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BioShock: Rapture, by John Shirley
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It's the end of World War II. FDR's New Deal has redefined American politics. Taxes are at an all-time high. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has brought a fear of total annihilation. The rise of secret government agencies and sanctions on business has many watching their backs. America's sense of freedom is diminishing . . . and many are desperate to take that freedom back.
Among them is a great dreamer, an immigrant who pulled himself from the depths of poverty to become one of the wealthiest and admired men in the world. That man is Andrew Ryan, and he believed that great men and women deserve better. And so he set out to create the impossible, a utopia free from government, censorship, and moral restrictions on science--where what you give is what you get. He created Rapture---the shining city below the sea.
But as we all know, this utopia suffered a great tragedy. This is the story of how it all came to be . . .and how it all ended.
- Sales Rank: #344222 in Books
- Published on: 2011-07-19
- Released on: 2011-07-19
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x 1.47" w x 5.83" l, 1.09 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 432 pages
Review
“I am Andrew Ryan and I’m here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow? No, says the man in Washington. It belongs to the poor. No, says the man in the Vatican. It belongs to God. No, says the man in Moscow. It belongs to everyone. I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose....Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by Petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.”
About the Author
John Shirley won the Bram Stoker Award for his book Black Butterflies. He was co-screenwriter of The Crow and television writer for Fox, and Paramount Television. His novels include City Come A-Walkin', Eclipse, Crawlers, Demons, and Bleak History.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
Park Avenue, New York City
1946
Almost a year later …
Bill McDonagh was riding an elevator up to the top of the Andrew Ryan Arms—but he felt like he was sinking under the sea. He was toting a box of pipe fittings in one hand, tool kit in the other. He’d been sent so hastily by the maintenance manager he didn’t even have the bloody name of his customer. But his mind was on earlier doings in another building, a small office building in lower Manhattan. He’d taken the morning off from his plumbing business to interview for an assistant engineer job. The pay would start low, but the job would take him in a more ambitious direction. They had looked at him with only the faintest interest when he’d walked into the Feeben, Leiber, and Quiffe Engineering Firm. The two interviewers were a couple of snotty wankers—one of them was Feeben Junior. They seemed bored by the time they called him in, and their faint flicker of interest evaporated completely when he started talking about his background. He had done his best to speak in American phraseology, to suppress his accent. But he knew it slipped out. They were looking for some snappy young chap out of New York University, not a cockney blighter who’d worked his way through the East London School of Engineering and Mechanical Vocation.
Bill heard them say it, through the door, after they’d dismissed him: “Another limey grease monkey…”
All right then. So he was a grease monkey. Just a mechanic and, lately, a freelance plumbing contractor. A dirty little job screwin’ pipes for the nobs. Heading up to some rich bloke’s penthouse. There was no shame in it.
But there wasn’t much money in it either, working on assignment for Chinowski’s Maintenance. It’d be a long time before he could save up enough to start a big contracting outfit of his own. He had a couple of lads hired on, from time to time, but not the big contracting and engineering company he’d always envisioned. And Mary Louise had made it clear as polished glass she was not really interested in marrying a glorified plumber.
“I had enough of fellas that think they’re the cat’s meow because they can fix the terlet,” she said. A pretty girl from the Bronx was Mary Louise Fensen and raring to go. But not terribly bright, after all. Probably drive him barmy anyway.
The moment he’d got home the phone rang, Bud Chinowski, barking about getting his ass to an address in Manhattan, on Park Avenue. Their building maintenance was AWOL—probably drunk somewhere—and the Bigshot at the penthouse needed plumbers “fast as you can drag your lazy ass over there. We’ve got three bathrooms to finish installing. Get those witless wrench-jockeys of yours over there too.”
He’d called Roy Phinn and Pablo Navarro to go on ahead of him. Then he’d changed out of the ill-fitting suit, into the gray, grease-stained coveralls. “Limey grease monkey…” he’d murmured, buttoning up.
And here he was, wishing he’d taken time for a cigarette before coming—he couldn’t smoke in a posh flat like this without permission. He stepped glumly out of the elevator, into an antechamber to the penthouse, his toolbox clanking at his side. The little wood-paneled room was scarcely bigger than the elevator. An artfully paneled mahogany door with a brass knob, embossed with an eagle, was its only feature—besides a small metal grid next to the door. He tried the knob. Locked. He shrugged, and knocked on the door. Waiting, he started to feel a little claustrophobic.
