by the Asian Pacific countries, especially China. Which is a refreshing change. Having lived in Viet Nam, Napper knows this world inside out and 36 Streets is testament to that.

If William Gibson invented cyberpunk (debatable), Napper has just kicked it into the 21st Century. Superb from start to finish I cannot recommend this highly enough.

meh

Set one hundred years into the future, China has invaded Vietnam and is twenty years into a heavy handed occupation. Lin, born in Vietnam but adopted and raised in Australia, has returned and works within a chaotic insurgency. She's a gang member and Bao, the powerful gang leader, is training her for leadership in battle.

I came to this book from the world of Gibson's Sprawl books, but whereas in Gibson the brutalism is in the overall environment (images of the Blade Runner movie), the brutalism in 36 Streets is in the damage being inflicted by various enemies on each other. It's more like a Bruce Lee world of wounding, dismemberment, and murder.

Into that world Napper injects mind enhancement through sophisticated software, future-tech body repair and modification, and a darkly envisaged computer game that is undermining a nation's trust in itself.

Lin has been hired by the developer of the computer game to find whoever murdered his business partner but as she delves deeper into the game and the people around it she finds herself bouncing between her gang, its street rival, the Viet Minh resistance, and the Chinese occupying forces.

Lin picks up a DNA fragment from Molly Millions, and there's a polite nod to 'tears in rain'. As I understand it the book was part of Napper's PhD thesis on cyberpunk and referencing his source worlds is fitting, and done respectfully.