Twenty-first century New York. It's a nightmare. Reaganomics has gone mad: there's murder and mutilation on the bombed-out streets, and in the corporate conference rooms. Manhatten is a zoo. There's guerilla war on Long Island. You'll need to be rich to survive at all, and it's easier to be dead than poor.
— from the blurb of the 1989 Unwin Paperback edition
Ambient is the debut novel of American cyberpunk writer Jack Womack. It was first published in 1987 and is the first in his Dryco series. Made up of six novels that are loosely related, the Dryco series follows the Machiavellian exploits of the eponymous corporation, or the people affected by them, in a dystopian version of New York City set in the 2030s. The overarching conflict is centered on the heads of Dryco, the corrupt Dryden family, who manipulate runaway climate change, social decay and ongoing economic instability in a bid to conquer the world.
Seamus O'Malley is the bodyguard and assassin for Dryco's tyrannical CEO, Thatcher Dryden II. He's also in love with Dryden's mistress, the beautiful proxy named Avalon. After foiling an attempt on Dryden's life, O'Malley is roped into a murder plot by his boss. The target: Thatcher Dryden I, AKA the 'Old Man.' It turns out that Dryden Sr. is actively attempting to destroy the company's solvency by speculating in the Bronx's real estate. O'Malley is hesitant at first, but when Jr. offers him the option to elope abroad to Leningradnote with Avalon, O'Malley plays along. However, things go south when unforeseen circumstances cause the assassination attempt to fail. With Avalon by his side, O'Malley goes on the run into the heart of NYC, to seek shelter with his sister Enid and the vilified race of mutants known as 'Ambients'...
Considered a cult classic in the cyberpunk community, Ambient introduced readers to an imaginatively shocking vision of a near-future world, replete with dashes of ultraviolence, disturbing social commentary and deviant sexuality. The novel has drawn comparisons to Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, especially in its usage of poetic Future Slang by Dryco and the Ambients.
The other books (in publication order) are: Terraplane (1988), Heathern (1990), Elvissey (1993), Random Acts of Senseless Violence (1994), and Going, Going, Gone (2000).
The novel provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Avalon. She's Mister Dryden's mistress and proxy, who shadows him in meetings and fights in the life-or-death gladiatorial conferences that settle corporate disputes between Dryco and its competitiors. Despite being twenty and raised as a 'lala' (a child sex slave), Avalon is a female bodybuilder and can hold her own in a fight.
- She's so strong that she nearly snaps O'Malley's back a bunch of times from simply bear hugging him.
- Bad Boss / Corrupt Corporate Executive: Dryden the Elder and Dryden the Younger are both just as cruel and Machiavellian toward anybody. Both have arranged the assassination of their rivals and would go as far as trying to kill each other. The evil extends to such an extent thatDryden Sr. beat his own wife (his main business partner) to death with a baseball bat in front of his son to prevent the truth about the Pax Atomica and Alice from leaking out to the public. The world is such a nightmare that most people don't seem willing to overthrow Dryco anyway.
- The Big Bad: Thatcher 'Old Man' Dryden I fits this to a T.
- Bittersweet Ending: After O'Malley confronts him to find out the truth about the Old Man, Mister Dryden commits suicide and O'Malley is escorted to the estate where the missing Avalon is discovered to be safe and sound, seemingly betraying O'Malley all along by siding with Dryden Sr. The latter gives O'Malley a key to a filing cabinet that contains the truth to various conspiracy theories, but the Pax Atomica conspiracy is missing. After being knocked out by Jimmy, O'Malley is taken to the Tombs beneath the estate where the Drydens' enemies are tortured and deformed by Alice, a supercomputer that can draw up any event from its memories. O'Malley is given permission by the Old Man to ask Alice any question. He discovers the truth about Avalon's childhood, his father's fate, and the murder of the Old Man's wife in relation to the Pax Atomica. This question infuriates the Old Man who tries to attack O'Malley but is subdued by him. Despite insisting that a failsafe is built into his body to set off the nuclear missiles on the world, the Old Man is shot by Avalon. Alice somehow prevents the nukes from going off and O'Malley and Avalon escape with Enid, who had her memory removed by Alice as punishment by Dryco.
