Editorial Review Product Description Nomad marked a number of firsts. Unlike most action-adventure series, it was conceived from the start as a four-book miniseries. Today, in an era in which action films could not exist without wall-to-wall computers and themes incorporating digital technology, it's hard to fathom how different the core concept of Nomad was from virtually everything else published in the category when the books appeared. Ahead of its time, Nomad was classified as "science fiction" and earned its author the mistaken title as a "science fiction writer." The series, which among other things featured a kung-fu master in a virtual reality universe, created an entirely new genre. This is the complete four-book Nomad miniseries using the original manuscripts which are considerably different from the published versions by Gold Eagle. ... Read more Customer Reviews (7)
Always Right On Target
In Nomad, David Alexander has created a suspenseful technothriller that will wire you to your chair. It's that good and that riveting. This bestselling author of such action thrillers as Snake Handlers and Under Attack has also proven his abilities in Nomad. This is action that will keep you turning the pages long after you should have turned off the light.
Totally Awesome!
Nomad is definitely a high-concept and highly imaginative foray into a future world in which the action hero fights quite a bit of his battles in an artificial reality that is wholly generated by a massive and powerful computer system.
As in our own world, the world of Nomad is constantly under threat of attack from terrorism and from more conventional warmongers leading rogue states.
Alternatively in the Nomad series, one of the major sources of international instability is massive and highly organized criminal organizations that have here assumed many of the trappings of national governments and which are in some ways indistinguishable from giant multinationals. I think the Nomad miniseries handles these and other themes imaginatively and powerfully.
Nomad shows that Alexander is more than just a good futurist, he's a pretty accomplished storyteller too, which I suppose is the main reason why I can't get enough of his stuff.
Can't Recommend This Thriller Too Highly!
I'm not very interested in trying to tell other people what to do and especially not what to read, but I'll make a rare exception in the case of this particular thriller and give it my very highest recommendation.
I think it's an exceptional example of sustained good writing across a series of multiple but interconnected storylines, where the central character stays true to form yet has enough depth to begin with so that there's plenty of material to continue to spin off. The treatment of high-tech weaponry and scenarios for future global society and digital warfare are all handled quite imaginatively and most, if not all, of the standard cliches that are frequently used as padding are avoided here. There isn't a lot of "air" pumped into these pages. It's all solid, muscular writing that stays on target and keeps on hitting the bull's eye consistently.
This one's a winner on every level, filled with the kind of gripping action and taut suspense that readers of the genre will appreciate as the stuff that first-rate thrillers are made of.
GIVE US MORE NOMAD, PLEASE!
This is an action thriller classic and a must-read for anyone out for a fast-paced thriller reading experience.
The Nomad Miniseries Ranks in the Grand Tradition
These four futuristic thrillers have got to rank as possibly the most imaginative works in the categpory, especially when you consider the awesome fact that they were written decades ago, and that a great deal of the "future" world that Alexander created in the books has either happened or is in the process of happening.
Issues such as whether a writer predicted the future are really sidelights (because when we read a thriller we're reading fiction and not an encyclopedia or a technical manual) but author Alexander has shown an uncanny ability to gaze into the future with a keen eye that and a sharp analytical focus on trends in politics, warfare, and many other areas.
These visions of futurity that the Nomad miniseries shows us are in many ways terrifying, because since some of them have become our present and others will potentially become our futures, if the more terrifying of these visions -- like the characters and situations that figure in the storylines about what might be called "super-terrorism" or "techno-terrorism" actually happen, it will be bad news all around.
I hope they don't, but planes and other types of aircraft crashing into skyscrapers, military robots and robotic weapon systems, like those used in the War in Iraq and now under development, man-machine interfaces like computer implants in the human body and cyborgs, space weapons, stealth and invisibility using high-tech active systems that are only now, decades in the future from when Alexander wrote about these things, and many, many other developments of this type, run through the narrative of these books.
Will military use of time travel be a reality we'll be confronted with sometime in the not too distant future? Based on the many other imaginative products of Alexander's vision in the pages of Nomad, this chilling prospect may in fact happen one day.
It's no wonder that the Nomad books were originally branded as "science fiction," because the future, before we're living in it, always resembles "science fiction."
Any author who writes books like these is, in my opinion, a kind of visionary. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are two prime examples of such gifted authors. Based on the achievements in the Nomad Miniseries, David Alexander ranks with those I've mentioned above who've preceded him.
Yet we don't value Jules Verne of H.G. Wells just because they too described military submarines and space travel before these happened. We value them as great authors because they've given us great reading that has withstood the test of time.
In my view just as you can sit down and enjoy a book like Wells' The War of the Worlds today and take it down from the shelf or read it again on your Kindle, you can take Nomad, read it today, and take it out again five years later and it'll still read as fresh and original as when you originally read the first sentence. That's why Wells and Verne are such good authors, and that's exactly why David Alexander is such a first class author.
Nomad, in total, is one of those rare visionary works that defy easy characterization, capsule description or egregious pigeon-holing. The four books that make up the miniseries are a picture painted on a broad canvas, like one of those huge paintings of pitched battles that cover an entire wall and show the action both near and distant. Maybe that's why, after having finished reading the entire miniseries, I plan to return to it again very soon, and I'm sure return to it after that next reading.
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