New York Nights

An atmospheric near-future detective tale set at the dawning of realistic VR for popular use, New York Nights neatly captures an investigation in which technological advancement muddies the waters of appearance and motivation. When the past, present and future intersect in an otherwise standard case, this tech-thriller evolves into a very human story filled with intelligence and careful observations as several partners seek answers to complex questions.

Brown’s writing contains good energy and style, and his New York of 2040 is nicely realised as a living city full of contrasts: a metropolis of many peoples, operating 24 hours a day. Sci-fi, crime and cyberpunk fans will likely find something of interest here, as will anyone interested in solid storytelling containing believable characters and situations.

reviews.metaphorosis.com

3 stars

The junior partner in a detective agency, Halliday follows up on a new missing persons case that turns out to be far more complicated and serious than it seems. As he follows the leads in a near-future New York City, more and more his nearest and dearest get involved, and the stakes get higher and higher.

Have patience with this book; try to get at least a few chapters in. After that, it's not bad. Those first few chapters, though, are a very tough read. If I hadn't already read several Brown books, I'd have stopped there. The first chapters exhibit stereotypes left and right, including particularly offensive treatment of lesbians. Every few pages I'd think of giving up in disgust, but kept searching for a sign that this was just a character viewpoint we were seeing. That was never clearly expressed, but after a while the offensiveness toned down (though quite a bit of stereotyping remained). The protagonist, Halliday, seems otherwise likeable, but we never really see any indication that his viewpoint has changed - he just uses milder terminology. There is a chapter from a lesbian's point of view that is much more bearable, so perhaps it really is a just an offensive trait of the character rather than the author.

Potential bigotry aside... This is a straightforward detective story with SF elements. There's nothing here you haven't seen in one form or another, but it's put together fairly well on both genre fronts. There are moments of dialogue or word choice that seem to betray Brown's non-NY origins, but they're minor. (I do wonder why so many non-American authors seem to feel compelled to set their stories in the US, but that's another issue.) The story itself works fairly well on plotting, character, and story, and the mechanics are good. In fact, in some ways, the story is more complete than some of his later more successful work.

If you're a fan of SF detective stories, by all means give this a try. If you can make it past the first two chapters, you'll be okay. If not, try some of Brown's other work - Helix, perhaps. I'll be going on to the next book in the series because... well, because I already have it, and because I know the stereotypes are not the whole story - just a (substantial) barrier to it.

Fair number of typos.

I first came across Eric Brown’s work in The Fall of Tartarus, a collection of short stories I stumbled upon while working in India. The premise hooked me immediately: a world doomed to destruction in a century, a blend of medieval superstition and high-tech intergalactic civilization, fanatical cults lurking in the shadows. At least, that was the promise of the back cover. In reality, those elements were more like background flourishes than integral parts of the stories themselves. But despite that, I found myself charmed. Brown’s characters had warmth, his writing was engaging, and a few of those stories have stayed with me as some of my favorite sci-fi shorts of all time.

A couple of years later, working in Thailand, I came across New York Dreams, the third book in Brown’s Virex trilogy. I enjoyed it. The concept of people immersing themselves in isolation tanks to spend their lives in virtual reality was intriguing. But by the end, I felt the story fell apart.

Which brings me to "New York Nights", the first book in the trilogy, which I’ve just finished reading. And I find myself running into the same issues that nagged at me with "New York Dreams". The characters are likable. The writing is easygoing. The concepts are fun. But the world he’s built feels flimsy, like window dressing for a story that doesn’t really need it.

The obvious comparison is to William Gibson, whose future landscapes feel like places you could get lost in. Gibson’s setting is oppressive, inescapable, and fundamental to the narrative. You couldn’t strip the sci-fi out of Neuromancer and have anything left. Brown, on the other hand, has crafted a future where holograms can disguise identities, buildings can be made to look like something else entirely, and virtual reality is immersive to the point of bodily transformation… but none of it feels fully realized. These are cool ideas, but they never become more than props.

And that’s the problem. The best science fiction holds up a mirror to our own world. The Time Machine isn’t just about a distant future where the rich are cattle and the poor are cannibals—it’s about the social anxieties of H.G. Wells’ own time. Neuromancer paints a future where human connection has withered away, replaced by intimacy with technology. But what does New York Nights say about us? That’s where Brown misses an opportunity. He’s created a world drowning in illusions—holograms, VR escapism, a society ignoring its own collapse—but rather than using these elements to make a statement, he uses them as the backdrop for a fairly standard hard-boiled detective story.

Which is fine. I have no problem with a sci-fi detective novel. But if that’s what you’re going for, then commit to it. I don't know, maybe Dresden Files in the future with Sci Fi instead of supernatural elements? Instead, Brown seems caught in the middle, unsure of what he wants his book to be.

