A vision of the future

 So, I managed to find my Shadowrun collection again, finally... (They've started repriniting some of the original series as Legends now. Me, being someone who doesn't mind used books, has the original pulpy paperbacks mostly.) Anyway, I started at the beginning of Stephen Kenson's original 4 novels prior to the return of the comet and the newer editions of the game that revamped a lot of system. (As a side note, much of this got dug out thanks to me starting the Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun games.)

Which brings us to Technobabel, which doesn't concern Talon, the gay Mage who figures prominently in the other 3 books, but instead gives us a vision of the 6th World's Corporate Court, infighting between Fuchi and Renraku, and some really interesting portraits of Technoshamen, folks who's personal totem spirit is the net (or Matrix, in this setting.) 

We open with doings in the Zurich Orbital, home of the Corporate Court, where the big 10 AAA corporations keep each other in check. Fuchi is bringing suit against Renraku, under the assumption that an exec from Fuchi, who received enough stock in Dunzelkhan's will to make him a board member of Renraku, has been using trade secrets to increase Renraku's share of the market. 

Then we meet a man who begins nameless, narrating his awakening in an alley, being  bodynapped by Organ Grinders, folks who sell body parts on the black market generally. As the book progresses, we find out said nameless man is now Babel, a Technoshaman (or Otaku, in the slang of the setting), able to enter the Matrix without the aid of a computer or other body modifications. As things progress, we find that Babel had a human name at one point, and he's the evidence Fuchi has been looking for. However, the spirit of the Matrix has its own ideas on how Babel should proceed. 

It's a fun story, providing all kinds of mental fodder for whenever I get around to writing up an adventure. Would I suggest it for people not familiar with the setting? Not unless they want to do a deep dig to get background information, since while things are touched on by way of explanation throughout, the world this is set in has had 6 Editions, and even with this one being set in 3rd, there's a heck of a lot of information out there. (Particularly since by the start of the next book, Fuchi broke up and one of its major players now runs Novatech.) But otherwise, it hold up well and makes for a fun read.