Black Out (novel)

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novel
title Black out
country Germany
author Andreas Eschbach
publishing company arena
First publication 2010
expenditure German

Black Out is a 2010 novel by the German author Andreas Eschbach . The novel is about a teenage hacker who is wanted worldwide and tries to stop a threat to humanity. The novel is continued through the books Hide Out and Time Out .

content

The 17-year-old Christopher Kidd, known as the Computer Kid , is a computer genius and became known when, at the age of 13, he smuggled a virus program into the software of her employer from his mother's work PC because his mother had made a mistake and otherwise the grandparents' house lost. After the matter was exposed, his mother lost her job. The whole family then moved to England, where his father found a job with a professor who was researching the possibilities of a brain interface for microprocessor-controlled prostheses.

A colleague of Christopher's father decides on his own to have the first prototype of the computer chip implanted. Success comes when he now has a direct, mentally controllable Internet connection and thus initially with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? occurs. With the money he won, he founds a company and set about networking as many people as possible with the computer chips. As a result, people form what is known as coherence and lose their individual identity. After Christopher's parents have also become so-called upgraders, they force their son to join Coherence as well.

Due to a defect in his implanted chip, Christopher can switch it off at will. He decides to look for the famous dropout Jeremiah Jones, who distrusts any technology, in order to tell him about the threat posed by the cyborg- like upgraders. Christopher goes with Jones' daughter Serenity and her brother Kyle in search of the dropout colony.

Christopher makes it clear to Jones and the others how great the threat is now. Over a hundred thousand people are said to have been equipped with chips, networked and robbed of their identity, including those responsible for all important positions in the military and secret service. You then decide to do something about it.

Together with Jones and a few other dropouts, they want to destroy a factory in Silicon Valley where the computer chips are manufactured. On arrival, however, the factory is empty and Christopher is captured by several upgraders and his father. You want to supplement his defective chip with an additional, intact one. Christopher hacked into the Internet with his computer chip implant and, with the help of his ability, managed to paralyze the national power grid and provoke a gigantic blackout. However, his plan fails. At the last second, the rushing group around Jeremiah Jones overpowers the upgraders. The team escapes with Christopher's father.

The professor, who also lived among the dropouts and who had headed the brain interface research group at the time, tried to remove the chip from Christopher's father. Christopher confesses to Jones that he just wanted to save his father and explains that this may only have been the beginning of a great war.

background

Part of the scientific basis of the book has already become a reality: 52-year-old Jan Scheuermann was paralyzed at the age of 37 and her brain could no longer control her movements. With a neural interface, she can only move an artificial arm through her thoughts. This experiment, which previously only worked in the laboratory, roughly corresponds to the idea of ​​the prosthesis maker Heinz Raumacher, Christopher Kidd's grandfather. The manipulation of brains using electrical sensors has already been successfully tested in animal experiments.

Neurobiologists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology made mice believe they received electric shocks when they received only certain pulses of light. The scientist Ed Boyden can let mice fall asleep and wake up again at the push of a button. The scientists at Duke University North Carolina managed to use helmets that were connected to the brains of rats to equip the animals with an additional sense, with which they can recognize infrared light through their whiskers. Miguel Nicolelis has already managed to connect the brains of two rats to one another. The scientist believes that a network of connected brains would spread in humans as quickly as the Internet once did.

characters

Christopher's mother

Christopher's mother is in a relationship with James Kidd and has a son named Christopher Kidd, also called Computer Kidd. Christopher's mother grew up in simple circumstances. Money was important to her, so she did an apprenticeship in banking, studied finance and later worked as one of the few women in foreign exchange trading in a bank in Frankfurt. There she met her husband James Kidd, who worked there in the computer department. The family lived in Frankfurt. Christopher was cared for at home by his father after the birth. His mother kept working. For her, work and success were of great importance. Christopher became a computer genius. Computer Kidd sneaked into his mother's work computer as a teenager because she had made a mistake and Christopher's grandparents would otherwise have to sell their house. From there he infected the whole world with a computer virus. As a result, his mother was released and the family moved to London.

Christopher Kidd

Christopher Kidd is the son of James Kidd and Mrs. Kidd. His grandfather is a prosthesis maker, his grandmother was a painter until she went blind and finally died. His best friends are Kyle and his sister Serenity. Even in elementary school, Christopher was better at programming than his father. He sent a virus that paralyzed the network for a few days. Christopher is with the rebels to stop the coherence, as he knows about it because he got a chip himself, luckily flawed.