“’Ello?” he called. “Plumbin’ contractor! From Chinowski’s! ’Ello!” Don’t drop your Hs, you bastard, he told himself. “Hel-lo!”
A crackling sound, and a low, forceful voice emanated from the grid. “That the other plumber, is it?”
“Uh…” He bent and spoke briskly into the grid. “It is, sir!”
“No need to shout into the intercom!”
The door clicked within itself—and to Bill’s amazement it didn’t swing inward but slid into the wall up to the knob. He saw there was a metal runner in the floor and, at the edge of the door, a band of steel. It was wood on the outside, steel inside. Like this man was worried someone might try to fire a bullet through it.
No one was visible on the other side of the open doorway. He saw another hallway, carpeted, with some rather fine old paintings, one of which might be by a Dutch master, if he remembered anything from his trips to the British Museum. A Tiffany lamp stood on an inlaid table, glowing like a gem.
This toff’s got plenty of the ready, Bill thought.
He walked down the hall, into a large, plush sitting room: luxurious sofas, a big unlit fireplace, more choice paintings and fine lamps. A grand piano, its wood polished almost mirrorlike, stood in a corner. On an intricately carved table was an enormous display of fresh flowers in an antique Chinese jade vase. He’d never seen flowers like them before. And the decorations on the tables …
He was staring at a lamp that appeared to be a gold sculpture of a satyr chasing an underdressed young woman when a voice spoke sharply to his right. “The other two are already at work in the back … The main bathroom’s through here.” Bill turned and saw a gent in the archway to the next room already turning away from him. The man wore a gray suit, his dark hair oiled back. Must be the butler. Bill could hear the other two lads, faintly, in the back of the place, arguing about fittings.
Bill went through the archway as the man in the suit answered a chiming gold and ivory telephone on a table in front of a big window displaying the heroic spires of Manhattan. Opposite the window was a mural, done in the sweeping modern-industrial style, of burly men building a tower that rose up out of the sea. Overseeing the workers in the mural was a slim dark-haired man with blueprints in his hand.
Bill looked for the WC, saw a hallway with a gleaming steel and white-tile bathroom at its end.
That’s my destination, Bill thought bitterly. The crapper. A fine crapper it might be, one of three. My destiny is to keep their WCs in working order.
Then he caught himself. No self-pity, now, Bill McDonagh. Play the cards you’re dealt, the way your Da taught you.
Bill started toward the door to the bathroom hall, but his attention was caught by the half-whispered urgency of the man’s voice as he growled at the telephone.
“Eisley, you will not make excuses! If you cannot deal with these people I will find someone who has the courage! I’ll find someone brave enough to scare away this pack of hungry dogs! They will not find my campfire undefended!”
The voice’s stridency caught Bill’s attention—but something else about it stirred him too. He’d heard that distinctive voice before. Maybe in a newsreel?
Bill paused at the door to the hall and had a quick look at the man pressing the phone to his ear. It was the man in the mural—the one holding the blueprint: a straight-backed man, maybe early forties, medium height, two thin, crisply straight strokes of mustache matched by the dark strokes of his eyebrows, a prominent cleft chin. He even wore a suit nearly identical to the one in the painting. And that strong, intense face—it was a face Bill knew from the newspapers. He’d seen his name over the front door of this very edifice. It never occurred to him that Andrew Ryan might actually live here. The tycoon owned a significant chunk of America’s coal, its second biggest railroad, and Ryan Oil. He’d always pictured a man like that whiling the days away playing golf on a country estate.
“Taxes are theft, Eisley! What? No, no need—I fired her. I’ve got a new secretary starting today—I’m elevating someone in reception. Elaine something. No, I don’t want anyone from accounting, that’s the whole problem, people like that are too interested in my money, they have no discretion! Sometimes I wonder if there’s anyone I can trust. Well they’ll get not a penny out of me more than absolutely necessary, and if you can’t see to it I’ll find a lawyer who can!”
Ryan slammed the phone down—and Bill hurried on to the bathroom.
Bill found the toilet in place but not quite hooked up: an ordinary Standard toilet, no gold seat on it. Looked like it needed proper pipe fittings, mostly. Seemed a waste of time to send three men out for this, but these posh types liked everything done yesterday.
