counting heads

This past weekend Rakka and I went to Bailey/Coy so she could pick out her birthday present from c&b. I just tagged along to check it out. I ended up dropping 75 bucks; I cleaned them out of Iain M. Banks.
Reading the culture books again reminded me that I've never talked about Counting Heads by David Marusek. And it reminded me of Banks. It's a vicious circle.

I couldn't help comparing the two. I kept thinking "this is like something from Banks, but not quite as cool."

Counting Heads is more focused on nanotech, cloning and the like, which makes it more modern. Maybe fadishly so. But I really shouldn't compare them. I just do it because of the technology discussed is similar. The themes are actually much different.

Heads gets fairly deep into the ethics of technology. Nanotech helps people in a lot of ways, but it's also facilitated a police state that can know, literally, your every move. Clones are 'free' in that they can choose whatever job they want, but they're made to do one thing and they're not really good for anything else. And etc. You get the idea.

Over all, pretty fun. Not quite as polished as it could be, maybe.