"You make more of me..I'll make more of you.."

Norman Spinrad-Little Heroes.

It is a world without limits. Plug in and become the person you always wanted to be.

It is a world without genuine living Rock stars. They have long been replaced. Holograms and computers are so much easier to manage.

It is a world without soul.

Little Heroes.

My first reaction to this book, which I read so long ago, was awe. I felt awe that ANYONE could write like this!

Bear in mind that Dystopian was not even a genre back then.

Little Heroes is primarily about music. Rock Music. And, in my humble opinion, it maybe THE BEST BOOK ABOUT ROCK-N-ROLL EVER MADE!

It tells the story of Sally, Bobby, Karen,Paco, Gloriana and the REALITY LIBERATION FRONT.

What is so odd is how eerie it is reading this book now. Because, unlike many books of this genre, some of Little Heroes actually came true.

It is an incredible read. And amazingly sooo way ahead of its time.

Little Heroes could have been about today's time period..although it is a pretty old book. There is so much it got right and so much about society that turned out to be true.

The characters will move you. They will make you smile and chuckle.

I liked all the main characters..Sally..well.. she is impossible not to feel for. I wanted to give her a hug through most of the book. Sally is a wanna be rock chick who is madly in love with Bobby but literally lacking any esteem what so ever. She is not beautiful and and is convinced beauty is all that matters. She is also self conscious about her weight. Very self conscious. Read on to discover how "Cyburg sally" is born.

Bobby. Well..Bobby is a wimp. He too is obsessed..he is obsessed with rock groupies and the ladies of music..I am sure he is obsessed with "Layla" because in Bobby's world..if it is beautiful, likes Rock-N-roll and moves..he wants to nail it. Bobby is aware of Sally's feelings for him but does not feel the same way. Indeed, she repulses him.

Or does she?

Karen and Paco and the members of the Reality Liberation front. I will not say a word more about THIS cast of colorful characters. You will just have to read about them.

But I will speak about Gloriana. Oh, the wild , wacky and wonderful Gloriana.

I first read this way way back. It was a favorite then and it still is.

Not a fast moving story. The truth is it is long, gritty and slow moving. It is wordy and fun and scary and tender. There is a lot to get through but it is worth it.

Great writing, great characters, great pace, great world building and some really great fun. Highly recommended. ( )

My review is posted here:

http://www.gordsellar.com/2011/09/05/little-heroes-by-norman-spinrad/ ( )

Le culte des idoles, la volonté de devenir une star, le très haut débit, les psychotropes, l'industrie phonographique, la décérébration continue.

Non, ce n'est pas une étude sociologique mais un très bon bouquin de SF, fascinant, inquiétant, qui est en train de devenir sous nos yeux un livre d'histoire.

Un roman qui dégaine et tire très vite. Amateurs d'I-pod, lisez ce livre avant de rebrancher les cables ! ( )

En algún momento entrado el siglo XXI, una rockera ya entrada en años es convocada por una corporación para la creación de una estrella de rock encarnada en un cyborg. ( )

"Little Heroes" suffers big-time from Spinrad's habit of letting his plot get away from him and romp through fifteen or sixteen chapters while restating the same precepts over and over again. Fortunately, his characterization and dialogue are such that you don't care.

It's the near-future, and the music industry is tanking. They're looking to cut costs and a big one is the overhead for the actual musicians. Obvious answer: eliminate them. The technology is good enough that a perfect human-looking star can be synthesized, but so far they haven't created one with any juice. Enter Gloriana O'Toole, the Crazy Old Lady of Rock and Roll, and the two techno-dweebs they assigned to her, Bobby and Sally. Together -- with the help of some wizard wire that gives them the equivalent of safe and controllable acid trips -- they manufacture a rock and rol star. Problem is, the best rock and roll stars tend to attack authority. Like, say, the music industry...

And, this being a Norman Spinrad novel, that's the smallest part of the plot. There's also Paco and Karen and Larry and the Reality Liberation Front and Dojo and a lot of wheeling and dealing and an uprising of the newly wired drug culture and... there's a lot, and it all mixes together. The characters zoom back and forth into each other and much philosophy, sex, and rock and roll occurs.

I think the book would have been improved greatly with about sixty pages trimmed out, but it still remains one of the ones I reread every few years, and like his other books Spinrads speculative predictions are scary-close. ( )