Broken Frontier

Minority Report from the other side of the cell leads to an arresting ride.

In the far-off future, a special tattoo uploads and streams everyone's consciousness to the Overmind, an all-knowing database that scans and deduces when people are going to commit crimes; suicidal thoughts here, intent to harm there, all of it comes up to prevent the crimes before they happen. In fact, it's so successful, crime rates have plummeted.

While Minority Report focused on preventing crimes before they happen (and the concept of free will; arresting you for something you may do in the future is akin to killing a child Hitler), that's not the crux of Nowhere Man. Instead, the lead of the book, Mason, is ready to take out the Overmind for pure freedom; uploading your intelligence and having your thoughts scanned is not true freedom, even if you're safer for it.

Guggenheim's writing is strong, but definitely picks up once the reader deduces what's going on; it's like being thrown into the deep end of the pool. Kang's work isn't outstanding, relying on shadows too often, but there are good forms throughout, and the occasional stand-out facial expression make Kang an artist to look out for. A segment in the book that features children's television characters stands out to the versatility of the artist, to note.

Nowhere Man is off to a good start, but unlike the characters in the book, we'll have to actually see how things unfold before issuing a final verdict.