The Punch Escrow

With dizzying inventiveness, Tal M. Klein’s sci-fi and sci-fantastic The Punch Escrow rivals the best of Wells and Bradbury in ideas per page. This is an incredibly smart, witty, imaginative 22nd century thriller that is ostensibly about teleportation in the future gone awry, but ultimately a sly, speculative warning shot about our insatiable (and unsustainable) need for technological advancement in the hands of corporate interests. If I’m making this sound like a slog of a science lesson/cautionary tale, it’s anything but. Sure the novel is annotated throughout as Klein footnotes each technological future marvel with definitions and scientific explanation, but nothing here is obtuse; this is pure fun and the story barrels along as we follow Joel Byram (an app salter, don’t worry, Klein will explain), his wife Sylvia (a high level employee at a teleportation company that controls more than just travel in the future), and Joel Byram (yep, Joel again…) between New York, rendered in brilliant futuristic clarity, and Costa Rica on a vacation that goes horribly wrong during teleportation. I found each imaginative detail in Klein’s novel delightful and, dare I say, more prescient than not. Klein creates such a vivid, rich future in this novel that it’s Hollywood’s loss if they don’t snap this up and spin this into cinematic gold. Highly recommended.

I received an e-ARC of this novel through NetGalley and Inkshares Geek & Sundry. Thank you.

This was a wonderful reading experience and the mix of humor with science - with an added twist of adventure - made me want to put everything else aside to see what Joel was into now.

This story takes place in 2147. Freight teleportation began first (not slowed down at all by the loss of one of the art world's practically sacred icons), but by 2126 human teleportation had become commercialized by one of the largest corporations in the world, International Transport. (See, we can blame it all on IT!) Joel Byram's wife Sylvia works for IT and has been so consumed by a new project that it has caused some serious stress on their marriage. The plan is for the two of them to teleport to Costa Rica for a second honeymoon. Sylvia leaves first (because only one person can go at a time) and a few seconds later Joel's teleportation process begins. So why does Joel regain consciousness after being given a huge electric shock to find himself not in Costa Rica but in a room with three people he doesn't know and without the ability to use his comms? The story is told by Joel as a way for him to explain to people in the future how he found out there was a dirty little secret about teleportation and a huge global corporation would do whatever it took to keep that secret hidden. This is Big Technology against Religious Fanatics and, yes, the capital letters are necessary.

The book is very much science fiction with the insertion of humor making it a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The author has done this one right because everything from the monetary system to the medical science to global governing has moved far ahead of our present world. Joel is definitely not going to impress as a standard hero of a novel except that you understand that he is basically a very good guy, he just lets his attitude and sarcasm get him into all kinds of trouble. Tal M. Klein did such a good job with the science of explaining what the Punch Escrow is that even I understand where he was going with it. There is good hard science involved in telling the story and making it plausible but it is also filled with lighter moments of humor and plot twists that keep readers wondering what - or where - in the world the book will go next.

Grab this one if you like something really different to read. Grab this one if you like science fiction. Grab this one if you want to feel like you've been on a big, impossible adventure. In short, just grab this one because it's such a darn good book!

Found it hard to put down this fast paced read and ended up reading it in one sitting.

This book was a blend of The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer and Dark Matter with lots of other influences.

I frequently think about the matter compilers used in The Diamond Age, and now have blended those thoughts with that of the technology used in this book.

Definitely a moral mindfuck and I highly recommend it.