Book: Machine Man

Max Barry‘s new novel Machine Man is a story about a scientist who loses his leg in an industrial accident and then proceeds to replace it with an artificial version – and embark on a quest of hacking himself. This is a cyborg story. It is also love story.

I discovered an excerpt online that happens to include one of my favorite sections: A conversation between the main character and his love interest. During a regular interaction (dinner), he explains the concept of deadlocks to her (via io9).

One night I reached for the salt but Lola had already moved it to her side of the table. I looked at her. She was drinking from her glass of water. “Salt,” I said, but she just nodded and kept drinking. She drained half the glass. When she set it down, she picked up a napkin and dabbed her lips. She tapped salt into her soup and handed it to me. I stared. “What?” she said.

“Nothing. It’s just . . . nothing.”

“What?”

I put down the salt. “You locked the salt while performing an unrelated task.”

She blinked. “You mean drinking?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t wait five seconds for salt?”

“I can. But salt is a shared resource. If you’re going to lock it, you should use it as quickly as possible, then release it. You can’t leave it locked while accepting an interrupt.”

“I got thirsty.”

“Then first return the salt to general availability.”

“Just in case you happen to want salt in that five seconds?”

“Yes.”

She stared at me. “Really?”

“Otherwise you compromise the system.”

“What system?”

“The . . .” I waved my hands. “The system.”

“There isn’t any system.”

“Everything is a system. Look.” I leaned forward. “What if I had your water and I suddenly decided I wanted the salt? And instead of giving you back the water I just sat here waiting for you to release the salt, which you didn’t because you were waiting for the water? It’s a deadlock, that’s what. It’s catastrophic system failure. And you’re probably thinking, ‘Well, I could just ask Charlie to give me the water in exchange for the salt.’ But that requires you to understand my resource needs, and violate process encapsulation. It’s a swamp. I’m not saying it’s a big deal. I’m just pointing out that locking the salt like that is incredibly inefficient and systemically dangerous.”

Lola snickered. “You’re insane.”

“I’m not insane. It’s a fundamental principle. You’re insane.”

“Regular people don’t bring fundamental principles to the dinner table.”

“Well,” I said.

We ate. “Explain that again,” said Lola. “That stuff about locks.”

I found this book to be as humorous and entertaining as it was thought-provoking. The author also created this helpful trailer: