Quin Taber is a talented young computer software expert who is obsessed with discovering the origins of an apparently sentient Web entity called the Digital Carnivore. Quin previously worked for WebCense, the world's most powerful web technology company, which he is now suing. He also has an illegal AI assistant, Molly, who is programmed to work for him. Walter Cheeseman, who is the CEO of WebCense, is maniacally working to unify Earth under a world government that he believes he will be able to control.

Quin's investigations into the origins of the Digital Carnivore uncover connections to the start of Feedback music decades ago by two young musicians, Martin Grish and Adrian Rifkin, but Grish was convicted and mind-wiped by WebCense, and Rifkin disappeared and is presumed killed by an organized crime hit. Cheeseman is also seeing these connections and has his own reasons to want to control the Digital Carnivore and take down Aqualung and the Snake Vendors. Quin attends the Snake Vendors' next concert to try to talk to Aqualung, but Molly has to save Aqualung from an assassination attempt, and Aqualung decides to flee to the moon, which is seeking independence from Earth.

Earth quarantines the moon, and Aqualung is stuck on Freefall space station in high Earth orbit. He hides there as Earth unifies under a world government that WebCense and Cheeseman control. From Freefall, Aqualung (with help from Quinn and many others) uses his musical and technological skills to help lead a resistance movement to allow both the moon and Freefall station to be sovereign nations.

A compelling vision of a cyberpunk future

Matthew Jarpe's first novel represents an auspicious debut. Radio Freefall is a book that clearly falls into the cyberpunk genre created by William Gibson and others in the 1980s, but that describes a future world far more believable than most in that genre, a future more cyber than punk, despite the central role played by rock music. It is the first truly new cyberpunk vision in recent years. Although comparisons with Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress are inevitable, Jarpe's book reminds me more of John Shirley's early SF novels. It also reminds me in some ways of Allen Steele's early novels, although Steele's politics and tastes in music obviously differ greatly from Jarpe's.

Jarpe has crammed a number of interesting new ideas into this novel. Rock-inspired political protesters being anti-world-unification is jarring at first, but makes perfect sense in the context of this future world. The concept of AIs being required to be registered but un-tethered to human interests is also unique (although, after some thought, it makes sense only if you assume that only humans can be the cause of counterproductive behavior). Aqualung's Machine and the idea of Feedback music are interesting, as is the Digital Carnivore, the most Gibsonesqe aspect in the book.

A few first-novel caveats should be noted. Jarpe tends to overplay withholding information from the reader, and this occasionally becomes annoying as Aqualung is slowly revealed after long stretches as the viewpoint character to have been Rifkin, and therefore a 50-year-old who has been in hiding for more than 20 years but somehow retaining his cutting-edge musical and technical skills. The novel also could have had more philosophical depth if Cheeseman had not been portrayed as so obsessively and amorally evil, thereby short-circuiting the political question of whether the Earth will be improved by unified world government.

But Radio Freefall is an excellent first science-fiction novel and will be enjoyed by fans of rock music and science fiction alike. The book clearly brings Matthew Jarpe into the spotlight as a new SF writer to watch.