Synners by Pat Cadigan
"Synners" is a science fiction narrative set in a contrasting landscape of Los Angeles, exploring themes of corporate greed and the underground hacker culture. The story centers on Diversifications, Inc., a corporate entity focused on profit through virtual entertainment, and its artists, including Visual Mark and Gina, who navigate the challenges of a market-driven world. In stark contrast is the Mimosa, a hacker haven that fosters community among young tech enthusiasts like Sam, who is the daughter of one of the commercial writers, Gabe. The plot thickens with the introduction of "sockets," a groundbreaking medical technology enabling direct neural connections to the internet, which Diversifications, Inc. exploits to enhance their offerings.
However, this new technology comes with unforeseen consequences, as the characters find themselves battling a contagion—an information virus that spreads through their neural interfaces, causing catastrophic effects. As the narrative unfolds, the characters grapple with personal demons while attempting to save both themselves and their digital landscape. The story culminates in a struggle to reclaim agency over their lives and technology, emphasizing the importance of human connection and resilience against overwhelming odds. Overall, "Synners" delves into the intersection of humanity and technology, highlighting the complexities of modern existence in a rapidly evolving digital age.
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Subject Terms
Synners
First published: 1991
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Science fiction—cyberpunk
Time of work: The twenty-first century
Locale: Los Angeles, California
The Plot
Synners juxtaposes two visions of Los Angeles, the big business of Olympic Boulevard and the ruined piers of the Mimosa, the post-earthquake name of the Manhattan-Hermosa strip. In the realm of corporate entertainment, artists such as sometime lovers Visual Mark and Gina, as well as unhappy commercial writers such as Gabe Ludovic, struggle to survive in the wholly profit-driven Diversifications, Inc. In comparison, the Mimosa hacker culture resembles a family, providing a warm haven for youthful hackers such as Gabe’s emancipated daughter Sam, her friends Keely and Rosa, and their father figure, the all-knowing Fez. The two worlds meet when a new medical technology—“sockets”—permits the first human direct neural interface with the global net.
Diversifications, Inc. purchases the copyright to the sockets in an attempt to capitalize on the next market phenomenon, virtual entertainment. The company immediately implants Visual Mark and Gina so that the video artists can have product ready when the newly socketed emerge from their operations. For Visual Mark, whose reputation for hot video rivals his legendary drug use, having sockets provides the opportunity for which he has waited his entire life. With an entire system in which to visualize new scenes to go with new music, he quickly leaves his body, or “meat,” behind. His advanced imagination allows him to expand into a new creature, the first synthesized human, existing only in cyberspace. There he meets another cyber-creature, Dr. Art Fish, the unintended product of a chance meeting between an artificial intelligence and a virus vaccine.
A problem with the system is that when humans gain access to the net, they spread their own frailties. When Mark’s meat suffers a stroke, the spike is transferred into the global system. Like a virus, the stroke spreads contagiously throughout the world, crashing the network and growing more powerful as it proceeds. The socketed particularly suffer: Caught in the seductive lure of the stroke’s fatal information pattern, they either die or kill themselves. Only the socketed who are off-line at the time of the stroke, including Gina and Gabe, survive. With Keely’s help, the two make the trek from Diversifications, Inc. to the Mimosa, where Gabe is reunited with Sam.
Sam manages to hack a way into the defunct system and in doing so reawakens Art Fish, who has dampened himself to avoid the stroke’s attention. When Art wakes, he finds Mark alive in the system. Theorizing that if on-line brain illness exists, then on-line therapy must be possible, the hackers decide to try to cure the system. To protect themselves during the process, Art and Mark retract into a modified handheld computer that runs off of Sam’s body. The two merge in the process, and as Markt they help Gina and Gabe perform the therapy. In the following struggle, Gina and Gabe must both come to terms with their past demons, Gina her quasi-unrequited love for Mark and Gabe his nagging insecurities. In the end, human initiative, as expressed in Gina and Gabe’s commitment to each other, wins out over the stroke’s merely viral drive.