- Black-and-Black Morality: Given how messed up everyone is, nobody in the novel is completely good or evil, yet they constantly make evil decisions. Dryco has its filthy hands in everything, and would often assassinate people to keep them quiet, including Dryden family members. O'Malley is a hired thug who can easily murder a child if ordered to by Mister Dryden, and Jimmy and Avalon are no better. The Ambients try to keep to themselves but would kill anyone who tries to mess with their closed off community.
- Big Rotten Apple: As mentioned in the crapsack world entry below, this version of New York City was heavily influenced by the city's economic decline during the 80s, but here everything is cranked up to eleven. Think of all the random violence, drug addiction, child prostitution and corporate greed of the 80s. Done? Well, it's much, much worse here. The stain of Reaganomics has not washed off of Dryco's NYC.
- Big Fancy Castle: The Dryden Estate is located outside the city. It's heavily fortified and guarded to the point of overkill: several walls surround the main building. Dogs, Army Boys and helicopters patrol the premises 24/7. Gun batteries line up every corner of the walls, along with barbed wire. And to top it all off, landmines are scattered about the place.
- Bodyguard Crush: O'Malley toward Avalon. He keeps dreaming about eloping with her.
- Crapsack World: Where to begin? NYC is a decaying hot-bed of random violence by anyone to anyone. The Army Boys, conscripts as young as thirteen, go around causing massacres and waging war against entire neighborhoods on Dryco's orders. They even gang rape random women who happen to pass by their security checkpoints. There are deliberate incidents of road rage and civilians being done in by hit-and-run drivers, often for no reason at all. Trains are derailed and bombed by psychotic teenagers and entire roads are cordoned off, never to be repaired. The city's infrastructure is plagued by empty buildings with their structures randomly falling off and crushing civilians below or inside them. The media has pacified the masses with non-stop entertainment and news that features actual snuff on live television. Child protection laws have ceased and children are forced to work like adults, including being kept as child sex slaves by wealthy old men. And all of this is just a fraction of this grimdark setting.
- In the corporate and political spheres, Dryco controls everything. They control the economic, foreign and civil policies of the US government. As such, the police technically don't exist and the army serves as Dryco's own form of law enforcement, even if it means killing innocent civilians routinely. The Drydens even dabble in sex slavery and invite their friends to hunt migrant teens on their private estate.
- Despite a nuclear weapon-free world in the 21st century, there's a fresh Cold War between the US and Russia. World hunger is much worse than any other point in human history and the runaway global warming is causing mass flooding and desertification everywhere.
- Cult: The Church of E as followed by the Drydens and their associates. Who's E? While never named in the book, his physical description, as well as the sermons quoting his songs ("A Big Hunk O'Love," "Are You Lonesome Tonight?," etc.), and Dryden Sr.'s story about his visit to Graceland, make it pretty clear who it is.
- Meanwhile, the Ambients worship the deformed deity they refer to as Godness. O'Malley notices a painted mural of Godness, depicting it as a mutant with multiple conjoined heads and bodies, along with both male and female sex organs. It's shown holding the world over its head, ready to drop it into oblivion.
- Cyberpunk: The Dryco series is one of the most transgressive examples in the genre. The other books in the series feature time travel and alternate histories.
- Delinquents: Youth gangs terrorize NYC. From young men blowing up and derailing trains to all-female girl gangs that randomly gouge people's eyes out.
- Dysfunction Junction: Entire families are dysfunctional in this future world, but the Drydens take it a step further in their ongoing feuds with each other. Murder, child exploitation and building a seemingly all-seeing supercomputer that experiments genetically on their prisoners is just another day in the office for them.