James Kidd

Christopher's father, James Kidd, lived with his family in Frankfurt until his son hacked his mother's bank system and the media attention got too big. So they moved to London, where he works for Doctor Connery. A chip is implanted in him on a business trip. A little later his wife too. Now Christopher is brought into the coherence, but his father gives him a marked, broken chip. Christopher can switch off this chip and so he can flee from the coherence. At the end of "Black Out" James is operated on by Doctor Connery and Doctor Lundkvist. After that, James is in a coma for a long time. But when he wakes up he is no longer in coherence and normal.

Christopher's grandmother

Chris' grandmother was a painter, but she never sold her pictures or only for little money because she could not part with her pictures. In old age she slowly became blind from a rare disease. That depressed her, but her husband, a prosthesis maker, didn't know what to do either. She eventually dies from falling off the stairs.

Dr. Connery

Dr. Connery is the surgeon who worked with Christopher, Linus and Christopher's father on deciphering the optic nerve. He fled to Jeremiah Jones after Linus had the interface computer implanted and Christopher's father and Dr. Lundkvist removes the chip.

Heinz Raumeister

Heinz Raumeister, grandfather of Christopher Kidd and father of James Kidd, is married to the grandmother of Christopher Kidd. Heinz Raumeister is a prosthesis maker and has always fought to ensure that people who lost an arm or a leg in war zones could use their arm or leg again even though they had little money. He only had a minor plot for the book. Christopher had a good connection with his grandfather. However, Heinz Raumacher could not really live from the merit of the prosthesis work.

The coherence

Coherence is the (evil) association of people who have had one of the computer chips described in the book planted in their brains. Among them are the so-called upgraders, whose job it is to get more people to join Coherence. Since the members of the coherence are networked via the chips, they can communicate information via thought transmission.

Jeremiah Jones

He is the father of Serenity and Kyle. He is the leader of a camp in which there is no technology. On TV they claimed he blew up a kindergarten, but Christopher found out that was not true. He can help Christopher get Dr. To have Connery removed, who is also in the camp.

Lilian Jones

Lilian Jones is the mother of Kyle and Serenity. She is also the wife of Jeremiah Jones but has separated from him. She has dark, almost black, curly hair and black eyes. She seldom lies and you don't see any emotion in her.

Serenity and Kyle

Serenity and Kyle Jones are the daughter and son of Jeremiah Jones and Lilian Jones. They grew up without technology and neither of them have a cell phone to this day. Her parents separated when the two were still children. Serenity and Kyle have lived with their mother ever since. Unlike Serenity, Kyle had contact with her father before that. Serenity meets Christopher. Despite initial distrust, the two siblings, especially Serenity, like Christopher. Serenity befriends the Indian girl Madonna at camp. The two take Christopher to their father, where Serenity meets him for the first time after the breakup. While Kyle comes with the plan to blow up the factory, Serenity is assigned to watch the phone with her stepmother Melanie and Madonna.

Linus Meany and Ayumi

Linus Meany is a former employee in Dr. Connery. He was the first person to have an interface implanted. He won the Internet access in his brain from the English television series Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? . He then moved to Singapore in Asia. There he founded a company that specialized in biotechnology. She also made the chips that connect the coherence. He was one of the first members of the coherence and tried to include Christopher and his parents in the coherence in Singapore, but this failed because they managed to escape. His appearance includes a stocky body with broad shoulders and a lot of tattoos and piercings. He also has a ruby ​​in his front tooth. You can always find the latest electronic toys in his pockets, and now and then he behaves a little sexualized. His girlfriend Ayumi is probably from Singapore and is beautiful. She also speaks excellent English, which is evident from her stay in Singapore. Like her friend, she was one of the earliest members of Coherence.

subjects

The central theme of the book is the criticism of modern (computer) technology. Christopher Kidd - and numerous other people appearing in the book - are cyborgs who have been implanted with a chip that allows them to communicate with one another, and which enables them or forces them to share a mental unity as the so-called "coherence" to form a single central consciousness.

In this book, Eschbach processes the central thoughts of Joseph Weizenbaum and Neil Postman , the disembarkation of Jeremiah Jones is reminiscent of Henry David Thoreau , the terrorism accused of him of Theodore Kaczynski .

line

The novel is conceived as a trilogy. In November 2011, the second volume was published with Hide Out . The third volume, Time Out , was released in August 2012.

Audio books

literature

  • Andreas Eschbach: Black Out. Arena Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-401-06062-0 .
  • Johanna Greule: The brain engineers. In: Der Spiegel , 49 (2013) pp. 121–130 ( online , PDF).

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Andreas Eschbach: The new youth book series starts: BLACK * OUT