Book details of 'Proxies'

Title	Proxies
Author(s)	Laura J. Mixon
ISBN	0812523873
Language	English
Published	October 1999
Publisher	Tor Books

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The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'Proxies':

Reviewer amazon.com wrote:
Laura J. Mixon's 21st century is a far cry from utopia; pollution and global warming have begun to ravage the planet and drive a cowering populace indoors. Gangs of violent, dispossessed children prowl city streets, fresh foods are hard to come by, and average temperatures reach 130 degrees Fahrenheit. But along with the bad side effects of technology come the good: scientist Carli D'Auber's stunning advancement in communications allows people to send their consciousness across vast distances and interact at the other end through a remote device called a waldo. Most people are familiar with the small, trash-can-like waldos... but in a secret crèche, children are being raised to pilot humanoid versions called proxies, and they're being instilled with a deadly serious ideology. Can Carli, hunted by a renegade proxy with incredible strength and a frighteningly simplistic agenda, stay alive long enough to figure out what's going on? Part mystery, part human drama, and part a fantastic blend of cybertechnology, cloning, and telepresence, Proxies will keep you on your toes till the end. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
The dust jacket promotion emphasizes the originality of this novel, and the promise of great things from the author. While Mixon certainly presents a serviceable and even mature work, it isn't very different from many others that have gone before. The proxies of the title are android bodies that are used for telepresence: remotely controlled robots manipulated by human "pilots." In the world of the book, similar units called waldoes are very common, but the proxies are a new and classified version, developed to be indistinguishable from human beings, but with greatly superior strength, speed, and sensory capability. Because the robots are lifelike, a large part of the story involves either mistaken, or secret, identities and personalities. Mixon's characters are reasonable, but not exceptional. There are, however, quite a number of them. Indeed, the book suffers a little from the lack of any real central character, particularly since early parts of the book seem to imply that characters are modified by being "in proxy." The author also falls prey to the temptation to create an unexplained slang for the society in the book. Once you realize that most of the really outre terms are simply mangled French, it becomes easier to read. A number of the most frequently used words are both poorly defined in context, and difficult to derive. Is "kelly," a portable recording and note taking device, a reference to the (even now) old "Kelly Girl?" "Jello" seems to allude to a bewildering variety of video and display mechanisms, and even to something similar to fax printout. In addition, there is some mention of what seems to be runaway inflation; which is unconvincing given that only a very few prices, all for information access, are mentioned; and an ecological disaster which only seems to make it inconvenient to travel outdoors unprotected. The technology is very difficult to assess, since almost no details are given. A supposedly important communications technology (which turns out to be rather irrelevant to the plot in the end) is based upon a "recent discovery in physics," with no more explanation than that. (There is a reference to mass, as theoretically increased by high velocities.) While the instantaneous nature of that technology is undoubtedly important, there is no discussion of bandwidth or interface considerations. In terms of the proxies themselves, there are also problems. Almost everyone seems to be wired for direct brain-machine connection, possibly in order to be able to engage in virtual reality games. (Indeed, a newly ... created? ... personality seems to have a completely unrealistic knowledge of such games.) At one point there is a fairly detailed discussion of the difficulty of slow reaction times in getting the proxies to fight or do effective work. (Slow reaction times would also mean that you would have a tough time getting the proxies to even stand up straight without constantly falling over.) Yet several times the proxies react blindingly quickly, fast enough to kill, overpower, or escape from trained military or security people. On the other hand, you have to hand it to someone who understands that exposure to vacuum doesn't instantly result in "explosive" decompression. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999
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Book description:

The new millennium has been born in fire. In the Southwest, parched by an ever-warming global climate, Carli D'Auber has made the most important discovery of the century: a technology enabling individuals to send their consciousness across hundreds of thousands of miles, to be present in another country or on another world, through a remote device. Now a secret cadre has unleashed a powerful new weapon: "proxies"--remotely controlled synthetic bodies--to seize control of humanity's first mission to the stars. But they need Carli to carry out their plan--and they've sent a deadly cyborg hunter to track her down.