History Literature / Dopamine

''Dopamine'' rests on the realization that many Creator/WilliamGibson style tales from the 1980s and 1990s -- stories about omnipotent megacorporations, about weaponized computer viruses and a citizenry that conducts almost all of its interaction in a digital proxy world, about wily purple-haired computer hackers zooming on motorcycles through the neon-lit nighttime streets of gritty metropolises on missions to bust through firewalls, crack encryption algorithms, and thwart artificial intelligence constructs -- essentially describe the actual reality in which we currently live. With the existence of Google, Big Data, 4G cellphones, the NSA's PRISM program, Edward Snowden, Wikileaks, Anonymous, and ''[[TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}} Cyberpunk 2020]]'' having turned out to be still far away in the future as of January 2020, the genre of cyberpunk literature is essentially redundant; there is basically no point with reading ''Literature/SnowCrash'', when the good ol' ''NewYorkTimes'' from January 2020 can actually paint a bleak cyberpunk future being reality today, here and now.

''Dopamine'', therefore, is driven by a plot that sounds like something out of a TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}} source manual. Yet it reads a bit like a Creator/TomClancy tech thriller; describes technology that is not only common but almost downright mundane; and depicts thoroughly researched real-world hacking techniques, often in painstaking and scarily accurate detail.

''Dopamine'' rests on the realization that many Creator/WilliamGibson style tales from the 1980s and 1990s -- stories about omnipotent megacorporations, about weaponized computer viruses and a citizenry that conducts almost all of its interaction in a digital proxy world, about wily purple-haired computer hackers zooming on motorcycles through the neon-lit nighttime streets of gritty metropolises on missions to bust through firewalls, crack encryption algorithms, and thwart artificial intelligence constructs -- essentially describe the actual reality in which we currently live. With the existence of Google, Big Data, 4G cellphones, the NSA's PRISM program, Edward Snowden, Wikileaks, Anonymous, and ''[[TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}} Cyberpunk 2020]]'' having turned out to be still far away in the future as of January 2020, the genre of cyberpunk literature is essentially redundant; there's no point reading ''Literature/SnowCrash'' when you can just open the ''NewYorkTimes''.

''Dopamine'' rests on the realization that many Creator/WilliamGibson style tales from the 1980s and 1990s -- stories about omnipotent megacorporations, about weaponized computer viruses and a citizenry that conducts almost all of its interaction in a digital proxy world, about wily purple-haired computer hackers zooming on motorcycles through the neon-lit nighttime streets of gritty metropolises on missions to bust through firewalls, crack encryption algorithms, and thwart artificial intelligence constructs -- essentially describe the actual reality in which we currently live. With the existence of Google, Big Data, 4G cellphones, the NSA's PRISM program, Edward Snowden, Wikileaks, Anonymous, and ''[[TabletopGame/Cyberpunk Cyberpunk 2020]]'' having turned out to be still far away in the future as of January 2020, the genre of cyberpunk literature is essentially redundant; there's no point reading ''Literature/SnowCrash'' when you can just open the ''NewYorkTimes''.

''Dopamine'' rests on the realization that many Creator/WilliamGibson style tales from the 1980s and 1990s -- stories about omnipotent megacorporations, about weaponized computer viruses and a citizenry that conducts almost all of its interaction in a digital proxy world, about wily purple-haired computer hackers zooming on motorcycles through the neon-lit nighttime streets of gritty metropolises on missions to bust through firewalls, crack encryption algorithms, and thwart artificial intelligence constructs -- essentially describe the actual reality in which we currently live. With the existence of Google, Big Data, 4G cellphones, the NSA's PRISM program, Edward Snowden, Wikileaks, Anonymous, etc., the genre of cyberpunk literature is essentially redundant; there's no point reading ''Literature/SnowCrash'' when you can just open the ''NewYorkTimes''.

''Dopamine'' rests on the realization that many WilliamGibson style tales from the 1980s and 1990s -- stories about omnipotent megacorporations, about weaponized computer viruses and a citizenry that conducts almost all of its interaction in a digital proxy world, about wily purple-haired computer hackers zooming on motorcycles through the neon-lit nighttime streets of gritty metropolises on missions to bust through firewalls, crack encryption algorithms, and thwart artificial intelligence constructs -- essentially describe the actual reality in which we currently live. With the existence of Google, Big Data, 4G cellphones, the NSA's PRISM program, Edward Snowden, Wikileaks, Anonymous, etc., the genre of cyberpunk literature is essentially redundant; there's no point reading ''Literature/SnowCrash'' when you can just open the ''NewYorkTimes''.

* WouldHurtAChild: Ivan Zheleznov, in Act III. The only reason he doesn't kill [[spoiler:Sergey's daughter]] outright is that [[spoiler:it'd be both more profitable and more of a victory over Sergey to groom her into a sex slave.]]

* TooDumbToLive: Danny and his crew, by all rights. They're a bunch of computer geniuses, but their decision to interrupt the Mukhayev gang's breakin of Tungsten is based at least partly on their horribly incorrect assumption that playing SplinterCell gives them any kind of real-world grasp of covert ops. Satish is the only one who has any inkling of just how bad an idea this is.

''Dopamine'' is a 2014 novel by technologist and part-time author MikhailVoloshin. It's a modern-day adaptation of the CyberPunk genre that effectively takes place in the real world of the 2010s.

''Dopamine'' rests on the realization that many WilliamGibson style tales from the 1980s and 1990s -- stories about omnipotent megacorporations, about weaponized computer viruses and a citizenry that conducts almost all of its interaction in a digital proxy world, about wily purple-haired computer hackers zooming on motorcycles through the neon-lit nighttime streets of gritty metropolises on missions to bust through firewalls, crack encryption algorithms, and thwart artificial intelligence constructs -- essentially describe the actual reality in which we currently live. With the existence of Google, Big Data, 4G cellphones, the NSA's PRISM program, Edward Snowden, Wikileaks, Anonymous, etc., the genre of cyberpunk literature is essentially redundant; there's no point reading ''SnowCrash'' when you can just open the ''NewYorkTimes''.

''Dopamine'', therefore, is driven by a plot that sounds like something out of a {{Shadowrun}} source manual. Yet it reads a bit like a TomClancy tech thriller; describes technology that is not only common but almost downright mundane; and depicts thoroughly researched real-world hacking techniques, often in painstaking and scarily accurate detail.

* MacGuyvering:

* LegoGenetics: Completely subverted. The genetic engineering behind the MacGuffin is handled with painstaking realism, including the problems involved with restriction enzymes, plasmid uptake, and the need to use an indicator mechanism. Julie Yen even says at one point, "There's no such thing as a gene for [[spoiler:cocaine]]."