He was aware, as he worked, that Ryan was pacing back and forth in the room outside the hall to the bathroom, occasionally muttering to himself.
Bill was kneeling to one side of the toilet, using a spanner to tighten a pipe joint, when he became aware of a looming presence. He looked up to see Andrew Ryan standing near him.
“Didn’t intend to startle you.” Ryan flashed his teeth in the barest smile and went on, “Just curious how you’re getting along.”
Bill was surprised at this familiarity from a man so above him—and by the change in tone. Ryan had been blaring angrily into the phone but minutes before. Now he seemed calm, his eyes glittering with curiosity.
“Getting on with it, sir. Soon have it done.”
“Is that a brass fitting you’re putting in there? I think the other two were using tin.”
“Well, I’ll be sure they didn’t, sir,” said Bill, beginning not to care what impression he made. “Don’t want to be bailing out your loo once a fortnight. Tin’s not reliable, like. If it’s the price you’re worried about, I’ll pick up the cost of the brass...
Most helpful customer reviews
95 of 97 people found the following review helpful.
A must-read for BioShock fans!!!
By big kid
!!WARNING!! This book is a prequel to the games, but DO NOT read this book before playing them (Why haven't you played them yet???). It will give away certain "details" that the player should not know about when playing the games. This holds especially true for the first BioShock. I won't mention any of these spoilers in this review, so read on...
I wasn't expecting much when my copy of BioShock:Rapture arrived in the mail, but I consider myself a pretty big fan of the series and the idea of a prequel in print was enough to make me preorder it. I was not disappointed... far from it in fact.
If you've played the BioShock games then you know a great deal of the storytelling is done via audio diaries. These audio diaries are exactly what they sound like... the audio recorded thoughts of those that lived in Rapture. As you progress through the games you discover these recordings scattered about here and there. Each diary contains a small piece of a puzzle; a very dark puzzle that paints a picture of what took place in Rapture. From these diaries we learn of some of the horrible experiences of its citizens, as well as the events that ultimately caused its downfall. John Shirley does an extraordinary job of tying these diaries together into a novel that really fleshes out the story of Rapture.
In bringing these diaries together, Shirley takes side-characters from the games and gives our brief encounters with them more meaning. People that had small cameos from the games are given new life as you see the events that led to their fate in greater detail and from different angles. Not every character is given as much attention as others, but overall I was very satisfied.
I'm a very big BioShock fan so I'll admit that I might have some bias, but I'm trying to look at the book as objectively as I can. As one other reader mentioned, there are many different POVs. I can see where one might feel that some of these don't quite fit when considering the book by itself, as they serve little purpose to move the story along at times and can seem out of place. But for those that experienced the games, these "teasers" that seem unnecessary are actually a prelude for what came afterward. They're more fan-service than anything else; Shirley even dedicated the book itself to the fans of BioShock and BioShock 2. In addition to the spoilers the book contains, this is another reason I strongly suggest reading the book only AFTER you have played the games. These different POVs will be more familiar to you and will likely be more appreciated if you've played the games. That's my opinion anyway.
The only other issue I could see some readers possibly having is that the book definitely doesn't read like your everyday novel... it's choppy and jumps around, taking place over the entire decade that housed the rise and fall of Rapture (430 pages to cover 14 years, actually). I had no problem with this myself; the story was still very easy to follow and flowed well.
Bottom line... this book was a great read and it has me wanting to play through both games all over again! If you are a fan of BioShock then I highly recommend this book.
