"Simon Ings's first novel Hothead established him as a unique and powerful voice in cyberpunk fiction. Now Hotwire blazes a multimedia trail to the edge of the new cybernetic world order, where artificial brains have grown beyond the reach of language and interface direct by dream and vision...

"From the web of fibre optics cast across the world, thinking cities are emerging. Ajay had a future once, birthing them for the Haag Agency, first Delhi, then Milan. But when a rich woman seduces him into betraying his employers, Ajay's expertise becomes available, freelance, to the ruthless mayor of Rio de Janeiro. Rio craves something special. It wants to be made human.

"For this, Ajay must steal rare technology from a new Frankenstein whose name is Snow, a wetware expert long since dead and transformed into a mad orbital machine. No match for Snow, Ajay finds himself laid out on a slab, one of Snow's obscene experiments in production-line biology. Snow's manufactured daughter, Rosa, needs a new toy..." -- [jacket blurb, UK pbk, 1995]

"Hothead was a good first novel with lots of promise. Hotwire is a grand fulfillment of that promise and a progression into new territory. We're talking about techniq . Nanotechnology that transforms things, massive artificial intelligences which run things. Lots of gut, grit and gristle." --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 1995).