The Silicon Man & Protektor

Before Platt became a feature writer for Wired and other tech journals, he wrote several science fiction novels, including the two in this omnibus. In %E2%80%9CThe Silicon Man%E2%80%9D%E2%80%94first published in 1991, and set in 2030 in Long Beach, Calif.%E2%80%94he spins a web of intrigue around LifeScan, a government-funded project to create artificial intelligence for military applications. When FBI agent James Bayley gets wind of illegal activities and investigates, he discovers that scientist Rosalind Finch and her research team have gone rogue and are working on a vastly more ambitious scheme that they%E2%80%99ll kill to protect. %E2%80%9CProtektor,%E2%80%9D first published in 1996, is set in the 26th century on the pleasure planet Agorima, one of more than 10,000 human-inhabited planets linked by the Protektorate. When inexplicable malfunctions in Agorima%E2%80%99s computer system cause a series of deaths, Protektor Tom McCray%E2%80%94%E2%80%9C50 percent computer nerd, 50 percent private eye%E2%80%9D%E2%80%94is dispatched to find out who has infected the system with a virus that endangers Agorima%E2%80%99s static utopia%E2%80%94and why. Though set in vastly different milieus, both novels track as crisply written tales of futuristic crime and suspense, laced with the extrapolative %E2%80%9Cwhat if?%E2%80%9D vibe that one associates with cyberpunk in its headier early years. Platt provides insightful %E2%80%9CAfterword and Context%E2%80%9D sections for each novel that describe how they blossomed from idea to finished book, and both novels have aged well enough for readers to wish he were still in the SF-writing game. (May)