Damaged Goods

My road to recovery from prostate cancer surgery continues to go well. I had a follow-up visit with my surgeon’s office and learned that the cancer had neither worsened nor showed signs of escaping the prostate, so there’s a good chance that I’m now cancer free. Of course, my recovery journey will continue for several more weeks and there will be follow-up testing and physical therapy. That all noted, because of my post-surgical limitations, I’ve had time to read. This past week, I dove into the novel Damaged Goods by Richard James. Damaged Goods is the first novel in the world of First Action Bureau created by Jamie Anderson and Nicholas Briggs. Set a little more than 40 years in the future, the First Action Bureau of the title mines the world’s computers and surveillance equipment to find evidence of crimes about to be committed. Once they have a high probability of such crimes, they send in agents to intervene and hopefully prevent the crime. The bureau’s number one target is a group known as the Dheghomites, a terrorist organization who oppose the way computers have wormed their way into every aspect of society and use violence as a means to bring radical change.

In the Big Finish production of First Action Bureau, we met Nero Jones, the bureau’s best agent. The novel Damaged Goods is the story of how the bureau recruited Jones. When we meet her, Nero is in a juvenile correction facility, planning her escape. She almost succeeds, but is captured at the perimeter fence, where she’s taken back to the cell she shares with Meena, one of the few people she’s ever felt close to. Oddly, Nero isn’t punished or even chastised for her escape attempt. Instead, her mother comes to take her home and she’s told she will start college the next day. For a few hours, it looks like her life may be back on course, even if tensions are running a bit high with her mother. Then she goes to her bedroom to discover a man named Nathan Drake. Drake then tells Nero that he would like to recruit her for the First Action Bureau. Needless to say, Nero is just about as shocked by getting a job offer in person in her bedroom as any of us would be. She needs time to think about it.

The next day, while she’s on her way to her first day of classes, a Dheghomite bomb blows a hole in the monorail track ahead her train. Nero jumps into action and with a scramble out onto the train car and some quick thinking, she manages to jam the wheels just in time to keep all the passengers from plunging to their doom. Looking down from the monorail car, she thinks she spots Drake in the crowd below, as though he knew this was about to happen. The events make Nero much more interested in the First Action Bureau and the mysterious Nathan Drake.

Seeing out the bureau per Drake’s instructions, Nero joins up, begins training and is soon sent on her first mission, prevent a Dheghomite plot to destroy the Arthur C. Clarke space elevator. During the mission and immediately after, Nero begins to realize that not only can the bureau predict the future, they can influence it by wiping memories and implanting new memories. What’s more, if the bureau can do this, can others do it as well.

Damaged Goods by Richard James proves to be an action/adventure thrill ride of a novel. Along the way, he gives us glimpses at the potential uses and abuses of artificial intelligence, deep fakes, and predictive algorithms and delivers a grim picture of a future where it may be difficult to discern reality from fiction. That said, he also gives us some hope for the future by showing a world where a space elevator has been built and people are using that as a launching point for other places within the solar system. If you like a good suspenseful novel with a healthy dose of science fiction world building, it’s well worth checking out Damaged Goods by Richard James. Currently, the novel only exists as a signed, limited edition hardcover from Anderson Entertainment at: https://shop.gerryanderson.com/products/first-action-bureau-damaged-goods-hardcover-novel. Hopefully there will also be a follow-up paperback or ebook edition so more people can enjoy the novel after the initial print run has sold out.

Of course, I have long been interested in artificial intelligence, direct brain interface with computers and alternate realities. I saw echoes in this novel of my character Computer from Firebrandt’s Legacy and The Pirates of Sufiro along with some of the reality-bending stuff that happens in Children of the Old Stars and Heirs of the New Earth. You can check out my science fiction series at: http://www.davidleesummers.com/books.html#pirate_legacy.