BOOK REVIEW

The Plutonium Blonde

RATINGS Readability Geekness

John Zakour has been creating GeekToons for us since 1999. If you've seen any of the more than 250 we've got posted you know he's got a great sense of humor, especially when it comes to technology. If you check out the main GeekToons page you'll see mention of one of his newer books, A Man's Guide to Pregnancy. Before we had that info on the page, though, we highlighted one of his earlier books: The Plutonium Blonde, which he co-wrote with Lawrence Ganem.

The descriptions of the book made it sound a lot like an old dime-store detective novel, with a good dash of pulp fiction (the literary reference, not the movie reference) mixed in. The tag line on the cover, for instance: "He was the last P.I. on the planet, but could he save the world from a nuclear-powered, genocidal, exotic-dancing fembot?" And the cover itself, which showed your normal-looking '40s private detective wielding a decidedly non-'40s-looking handgun as he avoided a normal looking toaster that had been thrown by a '40s-looking blonde wearing a Wonder Woman bustier-thing and sporting a very android-like right hand. Good stuff, I thought.

As Geek.com's Chief Editor I looked at the mini book ad we had on that page every Monday when I posted the week's new GeekToon. The book always looked interesting to me, but I never seemed to get enough time to read it … until recently. I ordered the book from Amazon and dove in, not sure what to expect. I mean, I'd read and enjoyed my share of hard-boiled detective fiction, like Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, and Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, but I wasn't sure how well that style would mix with techno sci-fi. Plus, I'm always a little wary of dual-authored novels because you can usually tell when the author is changing, and it throws off the continuity of the read and/or the story. And last, it's not always a given that someone who's funny in one medium can be funny in another (however brilliant you think Ben Elton's incredible Black Adder scripts are, his novel Gridlock is just not worth the time). But John has been producing funny stuff on a regular basis for us for years, so I figured it was a pretty good gamble that The Plutonium Blonde would be a good read.

I made out like a bandit on that bet, and by an appreciable margin. The Plutonium Blonde is funny, enjoyable, very well written, extremely well plotted, and contains good tech and lots of subtle humor (both geeky and otherwise). It's also a great detective story that kept me guessing on a lot of things until the very end, and it's graced with all the stock detective story situations and twists that make the great detective novels fun--but with distinctive Zakour/Ganem twists. The book is so smoothly written and devoid of any of the mistakes/quirks that I usually see in multiply authored books that I actually felt compelled to ask John after I'd finished reading it if he'd done all the writing and just collaborated with Lawrence on the plot. Nope, he answered, they each wrote pieces and edited each other's work and agreed on plot twists, etc., etc., sharing notes by "e-communicating and phones," as John says--the seamless story was just a by-product of their similar styles and long-time collaboration. (The main characters and some of the story were originally exposed to the public back in 1997 as a novella written for The Sci-Fi Channel and distributed via PeanutPress.com.)

I don't like to give plot info away in my book reviews, and I don't like to get too detailed or give character synopses--in my mind that just gives you info that can take away from the fun of reading a book with no preconceived notions or someone else's character interpretations. Instead, I like to point out themes and styles and examples I found enjoyable in a book, and hope that those tidbits will get you intrigued enough to buy the book and experience it for yourself. When I'm reading a book for review I usually fold down the corners of pages where I find noteworthy parts, whether they be good jokes, nice turns of phrase, interesting plot developments, etc. Luckily for me, the sheer number of folded-over pages when I finished The Plutonium Blonde (the fold-downs almost doubled the thickness of the book!) gave me a lot of great things to choose from (and only some of which follow).

Right from page one, I knew I was in for a treat. Here's the description our hero, Zachary Nixon Johnson, gives of his world to set up the story:

The year is 2057 and, after a handful of species-altering upheavals, earth-shattering cataclysms, history-changing extraterrestrial contacts, and pop-culture disasters, the world is now a pretty safe place. I won't bore you with the judicial, economic and anthropological minutiae of the New New World Order, but suffice to say that the sun still rises in the east, the human race is still around to notice it, and we still pull down the window shades, roll over in bed and sleep until noon whenever possible.

Of course, the world's not perfect. People still run the shades-of-gray gamut of good to evil. There are still cops and robbers, saints and sinners, voters and politicians. And every once in a while, some crazy thing happens that threatens society, all of humanity, or the entire space-time continuum.