- Earth That Used to Be Better: The climate is so bad that deserts have expanded everywhere on Earth and flooding is common. When it rains (and that happens a lot), NYC's streets are flooded with filthy water from the poorly maintained sewers. Dried clumps of excrement are swept up off the street during a cold spell and become a blizzard of falling shit, which the Ambients refer to as 'Le Muerta.'
- Dryden Sr. had started building a terribly maintained sea wall by the coast of New York in the hope of protecting his assets. He even dreams of living long enough to build a Venice-like city on top of the old NYC.
- Executive Suite Fight: Near the novel's climax, O'Malley sneaks into Mister Dryden's HQ to confront him about being double-crossed and Avalon's whereabouts. Dryden sicks his secretary Renaldo on him. Renaldo is strangled to death by O'Malley who then proceeds to interrogate Mister Dryden before the latter kills himself out of fear using a poison pill.
- Eye Scream: While traveling via train, O'Malley and Avalon witness a man (who was continually vomiting on himself moments earlier) having his eyes casually gouged out with an ice pick.
- Due to constant burglaries at their homes, female computer operators for Dryco are forced to work in the World Trade Center offices in single shifts that could last nearly a week. Because they aren't allowed to take regular breaks, some of the girls eventually lose their eyesight and need walking sticks to navigate the office.
- False Teeth Tomfoolery: 'Choppers' are fake teeth that replace a proxy's extracted teeth to prevent their use in an 'untoward' way, which is future slang for biting their employers.
- Fallen States of America: With an ineffective government and an ongoing period of economic and social stagnation under Dryco's schizoid antics, America becomes a third world country that amplifies the worst aspects of nations such as Brazil.
- Future Slang: Everyone casually speaks a form of some street lingo in 2030s NYC. Some recurring words make sense when carefully following the dialogue, such as "vizz" (to 'look at' or 'to see') and "overmuch" (like 'too much'). Still, the bizspeak (or 'business speak' employed by Mister Dryden) and Ambient language feature short poetic sentences and deliberate instances of broken English. The Ambient language even has elements of Spanglish and French in it.
- Gladiator Games: Proxies don't just shadow their bosses to board room meetings, they fight to the death during 'conferences' that help settle disputes between Dryco and other companies. A room is designed as an arena where the central area is the playing ground. The proxies wear skimpy lingerie and Chainmail Bikini, along with rollerblades and protective sports gear, and skate around slaughtering each other with knives, chains and axes. Whoever survives has settled that dispute for their company.
- "Have a Nice Day" Smile: The corporate logo of Dryco is a smiley face, named in-universe as a 'smirker.' Avalon has one tattooed on her right buttock.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: After the eleventh birthday celebration for Mister Dryden's son, Thatcher Dryden III, he, the Old Man and some of their wealthy associates go out into the night to hunt a group of naked foreigners smuggled into the country for their sick amusement. O'Malley notices that one of the girls is a lala that the little Dryden boy had his way with in front of the guests.
- Lighter and Softer: Compared to one of its prequels, 1994's Random Acts of Senseless Violence, Ambient is less realistic and features plenty of over-to-the-top violence and sexual content. At times the book feels like a much more screwed up version of Robocop in its satire of a corporate America that's going down the tubes. It's still a dark book, but lacks the sophisticated emotional resonance that made the prequel much bleaker.
- Master Computer: Alice is a supercomputer that was developed by Dryden Sr. and his wife Susie D. It gradually developed a mind of its own yet remained subservient to the Drydens despite its lippy attitude. Alice can even devise experiments that malform prisoners captured by the Drydens. Later, O'Malley discovers that Alice can generate memories of events from anywhere via its massive data. He gets it to reveal the fate of Mrs Dryden who was murdered by Dryden Sr. in order to keep the secret of their abuse of the Pax Atomica.
- MegaCorp: Dryco, who owns almost everybody. They're usually the main protagonists of the series, yet some books are from the perspectives of other factions or characters not directly related to them.
- Ms. Fanservice: Avalon is a fit Action Girl who spends most of the book wearing luxurious wigs, stilettos and BDSM outfits, and lounges around company without pants. She even fights other proxies to the death in the conferences while wearing thongs and leggings under very little armor.
