Ian MacDonald explores the gestalt of transhumanism in a radically unfamiliar dystopian future. Terminal Cafe projects the future of the United States if we stopped pretending Brazil doesn't exist and embraced the Afro-Carribbean elements of our memetic function. This book is a hideously detailed, grotesquely erogenous exploration of a future that, correct me if wrong but virtually nobody since the 1980s has seriously looked at. If you geek out over the unique and Byzantinely complex, this book should leave you hankering for more; unfortunately there is no more, at least as far as I know he has never written a prequel or sequel. Too bad! The astrological-scale themes he deftly maneuvers into position stretch the imagination to such an extent that you might forgive some cartoonish characters. Actually, MacDonald's heroes are realistically imperfect: the powerful lawyer YoYo Mok comes from a really bad neighborhood, for instance, and she has a believable backstory with which Asian cyberpunk fans may very well identify. Santiago Columbar, one of the main movers and shakers, is a designer drug guru right off the game master's board at a Cyberpunk convention. Remember Cyberpunk? Nanotechnology, Non-Apocalyptic Fall of Christianity, World Domination by Corporations, Animist Cultism, Interplanetary Colonialism, and Ultra-Progressive Immortalism are all game pieces for MacDonald. The circumvallation he sets in place provides covering fire for a typically Brazilian acceptance of Transgender people and Sex
Workers. Ian MacDonald has taken so many threads of ideation to their logical conclusion in one book that it beggars belief he has never touched this skein since. This book positively begs for a prequel. So many story lines are hinted at, so many plots laid down and never expanded. Have you ever read Footfall by Niven and Pournell? Remember how heavy it felt when you picked it up? This book ought to have weighed that much. Terminal Cafe is a hallucinogenic cocktail offered one time only, at a bargain price. Unfortunately, it's from private stock; no-one knows when or if any like it will be offered again. That is why this reviewer has read it over.. and over... and over. This novel is unique; it is worlds away from contemporary popular novels. As with any well-written SF novel, this future is plausibly achievable within our lifetime! It's not that far off the mark. Some of this is bound to come to pass. This novel is visionary; it has some adolescent passages. I beg you to forgive them and look at the overarching themes. Plenty got lost in the transition to the 21st century. Read Ian MacDonald and recover your future.