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The Extremes
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780446676458
Edition: Reprint
ISBN: 0446676454
Label: Aspect
Manufacturer: Aspect
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: May 01, 2000
Publisher: Aspect
Studio: Aspect
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Editorial Review:
A bizarre and horrible coincidence draws FBI special agent Teresa Simons to England: on the same day that a mass murderer killed her husband and fourteen others in Kingwood City, Texas, another spree killer massacred seventeen in the small Sussex town of Bulverton. Teresa seeks to understand her husband's death by exploring the similar but unrelated event in Bulverton, as she once explored reconstructions of historical mass murders in ExEx (Extreme Experience, a brutally realistic form of virtual reality) to train for her FBI job. In Bulverton she finds a commercial ExEx parlor, which, she is horrified and fascinated to discover, offers a Bulverton mass-murder scenario. As Teresa explores both the town and the scenario of Bulverton, the separations between reality and ExEx, between ExEx murder reconstructions, between past and present, begin to blur--and so does the separation between Kingwood City and Bulverton, as Teresa realizes the simultaneity of the events may be more than a coincidence.
A New York Times Recommended Book, The Extremes received the British Science Fiction Association award for 1999. Christopher Priest's previous novel, The Prestige, won the World Fantasy Award and the James Tait Black Award. --Cynthia Ward
A bizarre and horrible coincidence draws FBI special agent Teresa Simonsto England: on the same day that a mass murderer killed her husband and fourteenothers in Kingwood City, Texas, another spree killer massacred seventeen in thesmall Sussex town of Bulverton. Teresa seeks to understand her husband's deathby exploring the similar but unrelated event in Bulverton, as she once exploredreconstructions of historical mass murders in ExEx (Extreme Experience, abrutally realistic form of virtual reality) to train for her FBI job. InBulverton she finds a commercial ExEx parlor, which, she is horrified andfascinated to discover, offers a Bulverton mass-murder scenario. As Teresaexplores both the town and the scenario of Bulverton, the separations betweenreality and ExEx, between ExEx murder reconstructions, between past and present,begin to blur--and so does the separation between Kingwood City and Bulverton,as Teresa realizes the simultaneity of the events may be more than acoincidence.A New York Times Recommended Book, The Extremes received theBritish Science Fiction Association award for 1999. Christopher Priest'sprevious novel, ThePrestige, won the World Fantasy Award and the James Tait Black Award.--Cynthia Ward
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Not Free SF Reader
A somewhat underwhelming and slow novel. A female agent is taking a break for her job, mostly for psychological reasons, after her husband has been killed in an operation goes wrong.
She goes to a town in England where a crazed gunman ran wild, and starts exploring virtual reality situations through sophisticated and probably illegal software that replicates violent situations and training.
Somewhat pointless end, too.
Rating:  - a disappointment
The novel started out with a very strong and intriguing beginning, but by the second half it was getting really tedious with the protagonist's repeated virtual experiences and a loss of direction to the story. I can't list all the disappointments that came out of the end of the novel -- they would be spoilers -- but whatever the author was trying to accomplish in the limp ending was certainly lost on me.
Rating:  - No payoff !!! I Feel Foolish For Hanging In There !!
By the time I got two thirds of the way through, I had devised three or four potential endings in my mind and was looking forward to the author's take. WHAT A LETDOWN. I now feel embarrassed that I invested all this time just to witness a complete and total LACK of anything even resembling an ending. With about 20 pages to go, I realized something was fishy. I should have seen it coming. The first half of the book gives absolutely NO CLUE whatsoever what the point of the book is.
I was ... Read More
Rating:  - Virtually real
I picked this up by chance at a bookstore, never heard of the author prior. I was about 50 pages in when I recalled I had originally found it in the SF section. Where was the science fiction part of the story? This was starting out as just a good novel, cleanly written, with a great eye for insignificant detail that helps flesh out the tale. Having read SF throughout most of my reading career, I know most of it is plot driven with characters and settings just used to push along the nifty story. This ... Read More
Rating: - An okay not-quite-finished book . . .
This is a rather frustrating book -- generally well written, filled with interesting ideas, but sometimes inconsistent and sometimes simply unbelievable. Teresa Simmons and her husband are trained FBI field agents in what seems to be our present, except that both were trained with the help of an extremely sophisticated virtual reality system that put them into various roles in a wide range of historically-based "killer" scenarios. Through repeated insertions into each scenario, they had to learn to react ... Read More
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