Track forward a decade. Terror has defeated privacy concerns as every CCTV camera in the land, now filming in crytal-clear high definition, is linked to law enforcement and powerful data sifting systems.
Sensor technology like that found in Microsoft's Kinect game controller can now sniff pheromones and track heartbeats as well as reading faces and recognising voices.
This has led to cops being issued with portable polygraphs that make lying during interviews almost impossible.
Big-data analytics has gone berserk and now informs the marketing of everything, including retail religion.
Perfectly animatronic sex doll robots called skinjobs have revolutionised brothels but are reviled by the followers of the latest mass-market religion.
Welcome to the world of Skinjob, a just-in-the-future techno-thriller from local IT industry identity and now author Bruce McCabe.
Skinjob - the term first came to prominence as a pejorative for the nasty androids in Ridley Scott's Bladerunner - sets a cracking pace as it follows a mass murder investigation by an FBI agent with a lie detector.
There's plenty of tech in the plot but Skinjob is more futurist than science fiction.
Everything in the book is either available now or on the drawing board for delivery in the next half-decade.
Unlike some techno-thriller writers, McCabe has been careful to strip away the heavy jargon and acronyms so the descriptions of the systems and gadgets in Skinjob don't get in the way of the story.
With decades of experience as an IT industry analyst and commentator, and a PhD in computer science, McCabe knows his stuff.
And he has woven a tight, entertaining yarn in Skinjob that also foreshadows the data and sensor-driven world we will live in come the 2020s.
PRICE: $19.75 hardcover,
$7.95 Kindle edition
RATING: 8.5/10
Disclosure: Stuart Kennedy knows Bruce McCabe well and was given a (very undeserved) acknowledgment by the author for providing some encouragement on the project one night over a six-pack of beer.
