‘Exadelic Takes A Shot At Being Silicon Valleys ‘Ready Player One

We don't often review books here at TechCrunch, let alone fiction, but occasionally a work is so carefully crafted for the ecosystem we cover that it warrants a quick release. So here's Exadelic, a sci-fi novel from former TC collaborator John Evans that does its best to match Ready Player One's benchmark density in the Bay Area tech community, but thankfully , is doing well. A little more.

Now let's admit that this comparison is not entirely fair. Ernest Cline's astonishing success was rich in references but lacking in other areas, although perhaps its biggest problem was its enthusiastic followers who failed to see how the book was relevant to their own life experiences and how empty he was to others.

So if this sounds like "Ready Player One, but Silicon Valley," that's understandable and somewhat accurate. But even though Exedelic is clearly a liberal film, with nostalgia evident in its title and beyond its premise, the plot quickly moves beyond its premature reliance on nods and winks.

At the risk of spoiling a little more than you'll find in the cover, imagine if you and your friends were at the center of a deep AI-driven technological conspiracy that could determine the fate of the planet. It's not the most original hypothesis, but believe me when I say that the scope is constantly and unexpectedly expanding.

The first few chapters played out like a tech thriller – in which a tech lead must survive being targeted by a malicious AI due to his limited intelligence – and to be honest, I was worried it would continue that way. Fortunately, the plot starts very quickly and never lets up, allowing Evans to exercise his imagination more effectively.

To say more would deprive the potential reader of the pleasure of a strange book deeply rooted in today's technological and moral zeitgeist. Out-of-control artificial intelligence, unscrupulous venture capital and questioning the nature of reality are at the heart of the plot — in other words, the same ideas you'll find in every week of TechCrunch reporting. There’s even a touch of magic!

(It should be noted that some sexual violence is central to parts of the book, and while this was a reference to some sort of trans philosophy, it's something I think in retrospect it doesn't shouldn't have been.)

While I think Xadelic is a great book to take on a plane or to the beach, I think the reason it fails is because it relies too heavily on cutting-edge Bay Area technology. And that's a plus: it relies on Evans' obvious familiarity with the world of startups, technology, and investing, not to mention turn-of-the-century San Francisco, which many readers will recognize and appreciate.

But there is a certain subjectivity in the process of extrapolating such a vast story from a single moment and point of view. Like 1960s science fiction, it envisions a future built on tube television and the analog computer, limited by today's technology and visual attitudes. Imagine a computer based on a mouse and keyboard in the year 3000: this does not correspond to the imagination proposed elsewhere.

Of course, many classic works of science fiction deviate from this, but Xadelic seems content to be a product of its time, finding value in imaginatively mixing and matching these ideas to create an original transfer , or even a real mash-up . If you can handle a bit of the nostalgia and sadness of the main character (his companions are more interesting), Xadelic is a fun ride.