Ambient (Jack Womack, 1987)

Jack Womack's Dryco series, which I've been meaning to read for years, is one part speculative and one part satire. Confuse these at your own risk. If you read it strictly as a dystopia, you will find it a little too whimsical. If you approach it as a work of satire, you will find it too bleak. Womack's future world is seriously messed up, but the path that lead from here to there involves a lot of downright silly occurrences, such as the deification (for real) of Elvis Presley, and the purchase of an entire borough of New York by a corporate head with more money and power than any government on the planet.

Although about 25% the size of the last science fiction book I read, REAMDE, it isn't a light read. Womack employs two dialects (Ambient and Bizspeak) in the dialogue (which sometimes bleeds into the narrative) that can bog the casual reader down, especially those who need to know the meaning of each word they read. If you try to parse the meanings word by word, you will be in for a world of frustration. I recommend you just glide through the language and let context clear things up. I will 100% definitely continue to read this series - five more books await!

As this wraps up the science fiction reading for 2014, here's a quick review of what I read in the genre for the year:
Starship Troopers - Robert Heinlein: A classic of science fiction.
Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner: Another award-winner, though less well-known today.
The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern: SF for YA, slyly packaged as regular historical fiction.
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr.: Yet another award winner and an important work in the mingling of theology with science fiction.
REAMDE - Neal Stephenson: A massive tome that is a thriller at heart.
Ambient - Jack Womack: You're looking at it right now!