Much as we view bears, mountain lions, and neanderthals the nebish view their contemporary human neighbors. Unlike the bears and lions, the humans tend to really be dangerous. The battling between the two makes quite a fulfilling sport for combatants on both sides. The most successful nebish hunters even tend to defect to the outside world and become "cow-eyes" (one needs big eyes to be above ground) themselves.
The dystopic future presented by TJ Bass is undated, and keenly not easily outdated as a lot of science fiction ends to be. The author was a physician and his understanding of biological science shows, but he keeps it fairly understandable to non-scientist reader, like me. His technical world is functional without belaboring too many engineering processes and he avoids over specifying the technology itself-- unlike the petroleum, fusion, and telephone-driven futures of 1945-1995. His societal evil is quietly competent and many a corporate employee reading this will get it right away. She maybe even agree with the Hive.
It was Bassler's take on artificial intelligence that I liked the best. While the humans, yes even the nebish are human, have complete story-arcs, the reader gets to know the AI working around the characters. I find this last bit the most interesting aspect about these two books. In a time where sci-fi writing is dominated by evil electronic-minds overtaking humanity, it is nice to see how a non-robotic engineer can understand how AI will most likely become helpful and therefore actually used by humanity. The works taken together rather reminded me of how HG Well's works, especially The War of the Worlds or The Time Machine, not only read well but are still relevant as speculative fiction. Definitely a couple of King Kongs here of S-F literature.