- Mutants: The Ambients are this in varying degrees. It's thought that they were born from parents who survived a nuclear accident on Long Island. Completely isolated from NYC itself and feared by the public, the Ambients formed their own community, culture, language and a religion based on the 'Godness.' While some of them are 'lucky' enough to lack limbs or end up as dwarfs, many of them are so deformed to the point of having grotesque mutations that rival those from real-life disasters such as Chernobyl. However, regular people voluntarily choose to become Ambients as an expression of solidarity toward them.
- It's implied that O'Malley might be an Ambient himself since his ears are detachable. However, since Avalon's teeth were removed and replaced with mandatory fake ones, his ears could also be a cosmetic choice.
- Enid O'Malley, Seamus' older sister, is a voluntary Ambient. Standing at 6'3" like her younger brother, she had her head and eyebrows shaved clean and sharp spikes put in their place. Her breasts were also surgically removed. She regularly speaks to him in the Ambient Future Slang.
- In the book's climax, it turns out that they weren't products of the actual nuclear accident itself. In fact, their parents were given anti-radiation pills that deformed the fetuses during the mother's pregnancy. The Ambients' parents migrated from Long Island into the abandoned parts of the city to escape from being purged.
- "Not So Different" Remark: When O'Malley criticises the Old Man's hidden capability to use Alice to torture people and nuke anybody at anytime as evil. The latter puts him down with an epic comeback:
"You're a fine to talk morality, O'Malley. Past twelve years you've spent your time bashin' anybody my son didn't like. Children. Old ladies. Puppies. Don't give me that shit."
- Pædo Hunt: The old corporate men 'rescue' female street urchins and turn them into lalas, which are basically underage sex slaves dolled up in makeup, perms and lingerie. Some of the lalas that survive until adulthood end up becoming proxies.
- Rape as Drama: O'Malley's sister Enid was gang raped by home invaders when she was just sixteen. The siblings took it upon themselves to avenge her trauma and kill the rapists when they come back for another attempt. This comes back into play later in climax when Alice wipes out most of Enid's memory by inducing her with Korsakov's Syndrome. Her brain will not retain any new memories and is forever trapped in the traumatic aftermath of that brutal gang rape. As the novel ends, it's not clear if Alice could or would recover Enid's original mental state.
- Sadistic Game Show: A very cruel example. A contestant in a jumpsuit enters a tube where quarters are fired at him at several miles an hour and he's supposed to catch them. It doesn't take long for the man to be turned into a bloody pulp.
- Scary Black Man: Jimmy the Rastafarian driver. He seems chill most of the time and secretly hates the Drydens, yet he's still willing to kill for them.
- Shout-Out:
- When he gets back home to his apartment, O'Malley notes that one of the movies being shown at the in-house nickelodeon downstairs is A Clockwork Orange. The movie is cited as a direct influence on Ambient.
- Mister Dryden once remarked that the idea of the deathmatch conferences came to him after watching a violent sports film featuring rollerblades.
- The Driver: Jimmy, Mister Dryden's valet. A Jamaican man much larger than the 6'3" O'Malley. He's on good terms with O'Malley, and appears to be on his side as they drive up to the estate for the final showdown. But, surprise surprise, he was on the Old Man's side all along and is last seen KO'ing O'Malley before the climax.
- Time Bomb: The method of assassination used to try to kill the Old Man in his estate's office. It fails when Avalon resets it an hour earlier in a bid to kill both Drydens at the same time. O'Malley learns later that both Drydens survived because a lala that the Old Man invited to his office discovered it almost immediately.
- Urban Warfare: The army is mostly made up of psychotic young boys who protect Dryco's interests. Urban areas that are trouble spots are cordoned off by them and there's active warfare between the Army Boys and other factions from Brooklyn to Long Island. Bombings and arson between the Army Boys and their enemies are an everyday occurrence.
