Book details of 'Implant'

Title	Implant
Author(s)	F. Paul Wilson
ISBN	0812544706
Language	English
Published	September 1996
Publisher	Tor Books

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Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
Wilson is an oddly underappreciated writer, in my opinion. His story lines are both interesting and entertaining. His characters are sympathetic. Villains are a specialty: he can make some people very dangerous without making them unattractive. Wilson can very definitely handle suspense, piling surprise on surprise without exhausting the reader. The technology of this novel is related to the titular implant. It is a colloidal capsule that can be inserted under the skin, and then dissolved, either after a period of time, or at a specific time by the application of ultrasound. The details of the implant itself are handled quite nicely. The triggering technology, though, is a bit problematic. First off, the ultrasound required in the sotry is not the low power that is used in diagnostics, but the higher level used in physiotherapy. (That itself presents a bit of a problem at one point in the text. The watt is a measure of power, but megahertz, while it may be used to calculate power, is not a measure of power as such.) The triggering unit that is used in the book has been cobbled together by a hobbyist in order to fit into a pocket. Fair enough: its a bit beyond the pale to have a full power supply and transmitter in the palm of one's hand, but a lot of the control circuitry isn't necessary so we'll allow it. However, the unit is meant to be used at a distance. Ultrasound, like any sound, will transmit through the air. However, sound does not transmit very effectively from the air into a body. This is why ultrasound transducers are pressed directly onto the body, usually with a gel layer to enhance the transmission. From the open air, most of the sound energy will simply reflect off the skin surface. Given that the objective, in the book, is to get the sound power to dissolve the implant inside the body, this effort is pretty much doomed to failure. There is also a rather nice computer mention in the book. I really have to hand it to Wilson: not many people know about the order switch on the DOS directory list command. Unfortunately, the command given isn't quite sufficient: you'd also have to include the subdirectory switch in order to get it to go through the whole hard disk. Also, three letter designations are usually the filename extensions, used to indicate to which program they belong. And if someone knows as little about the program cited as is stated in the book, it isn't likely that this same computer novice would be able to view a stored search. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999
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