Freedom Incorporated

Not bad at all - reads like a movie. No work of art, but a nice page-turner with action in a sci-fi futuristic setting where the assassin for the corporate state changes sides to defend a naive activist.

A solid read all the way through Although a couple of character back-stories just seemed to be thrown in, most of the characters (even some minor ones) were very well fleshed out.

While the story idea wasn't unique in itself, it was done well enough to overlook it, although the 'extra ending' seemed to be more of a "throw it in there and let the reader's imagination do the majority of the work", even though the foreshadowing made it obvious where it was leading.

But all said, a solid enjoyable read.

My thoughts of this book...well, In all honesty it was amazing. Every detail in this book brought me closer to the characters and conflicts going on. I never wanted to put in down and I never did until I hit the last page. I just wish it had a 'Disney-Land' ending...But when does that ever happen right? Overall three cheers for Peter Tylee, this book was excellent.

Peter Tylee's Freedom Incorporated constructs a gritty, dark future of what may happen if we let corporations have free reign without the proper constraints of democracy. It is set far enough into the future that it the author is free to imagine far-fetched technology like space-time bending transporters, but close enough to the present that it can logically extend from current trends, which are incredibly frightening. In many ways, the book serves as a wake-up call to where we are heading as a human society, if we allow neoliberal capitalism run its full course, unchecked by the restraints of democracy. Many science fiction writers clearly grasp the libertarian ideals of freedom, but they fail to understand the important role that the state can play in ensuring those freedoms for ordinary people. Generally they construct the state as the enemy, but Tylee clearly shows the dystopia that arises when states loose all power over corporations. Democratic freedoms crumble for ordinary people, who are subjected to toxic contamination, electronic surveillance, ruthless censorship, and summary execution.

The geek in me loved how Tylee depicts computer networks and the efforts to hack them in the year 2066. As a computer programmer myself, I found Tylee's descriptions of corporate security measures to almost be believable. Most of all, I loved the depiction of people who hack the technology to promote their anti-corporate message of freedom.

Tylee's depiction of how corporations control the planet through the "World Economic Forum" is frighteningly prescient, if we project from current trends. Likewise, his projections about electronic surveillance, toxic pollution and the privatization of water are not far fetched, considering the malfeasance of corporations at present. Everything that Tylee describes is a logical extension of what is already happening, which is what makes Freedom Incorporated such an outstanding work of science fiction. Following in the tradition of 1984 and Brave New World, Tylee constructs a frightening dystopia which is really a commentary on the problems of our present society.

There are a few areas where Tylee falls short in his projections of future dystopia. First of all, the characters live in a world of abundant energy and food, but global climate change and peak oil make these scenarios very unlikely. Just as Tylee describes the brutal control over clean water, I would have liked to read how people would live in a world of brutal rationing of food and energy, where the wealthy take the lion's share and the poor are left with the scraps.

The protagonists in Tylee's dystopia are flawed in ways which make them real. Some of the corporate bad guys are a little too cookie-cutter and one dimensional to be believable. I much preferred Tylee's sympathetic depiction of the corporate network admin to the unexplainable sadism of the lead corporate assassin.

If I have one gripe about the book, it is the unrealistic corporate takeover at the end. Yes, shareholders can be gullible, but Tylee skips over the details as if he knows it is implausible. The happy vision of the female protagonist getting her own plot of land and sailing in her boat on the sea was also not very plausible, but her decision to continue her environmental activism and working to create a democratic social movement against corporate malfeasance was a refreshing ending to the book.

Enjoyable but not by any means the most original or interesting treatment of the ideas. A few of the plot devices are laboured - the conveniently two-dimensional Russian assassin being a case in point - but the characters are good and engaging and the plot moves at a fair pace, especially given the length of the novel.
This version could do with some serious editorial attention, however.

I liked the idea of the storey but struggled to get past the first 30 pages and failed.

i liked the book!!!

I just finished this book and like some other readers found this to be an excellent read. I found my self having a really difficult time putting this down. The book could use some editing to correct typos, but I read past that and found the twists and turns exciting and the overall plot well thought out. The basic premise of the book is also an interesting concept of commerce gone bad. Perhaps not original, but the tools of the corruption are unique.

I just finished reading this book and immediately went searching for more fiction by this author. Unfortunately, I didn't find any.

I am a big fan of dystopian-future literature and disagree with just about everything the previous reviewer wrote.

I will agree that the book would benefit from a solid edit. There are quite a few typos.

I also agree that some of the main villains of the piece make some stupid moves. But it didn't require a great suspension of disbelief to accept that ruthlessness could trump intelligence in a corporate-controlled culture and that scum could rise to the top of the swamp -- that happens often enough in real life.

Overall, I found the quality to be as good as or better than most of what's commercially available today in this genre of fiction.

It worked for me on two levels, as an action story and as a warning of what could happen if people let convenience in commerce mutate into surveillance and control of their lives.

I think there's an app for that.

Not as gripping as the blurb would have it. The book would have benefited greatly from a savage editing. People too stupid to pound sand somehow come to possess great power, and unbridled corporate greed has ruined the world. Alongside this is astonishing progress in science, as well as astonishing blunders that threaten the universe. It's like a Steven Seagal "bad company" movie without the humor. Really savage gore interspersed with high-school level insight into human motivations.

Oh, and the part where the universe is in danger? Everyone pretty much ignores this until they get their ducks in a row.