Review Summaries

• Readers praise the strong momentum and the scale of crisis that closes out the series. The novel is especially appreciated for its political edge and dense speculative worldbuilding, which keeps its pace to the end.

Reviews

• 信念が合わさった人間たち集団の強さ

  元マイクロソフトエンジニアのラメズ・ナムによる「ネクサス」三部作シリーズの最終巻。 人間の脳と、液状で飲むことのできるOS（ネクサス）が融合した世界を描く。 人間という生き物は、どのような形で互いにつながっていくのか。自然発生的なのか、強制されるものなのか。つながり方に一石を投じるのが、このネクサスというＯＳなのだ。 ネクサスで新たな力を手に入れた者たち。このグループに憧れる者。そして反発する者らが対峙するエネルギー。これがよく描写されている本作。一方、大人の立ち位置はさまざまだが、生まれながらにしてネクサスが備わってしまっている子供たちもシリーズを通じて存在している。 たぶんテクノロジーをめぐるストーリーではないのだ。個人の信念の戦い。そして信念が合わさった人間たち集団の強さ。これらが作者の大切にしていることなのだろう。 １巻目から主人公のケイドが瞑想をしながら人間性を深める記述が続く。最終巻ではケイドは本当に強くなった。 自身を内省し、鍛錬する。その輪が広がることでよりよい世界を築いていくことができる。ここに元マイクロソフトエンジニアであった著者の信念が立ち現れているのではないか。 しっかり三部作構成として練られたシリーズだったと思う。本作では "集団の力" を強く感じさせられた。 作者であるラメズ・ナムは現実世界では気候問題に取り組んでいるようだ。気になる方は、著者の名前でツイッターを検索されたし。

• "Nexus" is, and always will be, the best book in this series for a variety of reasons, but "Apex" is right behind it in quality. "Apex" is a whirlwind of cutting edge sci-fi, political intrigue, action, and ethical quandaries. While "Crux" was perhaps the best in the series at really digging into the merits and pitfalls of competing idealogies and ethics surrounding this technology, "Apex" is a good follow-up to that. But the action, the pace is what steals the show in this book. The primary villian in this book is The Avatar, the cy-borg like shard of Su Yong's broken mind. The PLF factors into this book as well, with a somewhat satisfying turn of events involving them at the beginning. However, the primary scene of focus is Shanghai and China and events escalating there. Overall, a very good book. A very good conclusion to the story and world of Nexus. The ending is very bitter, somewhat sweet, and very sad; it may in fact bring a tear to some eyes. But just about everyone's story gets a final send-off before the last page. A few problems with this book, though, none of which necessarily hamper the overall story. Of course, my biggest problem with Nexus has been the bandwidth problem. Shortly after the movie "Avatar" came out, scientists pointed out that we do not, nor will we have any time soon, the necessary wireless fidelity or bandwidth to transmit human consciousness; there's just too much simultaneous data. Now you could say, "Yeah but human consciousness is just a fraction of the entire scope of the human brain, and at any given time you're only 'sending' so much". True, and this is my other issue with the books: if Nexus had been limited to basically a cell phone in the brain, it would have been fine. But the ongoing issues of turning people into zombies with Nexus, with pushing emotions and vision and full sensory data over things like a CELLULAR network is a bit hard to accept. Finally there's the issues of sharing all of this brain data through cellular and other wireless networks. This book of course assumes that our wireless networks will become flawless in the future (HA!), that somehow everyone everywhere would, in mere months or weeks, figure out how to proxy this data through the Internet, that the Internet would be able to support this extra load, that authorities wouldn't be able to easily detect those kind of data streams and shut down servers or even trace them back and arrest people, and that various other bits of infrastructures would come to exist so quickly. To be clear, I would have been just fine with the ideas dreamed up in "Nexus", of people just being telepathic when near each other, of close-range peer-to-peer mind sharing. It's when you get into the whole worldwide mind-streaming thing that things get strained and you have to have to suspend a lot of disbelief. This is of course not even touching on the fraility of human memory and that eyeballs are not camers ... Despite all that, again, 5 star book. Not enough problems to really warrant any loss there, and what the book strains in believability, it more than makes up for in emotion and action and pace. Definitely a good close to the series. I look forward to Ramez Naam's next story.

• Non ho mai affrontato la lettura di romanzi in inglese ma dopo aver letto Nexus non ho potuto fare a meno di proseguire con Crux e Apex, anche se disponibili solo in lingua inglese (o meglio, disponibili in varie lingue ma non l’italiano, ma io conosco solo l’inglese). In Apex gli eventi prendono una piega molto pericolosa a livello globale, la storia diventa sempre più avvincente e non posso fare altro che consigliarvi questo romanzo. Se siete nerd e appassionati di informatica, lo adorerete (hackers, interfacce neurali, computer quantistici), ma se avete letto Nexus lo avrete già capito che è il caso di proseguire nella trilogia. Sinceramente spero che Ramez Naam produca qualche sequel perché la storia mi ha intrigato molto e potrebbe proseguire ulteriormente, quindi spero che questa conclusione di trilogia in realtà non sia una vera e propria conclusione. 5 stelle perché di più non posso.

• Amazing Book, on the lines of the earlier two.

• A very interesting way to think about the co-existence of humans and AI. Very fitting in these times. It shows that tit-for-tat rules the world.

• Deze serie is zowel hartbrekend als hoopgevend. Het laat het beste en het slechtste in de mens zien zonder daar een oordeel in te hebben. Technologie is niet goed of slecht. Wij mensen bepalen dat.

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