The Sword and Laser discussion

So, one of the best things about the novel's narration, in my opinion, is we get a great sense of how Kovacs' very different brain works, from the neurochem, to his envoy training. One thing however that didn't seem to work very well, however, was a sense of how the total absorb functioned (or really if it did anything at all).

Like, a decent way into the novel (kindle says 38%), this exchange happens at the Bancroft's house:
"Mr. Kovacs, this is Nalan Ertekin, chief justice of the U.N. Supreme Court, and Joseph Phiri from the Commission of Human Rights."
"Delighted. You're here to discuss Resolution 653, I imagine."
"The two officials exchanged a glance, then Phiri nodded. You're very well informed," he said gravely. "I've heard a lot about the Envoy Corps, but I'm impressed. How long have you been on Earth, exactly?"
"About a week," I exaggerated.


Now, clearly, we're supposed to be impressed, since he's able to put stuff like this together in LESS THAN A WEEK! A short while later, we get this:

"Hey, that the Mary Lou Hinchley thing?"
"Yeah. Last year the Coastals fished some kid out of the ocean. Mary Lou Hinchley. Not much left of the body, but they the stack. Set it to spin, and guess what?"
"Catholic?"
"In one. That total-absorb stuff works, huh?"

So let me get this straight. The ability to remember the headline of newspapers (what seems to be the only actual newsworthy thing going on in this world), to associate that headline with workers in the U.N., and to guess that the one thing hindering an investigation is the one thing you've been told (repeatedly!) can hinder an investigation, are all amazing works of superhuman deductive faculties. Really? All I see is his ability to remember the two most important details of the world he's landed on. Something of which the reader is more than capable.

And I think that's the major problem. When you read a Sherlock Holmes story, and he puts all the details together for you, you're amazed, because that's something you can't do. But the times when Kovacs seems to use his total absorb mental powers, it's to remember things or make associations that the reader has already made.

I had a little bit of that problem, too. Until I got to the middle and there was too much going on to follow it all. Some of the problem was that Kovacs had backstory information that I didn't have. Some of it was that there just seemed like too many players in the game.

There is a moment towards the end (and I won't get into spoilery details) when he goes, "I'm making intuitive leaps!" but doesn't at all explain what those leaps are. This would seem to be a better representation of total absorb, but it still falls flat, because like you said, he has information that we don't, so we have no idea if we'd be able to put it together ourselves. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for the novel that we don't have that info, it's just bad for convincing us that total absorb is an impressive thing.

The other problem is that every detective in the hardboiled genre makes intuitive leaps like that, so the super duper brain powers we see are compared in our minds with the very ordinary brain powers of previous detectives we've read.

It's going to seem even less impressive a few years from now when anyone with Google Glass will be able to do the same thing.

Rob wrote: "The other problem is that every detective in the hardboiled genre makes intuitive leaps like that, so the super duper brain powers we see are compared in our minds with the very ordinary brain powers of previous detectives we've read."

I remember hearing, "If you want the villain to look smart, reveal the mystery at the beginning. If you want the hero to look smart, reveal the mystery at the end."