Amped

April 23, 2012
Owen Gray is an ordinary 29-year-old high school teacher implanted with a medical chip that controls his epilepsy. When the Supreme Court rules that “Amps,” people whose chips give them enhanced abilities, are not a protected class shielded from discrimination, Owen’s father, who’s also his neurosurgeon, reveals that Owen’s chip is “something extra,” and Owen is now in danger from “pure pride” activists. He takes off for an Oklahoma trailer park called Eden where chip designer Jim Howard lives alongside other implantees whose only protection now is each other. Most just want to live normal lives, but ex-soldier Lyle Crosby intends to exploit their enhancements to start a war, and Owen is thrust into the fight. Wilson keeps the action and fear-based prejudice ever-present without sacrificing depth. The story’s heart is the moral quandary Owen faces once he knows his implant only responds to his deepest thoughts, keeping the reader wondering how far he will go and how much he is willing to sacrifice. Agent: Laurie Fox, Linda Chester Literary Agency.

June 1, 2012
In the near future, a schoolteacher with a cranially implanted "amp" must master an array of hidden talents when a wave of bigotry against those like him threatens to tear the country apart. A few decades ago, the government began installing "amps"--small devices, generally designed to aid in concentration and mental focus--into the brains of underprivileged and otherwise challenged children. Now, a political movement led by a rabble-rousing Senator seeks to strip "amps" (as implanted individuals are derogatorily called) of their basic rights as citizens based on the argument that they are no longer truly human. Teacher and amp Owen Gray, troubled after witnessing the suicide of an amp student, learns from his scientist father that the implant he received as a teen is something rather more than the anti-epilepsy device he'd always thought it was. Gray leaves moments before an explosion kills his father and destroys his lab. Following his father's last advice and fearing for his life, Gray heads for an amp haven--a trailer park in Oklahoma called Eden. There he meets Lyle Crosby, an amp whose military-grade Zenith class amp makes him a super soldier. As Lyle helps Owen unlock the hidden powers bestowed on him by his supercharged amp, Owen must decide how far he's willing to follow the charismatic but unpredictable and often violent Lyle, as tensions between amps and non-amps come to a head nationwide. Wilson delivers a thoughtful, well-written novel, which, like his previous novel Robopocalypse (2011), deals with the often tense interplay between machines and humans. Unfortunately, while he nails the machine part, the human part falls a little short. The characters lack depth, and a crucial romantic relationship feels forced and unearned. The plot is thin, too, hewing too closely to archetype. Wilson, whose prose is always a step above the norm, is at his strongest creating amp-augmented action sequences and in conjuring situations which explore the boundaries between humankind and its technological creations. Provocative, with strong action sequences, but weak in character development and plotting.

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May 15, 2012
In Robopocalypse (2011), the author told the story of a self-aware artificial intelligence that unleashes an attack on mankind, reducing the human population to small groups of survivors. Many of that book's themesespecially the notion of approaching the concepts of racism and bigotry from fresh perspectivesare carried over to this new novel, in which society is torn apart, with amplified humans (people with neural implants that augment brain activity and offset certain medical conditions) declared to be unentitled to basic human rights and legal protections. Owen Gray, an amped schoolteacher (the device was put into him to control seizures he experienced when he was younger), finds himself suddenly cast out of society and winds up in a trailer park in Oklahoma, where the leader of a community of amped people pulls Owen into his plan to strike back against the oppressors. Steven Spielberg is turning Robopocalypse into a movie, guaranteeing lots of publicity for this compelling new novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)