And for some reason, it always happens on my watch.

Nice. I liked the writing, the everyday-style mention of non-everyday happenings, the hard-boiled delivery, and the grasp on reality demonstrated by understanding what most humans want regardless of what year it is: to live in a "pretty safe place" and "sleep until noon whenever possible."

As I ventured on from page one I kept waiting for The Plutonium Blonde to lose steam, to falter somewhere, to give me the chance to say, "Ah ha, I knew it was going to let me down." But honestly, from alpha to omega this book keeps up that great prose, style, humor and intrigue. The characters are fun, and while you don't look for Tolstoy-esque character development in a detective novel, by the end of The Plutonium Blonde you've got a pretty good feel for your main character, his AI-like computer "partner" (HARV), and the retinue of regulars who hang about, get saved, and save them in your normal--and some surprising--detective story ways.

The only plot I'll reveal to you is that Johnson and HARV have to figure out the pretty complex mystery behind a supersmart, superbeautiful, superdeadly android out to destroy humanity, and the cadre of folks (some good, some bad, which is always a sign of mature writing, I feel) who set the android on its path. As I mentioned above, I won't reveal any more plot-significant twists or characters, but I will give you examples from throughout the novel of the wonderful mix of humor, tech-sensibility, and fun that made The Plutonium Blonde one of my favorite reads in a long time.

There are some great phrases and "future-idioms" present throughout the book, used normally in sentences instead of being winkwink-nudgenudged at you. Their presence in otherwise normal paragraphs and situations gives a kind of verisimilitude to the story, and their subtle usage really reveals the skill of the two authors. Some examples:

Over the first few pages of the book Johnson introduces himself to us. Explaining how he came to be the last private detective on Earth, he says:

Personally, I like to think of myself more as a Renaissance man: living comfortably in the present but fascinated with the past. Truth to tell, I was born in the wrong century. I am endlessly (some would say compulsively fascinated by anything and everything twen-cen. It was a simpler time when everybody wasn't "wired" to everything else. It was a more stylish time. A better time? Hey, I'm not naïve. But the cars were a lot cooler back then and, in my book, that counts for a lot.

Again, I find the Ganem/Zakour writing style to be very well done, easy to read, and engaging. What I really liked in that paragraph was that "twen-cen" phrase, significantly (in my mind) not buried in quote marks, thus giving it the appearance of common vernacular. And note how we have a great mixture of character-necessary background that also sets the tone and drops some humor in with the car reference (I immediately flashed back to Blade Runner, when I remember being very disappointed at how all the cars on screen were cookie-cutter boring).

Some more future-idioms for you:

"Forget it, HARV," I said. I'm not doing it. Gates, I'd rather do anything than another one of those DOS-awful ribbon-cutting ceremonies."

And at that nano, three cheap-looking thugs in expensive looking suits crashed through my office door ...

"Gates", "DOS", and "nano" all show up frequently, and not just from the mouth of our hero.

"But now, since I can't interest you in anything carnal, can I get you a nice glass of iced tea? It's the real thing, you know. The kind that we drank in my day. Not that imitation DOS you get in restaurants now. Gates, that spam hoovers like a spoofed meg of wormfood."

It was clear that Grandma Backerman's regen procedures also included some subconscious slang implantation.

I loved the way those two paragraphs work together, with the second using future-idiom to tongue-in-cheek critique the "hipness" of the previous sentences, which are themselves loaded with future-idiom. Again, some nice, subtle touches all wrapped up in an engaging package. Really well done.

"It wasn't a real commotion," I said, just a full-contact rehearsal for my upcoming made-for-HV special: Zachary Nixon Johnson versus the Cheap Thugs in Expensive Suits. Net your local video-feed provider now to ask about availability in your area. Now if you'll excuse me, I have important PI stuff to do. Never a dull nano when you're me."

That's another paragraph with well-used future-idiom, and a nice segue into my next focus: tech-sensibility in The Plutonium Blonde.

Throughout the book you're exposed to technologies we don't have yet (not the least of which is the novel's title character), and while the authors make no pretensions about this being some cleverly disguised prophecy of things to come, they do make sure that the future tech we do run into as Zach Johnson does his PI thing is based on stuff we Geeks should be familiar with (interspersed, as always, with some good humor). Some examples:

After all, you don't need someone to dig up dirt for you when you're standing in the middle of a dustbowl. True, it takes a special skill to know the right place to dig, but it's hard making that argument when the CaffeineCorner down the street is giving away copies of The Complete and Unabridged History of History Volumes 1 and 2 on a nano-chip free with every purchase of a quadruple latte.

