The Extremes is an interesting exploration of virtual reality that's a bit at variance to the way the tech eventually worked out for us - first published in 1998, Priest uses injectable infusions of programmed nanochips to achieve his VR effects (making them much more immersive than mere digital technologies). At the same time, Priest also explores gun culture, both in the US and the UK, and how this could be affected by the arrival of sophisticated VR technology. This is done through the eyes of his p.o.v. character Teresa Simons, an FBI agent, born in the UK but a US Air Force brat who is therefore brought up in an exclusively American culture. Under the tutelage of her father, she becomes proficient with firearms, eventually joins the FBI, and marries a fellow agent. However, he is killed in a mass shooting on the same day as another mass shooting in a (fictional) town on the south coast of England. Teresa travels to England to visit this town and to try to gain some insight into her feelings through the shared experience of the townsfolk. But that sharing goes beyond our current experience through the influence of commercialised VR 'Extreme Experience' ('ExEx') simulations.

The novel was first published in 1998, so Priest would have written it in knowledge of the Dunblane massacre in March 1996, which resulted in the wholesale tightening of gun ownership laws in the UK and the total banning of any legal basis for holding handguns. However, the latest British mass shooting he references in the novel is the Hungerford massacre of August 1987; and the shooter in the novel seems to have had little difficulty in acquiring weapons. Having developed his theme, I would imagine Priest would not want to worry too much about legal details; someone on the wrong side of the law who wishes to acquire handguns will, even today. Priest instead concentrates in developing his characters to show the mindsets that gun possession enables, on both sides of the legal divide. His writing of Teresa is particularly good in this respect; and as a British writer, he does not overdo the "isn't Britain quaint" reaction that some American writers might have fallen into the trap of.

The FBI uses ExEx simulations to enable agents to learn how to handle mass shooting incidents through trial and error. The long-term psychological impact of this on participants is also a theme. The ExEx sequences are written in a hyper-realistic style. I was reminded of Christopher Nolan's IMAX set-piece sequences inserted into his 2008 Batman film, The Dark Knight which could well have a connection because Nolan filmed Priest's preceding novel, The Prestige, in 2006. Certainly, I got a similar feeling in coming across those sequences in this novel to the sudden switch into the hyper-realistic IMAX format when watching The Dark Knight.

As his story develops, Priest increasingly explores the implications of 'nested' VR simulations, throwing our expectations of what constitutes 'reality' into doubt. It may well take a second reading for me to process this one completely.

At the same time, being set in a near future that is now more than twenty years in our past, the novel also offers a slightly nostalgic look (well, for me at least) at the Britain of the past. I found the fictional south coast seaside town setting, seen from the perspective of the local inhabitants, rather reminiscent of the Midlands town where I grew up.

The next Christopher Priest novel on my TBR pile is his novelisation of David Cronenberg's eXistenZ. This came out in 1999 - the year after The Extremes - and is also about VR gaming tech bioware and its corporate politics. As I recollect the film, it also looks at issues arising from simulations run within simulations. It makes me wonder whether Priest worked on the two projects at the same time. The thematic similarities hardly seem like coincidence. ( )

Teresa Simons regresa a Inglaterra tras el asesinato de su marido, agente del FBI. No superando el trauma, se pone en contacto con la empresa Experiencia Extremas, S.A.; la cual le introduce en una realidad virtual, pero que puede provocar emociones tanto placenteras como desagradables. Alli Teresa asiste a la traslación de la violencia al mundo real al producirse una serie de asesinatos; además descubre que su pasado y presente la pueden dejar sin futuro.

Priest has disappointed me badly in the past, but this one measures up to his best. Priest seems to like a bit of a narrative challenge, and in this one his experimentation is woven in to the rest of the book, rather than arbitrarily imposed. And it works well. More than solid. ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3422081.html

It seemed to me a bit of a departure from Priest's usual beat, set firmly in a coastal town in Kent with virtual reality, coming to terms with the ghosts of mass murder and a bit of sex all key ingredients to the plot. If anything I felt it was a bit too straightforward compared to some of Priest's other work, but it was still highly satisfactory, with a beginning, a middle and an end which all cohered from the two main characters' viewpoints. ( )

"Teresa was target training by the age of ten. Her accuracy with a weapon thrilled her. She recognized as natural the weight of the weapon in her hand, the way it balanced there, the jolt of adrenaline that flowed when the recoil kicked at her arm and shoulder, and because these were exciting to her, the condition of gun ownership and use was integral to her personality and identity." - Christopher Priest, The Extremes

Gun violence, gun violence, gun violence, gun violence - The Extremes, Christopher Priest's 1998 novel about Teresa Ann Gravatt traveling to sleepy small town Bulverton on the southern coast of England, the site where a gunman went berserk and killed 27 people in a shooting spree the previous summer.

