It is a great premise for a story, fantastical concepts that you have never imagined.
Enjoyed reading this and can't wait to read other books from this author.

Icicle is a really intriguing story - the idea of the singularity, of human consciousness meeting technology, has always interested me. This explodes those boundaries with multi-billionaire Braxton Thorpe who is regenerated after being cryogenically frozen into a digital being. As he funds a team and works with them to expand the "human" (and feline!) digital presence in the matrix, they explore the dangers facing humankind. The concept is so interesting, that it was easy to overlook the highly technical language in the text - this did mean skimming over quite a bit in several sections, but honestly, you don't need to understand it to love the concept and the story. The character start of a little cheesy, especially the women, who are written as almost manically sex-driven, but they do develop a little better as the story does on. While I would have loved their characterization to be smoothed out a fair bit in the beginning, the plot is so compelling, you can't help but read on.

Icicle starts with a familiar premise - super rich technology tycoon Braxton Thorpe arranges to have his head frozen after death, waiting for sufficient advances to bring him back to life (or in this case, virtual life as a machine intelligence). Where Williscroft maps new territory is the way he explores feasible and reasonable scientific and cultural advances across the world, with an emphasis on global (and intrastellar) connectivity.

The book is well written, with mostly believable characters and motivations throughout (although if you can understand the mind of a cat, then you are better than I). There are some signs of American-centric patriotism, but this doesn't detract from the story (a few other cultures would have been nice to explore).

There is a very solid scientific and mathematical background to the novel, but you don't need to understand any of it in depth to enjoy reading. There are sufficient explanations throughout to keep any interested readers in touch with the methods employed - otherwise just sit back and enjoy the ride.

ICICLE: A TENSOR MATRIX is the first instalment in Robert G Williscroft’s hard, science fiction story line focusing on engineer and entrepreneur Braxton Thorpe, and his consciousness journey into the electronic matrix.

Told from third person perspective ICICLE: A TENSOR MATRIX follows engineer and entrepreneur Braxton Thorpe into the twenty-second century. Approximately one hundred years earlier, Braxton Thorpe died but his head was cryogenically frozen until such a time the technology became available to reanimate the human consciousness. Fast forward to the early twenty-second century wherein Braxton Thorpe’s consciousness is uploaded into a tensor matrix (ala Tron), where our hero will discover he is not the only consciousness ‘aware’ in the matrix. With all of human knowledge available to Braxton Thorpe, our hero, along with scientists, mathematicians, computer specialists and an alien civilization known as the Oort, will endeavour to save Earth and humanity from a Marauder invasion.

ICICLE: A TENSOR MATRIX is a complex, infinitely detailed, technologically diverse, hard science fiction story line that focuses on the possibility of the awareness of the human consciousness in a computer matrix, and the resulting immortality for those willing to undergo a consciousness exchange. Robert G Williscroft pulls the reader into a world of wormhole portals, alien civilizations, rapid planetary transport, and the duality of mankind both in and out of the matrix. When Earth is threatened by an unknown enemy, politics plays hard and fast, and the resulting strain mirrors twenty and twenty-first century tensions.

If you are a fan of hard, science fiction (using mathematics, chemistry and physics) ICICLE is the perfect vehicle to ask the questions what if and how.



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