What I liked there was the head-nod to Geeks' love of caffeine coupled with our continuing desire to fit more and more info into tinier and tinier containers. And again, you'll note the subtle use of phrases like "nano-chip" and "quadruple latte" to get across that this is the future.

A prevailing theme in the book is Johnson's relationship with HARV, and how the detective's sense of humor just isn't shared by the computer (reminiscent of the Dr. McCoy/Spock interactions on Star Trek: TOS). To that end, one of Johnson's early attempts to make his "computer compatriot" laugh screeches to a halt:

"Yes, well forgive me, boss, if I don't quite grasp the subtle concept of witty PI banter. I guess I'll just have to be content with the ability to perform three billion separate calculations in a nanosecond. Frankly, I'm surprised that you managed to survive all those years without me."

(I should mention at this point that, although HARV likes to take on the form of a proper English butler, his attitude and speech patterns aren't the least bit proper, British or subservient. He's the world's most advanced computer and he doesn't let you forget it.)

Besides the wonderful concept of a computer that could compute that fast (will we be there in 50ish years? The scary/wonderful thing is that it's not out of the question!), I liked how the authors once again chose to give us essential information (i.e., HARV is the world's most advanced computer) in a funny way instead of just presenting it to us, and that it's coupled with something quantitative and matter-of-fact (however fanciful that fact might be in today's terms).

Tech-sensibility in The Plutonium Blonde isn't just limited to actual technology. There are places in the book where the situation, often humorous, is described in a way that just wouldn't seem as good to a non-Geek. Here are two of my favorite examples:

"… I'm going to repeat, very calmly, I might add, that Dr. Pierce's mother is dead. She's kicked the coffee cup, she's pushing up the paisleys, she has shuffled off her mortal interface, she's riding the ethernet of the next world. She's emailing from the great beyond and her address ends with 'the-hereafter-dot-org!'"

And another great little passage that will ring true to far too many of our ears:

The club itself was a small, metal, hanger-type building. It had once been the home office of an internet B2B business exchange back in the first incarnation of the world wide web. The company went bust after the great Internet collapse in the early part of the century. The owners of the company, billionaires one nano, bankrupt the next, committed mass suicide and broadcast the ritual over the web as a symbolic farewell to the fickle multitude of Internet users. Ironically, the company's server went down halfway through the ritual so no one actually saw the event, and the departed webmasters' message, like many others sent over the old web, went unheard.

But since humor is a big part of this book, the story doesn't end there:

Needless to say, the heirs of the company's owners became somewhat distrustful of technology after that and turned the once-mighty corporate headquarters into a very low-tech bar and grill. Technology comes and goes, they claimed, but booze and fried food never go out of style (a place after my own heart). And thus was born the Happy Hacker.

This is not authors pandering to Geeks by throwing in words and phrases to seem techno-savvy. This is just two Geeks writing a good story and trying to be funny, and it really works even when their Geekdom leaks through.

As I've mentioned before, The Plutonium Blonde is also a very good detective novel, with some intriguing twists and turns and puzzles. I don't want to give anything away, but here's a great example of the thought the authors put into every part of the story. At one point there's a list of filenames our hero is trying to go through to piece together clues to make his next move, and it turns out he has to look at the files named after physicists. He gets the list of 10, examines it, and figures out from the obviously missing name the last name of the person he's looking for (the first name won't be easily arrived at either, but you'll have to read the book for that well-done piece). The list follows; can you figure out what Zachary Johnson (and HARV, of course) did?

1. Ampere
2. Archimedes
3. Bohr
4. Born
5. Broglie
6. Dirichlet
7. Einstein
8. Gallileo
9. Hawking
10. Ohm

Did you get it? If not, the missing physicist also invented calculus.

I want to end the review by reiterating that The Plutonium Blonde, on top of being techy and really well put together, is a funny book. To prove that, I'll give you some of my favorite one-liners from its pages, then a description and some quotes from one of the parts that was so perfect yet so wonderfully random that I laughed out loud and reread the passages at least three times. Okay, some quick humor bits from the book:

When that happens there'll be almost as many vapid personalities on the unemployment line as there were during the great budget crunch of 2017, when the old U.S. government laid off the House of Representatives.