Teresa had her own good reasons for making the trip - her beloved husband Andy, acting in the line of duty as FBI agent, was shot dead by a gunman's bullet during a similar shooting spree on the exact same summer day in a small town in Texas. Added to this, Teresa was herself raised in England as a little girl before her parents moved to the US, thus she feels a deep kinship with the country and culture of England.

There are no children as she and Andy decided to devote themselves to their respective careers as FBI agents. After more than ten years of marriage, Teresa is now a heartsick widow in her early 40s and takes the bureau up on their offer of leave of absence to better come to terms with her grief. She senses vaguely that speaking to the survivors in Bulverton will give her the emotional support she so desperately craves.

A word on Teresa’s background which lead her to become an FBI agent. The most important person in Teresa’s life while growing up was her dad, a career Army man and gun fanatic - he kept a loaded gun in every room of the house, subscribed to all the gun magazines, continually palled around with his gun buddies and took every opportunity to shoot guns. Her father was so proud when Teresa became quite expert in firing guns herself, winning many national shooting competitions.

Yet there was something unsettling about this macho gun culture. Teresa recounts: “She hated the way her father’s personality had changed when his gun friends were around, or when he was practicing with his weapons: it was as if he grew several inches in all directions, taller, broader, rounder, thicker. His voice was louder, he moved with more energy.” And after Andy had his skull shattered by a bullet, Teresa's attitude toward her background surrounded by guns and her great skill shooting guns takes an abrupt shift.

Once in Bulverton, Teresa decides to conduct her own investigation of gunman Gerry Grove's killing spree. However, the more Teresa attempts to talk to townspeople, including Nick and Amy who run the hotel where she's staying, the more she unearths the timetable and other details of events via police reports, accounts of eye witnesses, newspaper articles, the more she senses things simply don't add up - preeminently, an unaccounted for two hour gap between Grove leaving the local building dedicated to virtual reality technology and walking to town with his guns to commit mass murder.

Thus, there's drama aplenty in Bulverton but the real intensity for Teresa takes place in the worlds of the aforementioned virtual reality technology known as ExEx, short for Extreme Experience. And let me tell ya folks, it ain't called Extreme for nothing.

Teresa has had previous encounters with such programs, which are, incidentally, infinitely more advanced then anything available today (please keep in mind this is Christopher Priest science fiction). Back in her years training with the FBI, as a way to better understand and deal with mass murders, using ExEx, Teresa entered simulations of the actual past, such as the 1966 University of Texas tower shootings where Charles Whitman, a former Marine, went on the attack. Like other bureau trainees, Teresa will enter multiple times, taking on the role, in turn, of bystander, victim, law enforcement officer and even the gunman himself. Frequently, the simulation will end when the trainee is shot dead. A traumatic experience to be sure, but through such training, the young FBI agents learn fast. Or so the theory goes.

Teresa can hardly believe it - the ExEx programs in Bulverton are even more sophisticated. Wow! With all the new genius software programmers around the globe, upon receiving her injection of 619 neurochips (again, this is science fiction) and entering a scenario, she enters an entire world. And it's all so real. Teresa asks: how do they do that? The articulate gal at the ExEx facility tells her about new developments with shareware and contiguity. Teresa's skills as a sharpshooter pays off- she kills more times than she is killed. As readers, we follow her every step, every shot and every bloody death - an extreme reading experience. Make that extreme extreme.

In one ExEx scenario Teresa assumes the identity of a hard-core porn movie star - one of the major attraction for ExEx enthusiasts since there's such a close connection between sexuality and aggression, sexuality and violence, sexuality and death.

Teresa takes ExEx to even more extremes - she enters the world of Bulverton as Gerry Grove on the day of the killings - her mind and his mind interact, at various point even merge. She can't take the craziness and extracts herself from the program. Then, after scanning the computer menu for other scenarios, she chooses Kingwood City, Texas on that very same fateful day in June when her dear husband Andy was killed by a gunman on a spree.

What follows will be familiar to Christopher Priest fans as the jolt of the weird. Time and space turn, bend and curve beyond the conventional three dimensions. What is the real world, so called, and what is virtual Extreme Experience? What are the boundaries and what happens when each one blends into the other? In this way, in addition to violence, I judge The Extremes as a highly philosophical novel about the very nature and expansion of our perceptions. Ready for such extremes? If so, this ingenious Christopher Priest is a must read.


British author Christopher Priest, born 1943