Software is essentially a good read. The characters take a little getting used to. The novel is billed as cyberpunk but I find that a little bit of a stretch. Written in the early eighties, the novel extrapolates an older hippie culture as the current state of a segment of society. The basic premise is sound and might be better fleshed out in future sequels. The book is worth the read but don't expect a "William Gibsonesque" cyberpunk novel.
This really wasn't my cup of tea.
For a while we follow a character that has the annoying habit of being inebriated to the point where his ramblings can be a bit of a bore. I'm not a fan of Sci-fi books that do a stream of consciousness feed and it happened a lot with him.
I didn't really like the discussions about souls that kept coming up either. I really didn't find myself all that interested in what happened to any of the characters. It asked some interesting questions but, like the characters, I couldn't bring myself to care all that much in my hurry to read something else.
This is an interesting book. Not my usual style, but one I wanted to finish. I may go ahead and read the rest in the series. I think it will appeal to those who appreciate to older rock n roll generation, the possibilities of 'what if', now that we're old can we get a new body, and where will it come from? And then finding out our 'soul' is stored somewhere on disk and applied to a new robotic body.
