A review of 
Circuit of Heaven
by Dennis Danvers
1998
Avons Eos
IBSN 0-380-97447-9
$14.00

When I read the blurb, I couldn't have been less excited about this book.  
Blah blah blah some sort of cyberspace world where people can be uploaded 
blah blah blah love story blah blah blah oh, haven't we all read William 
Gibson by now?

But I was wrong.  After being prodded into reading this novel, I realized 
that this wasn't Gibson or any of his maddening copycats, nor Neal 
Stephenson's psychological musings.  Instead, it's a classic tale of 
starcross'd lovers: Justine, who has already been uploaded into the Bin 
(cyberspace, essentially, though perfectly rendered and that strictly 
adheres to normal physical laws to maintain the illusion) and will live 
forever, and a young man, Nemo, who feels he's found the perfect woman, but 
can't bring himself to upload himself.  Instead, he visits the Bin and then 
returns to real life with a terrible hangover.  Justine can't quite get her 
memories in place and can't seem to get technical support in the Bin to 
fix them, and it is these troubles that force her to discover an 
interesting mystery that, by the end, was twistier than I imagined.

Nemo is an interesting creation.  He maintains his life in reality for both 
his own pride and to spite his parents.  His family is "rich and powerful" 
in the Bin.  His caretaker is a Construct, a synthetic personality with a 
body like Barney the Dinosaur, who looks after him in the real world.  He 
has a few religious friends who are deeply spiritual and would rather grow 
old and die than experience the Bin.  Nemo, though, just isn't sure that 
he'd like to find God or upload.  He's a man on the edge.

The religious folk have a problem, though; the doors to permanently upload 
yourself are always open.  Many of the faithful lose heart and disappear 
one day.  They know this, and plots are afoot to close the doors and, well, 
rid the world of this den of sin.  This plot thread isn't explored as well 
as the romance, and that's a good thing; the thoughts and conflicts of our 
heroines are neither juvenile nor boring.  This is the story of two 
complicated, real people falling in love across the boundaries of two 
worlds.

Science fiction is one of the only genres where the MacGuffin, the neat new 
idea presented, also happens to be the metaphor.  One can see the Bin as 
the perfect, beautiful worlds we create in video games and on the World 
Wide Web and how humans are lost in the fascination with them, to the point 
of neglecting the real world.  That's a boring metaphor, and one beaten to 
death in cyberpunk literature.  Danvers is smarter than that, and 
fashions the Bin into something else; immortality, Happily Ever After, and 
even the Elysian Fields, only you don't have to live and suffer and die; 
you can just load yourself right in there.  My favorite moment is when, 
after the death of Romeo and Juliet in Bin theater, no one cries---why 
bother?  Such morbid tales just couldn't come true in the Bin.

I can, of course, quibble with the science.  No engineer in his right mind 
would design a system that doesn't include some maintenance equipment and a 
way to move or shut down if something goes wrong.  The Bin is on a 
satellite, which protects it physically from harm from the 
all-too-Christian fundamental religious folk on the outside.  But electronic 
equipment fails, and frequently; it's an oft-forgotten fact that 
semiconductors wear out.  (Most people upgrade long before their chips 
malfunction.)  Anything that you run electricty through long enough can get 
worn out.  Danger from a solar flare or even the inevitable sun's expansion 
at the end of the solar system would imply that adjacent to the satellite 
one might need a few robotic arms, a rocket, some sensing equipment, and a 
metalworking shop to keep things running.

There's hints of exactly what the rules are about the Bin---you can be 
uploaded briefly, or permanently uploaded, but to stay longer than a few 
hours a week, you have to decide never to come back.  That struck me as 
odd; if they can upload and download a little bit, why can't they download 
again?  If it's so important that people come and go from the Bin, wouldn't 
this problem be solved somehow?  The rules *do* seem a little arbitrary and 
contrived.  (I also wondered if there wouldn't be several different bins 
and backup storage.)

But that's not the point of the story.  This is a solid book of characters, 
love, cultural conflict, and even clear-minded discussion of religious 
fervor.  It's a smart, serious, well-written science-fiction romance 
definitely worth reading.