Review - Sentenced to Prism

There is no doubt that a good suit makes a chap feel good about himself, about the world at large and about his tailor. There’s nothing quite like a decent pin-stripe to make one feel a little taller, a decent whalebone-reinforced waistcoat to make one feel a little trimmer and a generous helping of space under the armpit to make one feel like one can keep one’s Glock safe and snug but ready for action (with fifteen in the mag and one up the spout) without – and this IS important – ruining the line of the suit.

Put it this way. Think of a suit. If you unconsciously put the word ‘shell’ in front of the term, believe me, the rest of this review is not for you.

Clothes make the man. In this case, a suit (or suits) make man an explorer, or a swimmer, or hiker, or runner, or whatever, it’s like the ultimate dressing up box. In this tale of the Thranx Commonwealth, Alan Dean Foster introduces us to a fascinating concept, a society that has evolved to the point where they wear specialized computerized hi-tech suits in everyday life.

There’s no doubt at all that a well cut suit makes one feel quite the thing. It’s so useful for the cut of a suit to add an extra inch across the shoulders for instance, or maybe flatter by holding that stomach in a bit more than nature is doing these days.

To say nothing of the material, a good tweed suit, for instance, should be able to protect the wearer from anything ranging from a roll in the gorse up to a fairly small yield tactical nuclear blast. A rather well cut dark wool suit gives the appearance of being in control, possibly of the finances of a major merchant bank, or the plans of an evil dictator to take over the world with secret nuclear arsenal, depending on how evil you feel up to being. A shell suit has its place too. And that place is on a bonfire.

Or you may wear a diving suit, or a dinner suit, as your profession or perversion dictates. Suits are important, they are all around us and they are becoming more prevalent every day. Uniforms are turning into suits. Don’t wear a uniform? If you are between fifteen and twenty five and wear a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, you wear a uniform. If you are over the age of thirty and wear cargo shorts and a polo then you a) should know better and b) see (a) but c) mainly, you wear a uniform. And you should know better. Okay, so imagine a suit with a computer and a food dispenser in it. Most of us currently describe such suits as ‘home’ (and this point is picked up on) but the human/snail hybrid, without the slime and antenna thingies is well explored here. If you could get your food, entertainment and conversation through a suit, what sort of civilization would that be?

Obviously, a one that likes their suits, imagine having a telly and a sofa with you all the time! But this novel also addresses what happens when you lose that comfort.

The suits in this novel house exoskeletons and computers that verge on artificial intelligence. It’s made clear that this has had an effect on society, from people feeling naked even when clothed, but without the suits that go over their cloths, to comparisons of the suits as mobile homes. But without the trailer trash connotations.

So what happens when your state of the art environmental suit that you rely on to keep you alive on a totally alien planet, where the life forms are not even carbon based, fails? That’s the point of the tale. A man reconnects with his own body, with his survival instinct and with some very, very strange alien life forms.

There’s an awful lot going on in this book, of which suits and mankind’s reliance on technology (and a certain type of technology at that) is just a part. What it also offers if an outstanding exploration of just how alien alien contact could be.