UPDATE: The BioShock Ultimate Rapture Edition is out! $29.99 gets you both BioShock and BioShock 2, including all their DLCs!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
I have a degree in literature and Bioshock is my favorite video game series
By S. Zinn
Let me start off by saying I had high standards for this book: I have a degree in literature and Bioshock is my favorite video game series. Sadly, I was very disappointed by this book. The character descriptions were far more "tell" than "show," a problem which got worse when the author started making such liberal narrative use of the audio diaries (especially the ones he made up, i.e. that weren't quoted from the game). (I mean, seriously? You have both Lamb and Steinman literally muttering their secret plots to themselves under their breath while in conversation with others?) Bioshock's visual aspect is such a main part of its appeal, and the author seemed to make no effort to describe the environment beyond saying they were "Art Deco" (or, in one attempt at variance, describing something as "Art Decoratif"). Every now and then I'd find a phrase that I thought was well-turned, but a lot of the descriptions were kinda lazy (he described three different female characters in the book as "frowzy"). I know only marginally more about the characters' backstories with the exception of Ryan, McDonough, and Fontaine. We already know that Sander Cohen is crazy, effeminate, and obsessed with bunnies; we played the games. Give us a sense of WHY he's that way. What character descriptions were given, were shallow, off-target, or just didn't make sense (see e.g. Tenenbaum's bewildering relationship with Frank, or the unrealistic explanation of her experience in the concentration camp). The emotional spectrum was fairly limited. The dialogue was disappointing, and not just because McDonough's/Atlas's/Tenenbaum's/Suchong's accents/speech styles were unconvincing. There was so much missed opportunity here, and that made me sad. I feel this should've been an early draft, not a finished product. There was very little of it that actually added to what I knew from the games, and it detracted from the actual story's emotional depth for me.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
An Exemplary Game Companion
By Darth Dragonetti
"Bioshock: Rapture" is a 2011 novel by John Shirley, and is the prequel to the videogames Bioshock (2007) and Bioshock 2 (2010). While the novel can stand alone on its own, it is recommended that the reader play through Bioshock 1 and 2 before reading the novel, as it is more effective as a whole if read after having played the games.
"Bioshock: Rapture" is set in 1945 and continues through the 50's. In it, we find a world changed by the recently fought Second World War and FDR's New Deal. Red communism is on the rise and the world is paranoid about possible nuclear war. Having escaped Communist Russia and come to America, only to find the U.S. aggressively adopting progressive policy, rich business tycoon Andrew Ryan is determined to find a place where business, science and art can flourish in an unchecked environment. Ryan is frustrated that the fruit of man's labor is taken from him by the state or by religion, and believes he can create an insular society free from the influence of the rest of the world, where freedom is the name of the game. What follows is a three-part tale that chronicles the creation of Ryan's utopia, and its eventual descent into madness. By the end of the story, the scene is set for the beginning of the Bioshock 1 videogame.
The plot of "Rapture" is incredibly interesting. It is a genius blend of both Ayn Rand and George Orwell; readers of those authors will immediately see similarities in "Rapture." However, while obviously inspired by these two visionary writers, "Rapture" does not feel ripped off, but rather comes across as an inspired reimagining of the ideas from Rand and Orwell. The plot moves through the years pretty quickly, and is always engaging. The reader should not expect a lot of violence or action in the first 2/3 of the book, but should expect an interesting blend of philosophy, intrigue, science and drama. In the last third of the book, chaos descends.
Mr. Shirley, the author, does an excellent job with the novel. The writing is top-notch, with references and dialogue that feel genuine to the 40's/50's setting. Vocabulary and colloquialisms are masterfully used, and really help catapult the novel to something transcending mere video game novelization. The characters are also brilliantly rendered, particularly Ryan, Lamb, Fontaine, Bill, Cohen, and others. So many of the characters Ryan brings on his grand experiment are eccentric, and Shirley does a bang-up job of highlighting those quirks, and spends enough time with each character that the reader really gets to know them. The reader will form a real emotional attachment with the more likable characters. The ending is handled masterfully, with both a sense of conclusion and a sense of mystery.
Those who have played the Bioshock games will notice how well the novel answers questions raised in the plot of the games. I was thoroughly confused by the plot of the first Bioshock game, but the novel really helped clear up the misunderstanding. The only plot element that was still hazy to me after reading the novel is what exactly ADAM and EVE are. We know what these two elements allow the user to do, but the science of the matter was glossed over. This small complaint was one of the only I had with the novel.
"Bioshock: Rapture" comes highly recommended, and is one of the best pieces of tie-in fiction I have read. Do yourself a favor and check it out, particularly if you are a fan of the games. Your experience will not be complete until you've read the timeless and tragic story behind the rise and fall of Andrew Ryan's shining city under the sea, Rapture.
In Summation:
The Good:
-clarifies the plot of the games and ties in masterfully with them
-great characterization
-outstanding writing style and use of dialogue
-effective ending for a prequel
-an example of what media tie-ins should be
The Bad:
-still fuzzy on exactly what ADAM and EVE are
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