Take the antagonist: an AI that hijacks the minds of people with neural implants, turning them into puppets. That’s a fantastic idea. It could be terrifying. It could be the foundation for a gripping psychological thriller. Instead, it’s treated as just another obstacle for our protagonist, Halliday, to overcome. It’s another prop.

And if all the sci-fi elements are just props, then what’s the actual story? Mostly, Halliday’s relationship with his Chinese girlfriend, which is cute, even if her portrayal might raise some eyebrows today. His partnership with Barney is solid. They work well together and still have good relationships with the police department they left behind, which adds a nice change of pace from the usual “ex-cops vs. the system” trope.

But even with that, the world still doesn’t feel integrated into the story. We could strip the futuristic setting away and tell the same basic detective tale in a modern-day thriller—swap the AI villain for a government mind control experiment and it would work just as well.

Try doing that with Neuromancer. You can’t.

The novel also suffers from pacing issues, particularly in the second half, where it starts to lumber under its own weight. Halliday’s personal backstory—his estranged sister, his guilt over the twin he couldn’t save, the occasional “ghost” of his dead sibling haunting him—feels like it belongs in a different novel. It’s a forced attempt to give him depth, but it never really ties into the main narrative in a meaningful way.

At the end of the day, New York Nights isn’t bad. It’s got enjoyable characters, some fun ideas, and a narrative that keeps you going, even if it drags in places. But in the end, it feels thin. It’s a detective story first, and a science fiction novel second. And maybe that’s why, as much affection as I have for Brown, I can’t shake the feeling that this book, like its world, is more of a façade than something fully lived-in.

Primer libro en que aplico mi mueva política. Leo hasta la página 50 aprox, si no me gusta se cierra y bye. No time for bad reading. Too many pendings.
Este no tenía gusto a nada.

Great read. Looking forward to the next two in the Virex series.

Classic Eric Brown. A frayed at the seams detective hired to find a missing lover, which turns into a much more complicated and far reaching case.

Set in a 2040's New York this is a futuristic cyber-punk, crime-noir thriller, and once you get through the first few chapters (which are slow going as they set the scene), the book is one that is hard to put down.

This is the 8th or 9th Eric Brown book I've read (most of which is pure SF), and he's yet to disappoint me.

This is the first of a trilogy, and I'm already half way through the next, New York Blues.

'2040. New York is crowded with the lost. Refugees from the radioactive eastern seaboard, the splintered remains of a society in freefall, walk the streets and spend their last dollars on an hour snatched in one of the new Virtual Reality paradises.

In a society bent on escape, Missing Persons is a good business to be in. If nothing else it keeps Hal Halliday busy enough to avoid his past.

But the past is not so easy to escape.

NEW YORK NIGHTS is a fast moving yet thought-provoking SF thriller. It examines the human costs of isolation and escapism in a future that offers wild possibilities.'

Blurb from the 2001 Gollancz paperback edition

This, the first novel in the Virex trilogy introduces Hal Halliday - an affable New York ex-cop turned private eye of the mid Twenty-First Century – and his older partner Barney.
The duo run a semi-successful business chasing missing persons and assisting the local PD with cold cases.
Hal is intrigues by the case of Sissy Nigeria, reported missing by her lesbian lover. It’s a seemingly simple case but one which becomes more complex when Hal is attacked by a shape-shifter in the missing woman’s flat.
Sissy’s home computer system has been burnt out and Hal later discovers that her research work for Cybertech involved the creation of machine intelligence.
Despite a lack of complexity and some coincidences which stretch credulity, Brown has created a compelling an highly readable novel which races along like a cyborg greyhound.
The most intriguing aspect is perhaps Brown’s depiction of a Lesbian Separatist community of which his estranged sister is a member. He manages to avoid cliched stereotypes without being preciously politically correct, and sets the stage for the next two books in the series. Indeed the whole novel has the feel of the TV pilot which sets up the relationships between the major characters and sets them in context before moving on to the meat and potatoes of the narrative.
Brown doesn’t go far enough to explore the potentialities of VR, although there are some truly innovative moments, such as the interactive holosoap. One can log in to a virtual city, adopt a character and literally become one of the three million stories in the Naked City, which run perpetually.
‘New York Nights’ is that rare thing in SF of the period, a novel which is too short. One expects the detective to be wrong-footed by red herrings and following various nebulous leads. This is what detectives do. If one compares this to Morgan’s ‘Altered Carbon’ – a novel of similar style but superior quality – one immediately notes the differences. Morgan’s novel is full of character and location detail, layered over a zig-zagging plotline. Brown lacks the detail and therefore this novel, although workmanlike, lacks atmosphere.

An AI goes hostile, escapes onto the net, takes over several humans, but is then captured (dramatically), and finally investigated, by the same people who were dumb enough to create it in the first place and let it escape. ummm. All set in a dystopian New York of 2040 (anyone old enough to remember when the future was a better place?). Not bad, but a tad wordy. I don't think that I will be re-reading or reading the other two in the trilogy.