Machine Man

I enjoyed this book. I liked the mix of human and machine and the way Charlie became more human as he replaced parts of himself.

Machine Man tells the story of Charlie Neumann, an engineer who loses a leg in a mechanical accident. He's fitted with a prosthesis, and like any good engineer would, Charlie starts to note ways to improve it. Give it gyroscopes. And wi-fi. Make it good enough that the biological leg that's paired with the prosthesis looks downright ... Neanderthal.

Machine Man takes a wonderfully dark, comic look at the idea of Transhumanism, by looking at what sort of person one would have to be to go to the lengths of replacing functional body parts with artificial ones in the interest of self-improvement (while Charlie's initial amputation is the result of an accident, he soon begins “creating” accidents that lead to further surgeries being required).

One of the things that absolutely terrified me about this book was how logical Barry manages to make Charlie's line of reasoning seemed. Maybe I've been primed for it because earlier this year I went in for a consultation on LASIK surgery, but the idea of using surgery to make yourself ‘better' seemed to be not-entirely-insane.

While being terrifying, it's also often hilarious - there were a few points that I found myself laughing so hard that I had to put my ebook reader down because I couldn't continue. It's very similar to the type of corporate absurdist humour Barry used in Company, so I'm sure anyone familiar with his work would appreciate it.

One thing that felt like a bit of a letdown was the ending of the novel. The opening 3/4 of the book are this wonderful, quirky, unusual sort of book, but the ending feels like a standard sort of sci-fi novel fight scene. I've seen other people negatively compare the ending to Robocop, which I think is a little unfair (partially because Robocop is an excellent film, and partially because it and Machine Man are completely different takes on the same genre). With an ending that was more in line with the feel of the rest of the book, this would have been an absolute classic; as it is, I can only call it “highly recommended”