If we could throw the Senate and the Executive branches in there, too, I'd vote for that in November.

I was doing some investigative work for my local grocery stores and I sort of accidentally discovered that a pet-breeding company, through an accounting error, had accidentally bred a million more house cats than they needed. … Teams of R&D specialists, spin doctors and ad agencies went to work and thus was born the cat-eating fad and the immortal slogan, "Cat-the cuddly white meat."

Brilliant. And for some more subtle examples:

"Are you whistling? What is this, the Bridge Over the bloody River Kwai?" (That film, by the way, celebrated its centennial anniversary this year and became a big hit all over again when it was re-released with the subtitle, "The Early Adventures of Obi-Wan.")"

If you're too young to remember the first Star Wars trilogy, please look up anything you can on the late, truly great Alec Guinness.

I have to admit that the column, the black box and the myriad other devices that were attached didn't look all that dangerous (but then I'm sure that the last Neanderthal thought the same thing when he saw the rock in the Cro-Magnon's hand).

I think that's some great stuff.

But perhaps my favorite scene in the book is when Zachary and HARV are being confronted by a homicidal elevator operator servant-droid that can't stop ending its sentences with prepositions. For some unstated and totally hilarious reason, HARV is driven inexplicably insane by the bad grammar, and it goes on and on, with the droid massacring sentence after sentence and HARV firing off some hilarious riposte of disgust. When they get back on the elevator later to go down, the droid tries to kill Zachary (but not before angering HARV with some more bad sentences). I don't want to quote the whole sequence, but here're some of the lines from the end which I really enjoyed.

"You asked to be delivered to the ground," it said as it approached me, "and I shall make certain that you arrive there, albeit not in the manner which you asked for."

"For which you asked!" HARV shouted. "Gates, this thing can't even threaten correctly."

"HARV," I said as the droid lunged at me, "I think you're missing the big picture here."

. . .

"Listen buddy," I growled in my best bad-gluteus voice,"One step closer and I'll blow you into an expensive scrap pile of … what it is you're made from."

"That's it," HARV said. "Threaten it in a manner that it will recognize."

. . .

"I, however, am a model class SFC- android and cannot be confused so easily."

He took another menacing step forward.

"Give him a grammar test," HARV said. "That'll confuse him."

. . .

It tumbled backwards out of the elevator and into a freefall to its termination.

HARV appeared from the projector in my lens and watched with me as the droid hit the ground below, shattering into a gazillion pieces upon impact.

"Wow," HARV said. "Talk about your split infinitives."

Maybe that's only stuff that an editor-type finds funny, but that whole episode was killing me. Great, great stuff, and a great example of how easily Ganem and Zakour mix tech, humor, plot, and fun all together to make The Plutonium Blonde such a great read.

Ratings Defense
John Zakour and Lawrence Ganem's The Plutonium Blonde gets the full 5 Geekheads for Readability. One thing I was definitely afraid of before starting the book was that it would be poorly written and/or edited and/or typeset, regardless of how good the plot and everything else might be. I was happily confronted instead with a well-written book in all senses of the word, and apart from the inescapable typos here and there (few and far between) the presentation of the book is outstanding. The authors do an incredible job of writing well and plotting so well that the story flows smoothly and picks up some great detective momentum all the way through to the end.

For Geekness The Plutonium Blonde also gets 5 Geekheads. As you can tell if you've gotten this far, I loved the mix of tech-sensibility, humor, future-idiom, and detailed plot, and at no point did I feel the geeky/science part was being neglected. Nothing techy is shoved in your face, and yet there's a lot of things to pay attention to. The mix of familiar and possible and maybe not-possible techno thingies is well handled, and adds nicely to the futuricity (should be a word) of the novel.

Geek.com Pick all the way.

I can't recommend The Plutonium Blonde highly enough, whether you buy it for yourself or if your non-Geek friends and family want to get you a gift (though they should read it, too, since it is so well done that even non-techies will enjoy it). You will really enjoy this book, and you will laugh. And then when you're done, you can get the sequel, The Doomsday Brunette, which is out now and waiting for your eager eyes.

And if that one's anywhere near as good as The Plutonium Blonde, sequel #2, The RadioActive Redhead,will be much in demand when its 2005 release date (estimated) rolls around.

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