Title:	Prisoners
Read more on: #:	reviews
Date:	Wed, Jun 8th, 2005 at 1:53 am
Security:	public
The flowers tell me I'm:	accomplished

Since the Cert. Ed. finished, extra work stuff doesn’t seem nearly as stressful or time consuming.  Blogging is once again possible…

I’ve owed Rupe and Jon a review of The Prisoner’s Dilemma for some time now, so finally here it is.

With just the right mix of satire and surrealism to capture the spirit of the TV series, plus topical relevance and enough commentary and character depth to warrant the significant word count, this is not only the best Prisoner novel so far (competition includes Thomas M. Disch) but is likely to remain so for some time (potential competition includes Robert Sheckley).
The main themes of media control and behaviour-predicting technology have complex connections, going deep enough into chaos theory, modelling and programming for hard SF, exploring authoritarian manipulation of the media enough for Chomsky and of personal relationships enough for Orwell, while providing enough good, old-fashioned surreal parody, humour and action that, despite these themes, the novel avoids bleakness and has great readability.
This mixture suits the setting and characters, both new and familiar.  Number 6 cannot be allowed to grow in depth or diminish in mystery by too much, which you’d think would present a problem for a novel of this size based around him.  He manages to remain stoic, teetering between the conventional and the unpredictable in ways that, as we all know, are some day to send him totally Fallout.  The mixture of ambiguity and predictability is tied very much into the chaos/prediction theme, in clever ways that I won’t spoil, but mostly through his interaction with 18, an interesting “opposite number” whose contrasts and distinctions with 6 provide an indirect exploration of his motives, allowing him to retain enough mystery to remain intriguing.
There are some fabulous characters, including a 101 based on Alan Turing and a group of young rebel surrealists known as “The Irrationals”, whose exploits were the high point of the novel for me (and not just because I know who half of them were based on…though I did laugh out loud at the line “Equinox disappeared – just threw up his arms and vanished”).  The Protoverse and the Prisonerverse mesh extremely well, but for those who don’t know of the former: a) the references are not overt, and missing them won’t affect your understanding or enjoyment of the rest of the novel, and b) remind me to point you to the web page when they’ve got it working.
Most of the dialogue remained as true to McGoohan as is possible for anybody else, with some fabulously pithy, quick-fire exchanges between 6 and 2.  Longer sections of dialogue presented more of a problem, since these were avoided in the series where possible but necessary in a medium which has to bring characters to life verbally, while much of McGoohan’s performance was physical.  Physical descriptions of McGoohan’s mannerisms were spot-on, but can’t help seeming a little comical when written down.  To be fair, it was just that kind of performance, and the writers had to tread a fine line between giving the character enough depth for a novel and not turning him into somebody else entirely.  Overall, they managed exceptionally well, and while I sometimes felt he was giving away more of himself than number 6 would (the roadrunner conversation), I never felt that he wasn’t number 6.
However, there are some things the written word can do that the TV series never could, and I doubt that all the CGI in the world could do quite as much as Jon and Rupe have to make Rover scary.  No more the bouncy weather balloon, but a strange, screeching amorphous blob of pure terror that eats you alive, body and soul, piece by piece.  What the Irrationals do to it is wonderful, and its revenge more so.  I am very tempted to quote here, but will hold back and allow you to read it for yourself.
If I had a criticism, it would be the sheer number of good ideas they’ve used in the one novel.  It covers loyalty, betrayal, individuality, community, celebrity, reality TV, terrorism, media manipulation, social engineering and chaos theory; personally, I really would’ve been tempted to hold a few plotlines back for later.  Expertly interwoven as they are, it smacks of the authors not expecting to get another chance at doing a Prisoner novel, which would be a shame.

If you're convinced, ISBN is 0-9677280-5-3, and you can order it from here or find it at Forbidden Planet.