Frequencies

Ortega, Joshua. Frequencies {vt. ((Frequencies))}. Seattle, WA: Omega Point Productions, 1999, 2001. San Diego, CA: Jodere Group, 2003.[1]

The 2003 hard-cover Jodere Group edition (the one we have read) is discussed by Alan Deniro, as "((FREQUENCIES))" in a "Rain Taxi Review": Rain Taxi Online Edition, Summer 2003 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 2003 — online as of summer 2021 at this link.[2]

Deniro holds that Frequencies isn't "a science fiction novel," but rather "The novel [sic] is essentially creative nonfiction disguised as science fiction, an empowerment narrative in Philip K. Dickian clothing." It is clearly a near-future, high-tech dystopia in the tradition of Nineteen Eighty-Four, with a cornucopia of more or less SF tropes, such as severely punished freaking out as in The World Inside, flying cars from BLADE RUNNER, and brain and other bodily implants from cyberpunk,[3] such as Neuromancer and its progeny — plus high-tech surveillance as in The Circle as novel and film and numerous other works.[4] See below for other instances of repeating tropes (motif, icons).

Frequencies is an incomplete work in itself, but Deniro usefully summarizes that the story as we have it so far (and so far goes up to 2021)[5]

has as its premise that "all living creatures...vibrate at a specific frequency which can be measured upon a spectral bandwidth which he called the LIFE—living incorporate frequency emission—spectrum." In the totalitarian Seattle of 2051 they've decided that higher frequencies usually indicate subversive thought; McCready, an agent of a division of the FBI known as the Freemon ("FREquency Emissions MONitor(s)"), investigates and squelches frequency offenders. He becomes embroiled within the inner workings of the Huxton family, founders of the software company Ordosoft™ and Most Important Family in the World. He is assigned to protect daughter Ashley, a free spirit, from strange attacks upon the family, and he begins to open up in her presence. But this character development is itself odd. This future is culturally bankrupt, and the Huxtons are no small part the reason of that. Ashley runs around to "herb cafes" and exclusive clubs and begins to gather vague intimations of a revolution against the frequency hierarchy. It's hard to take this seriously, however, when she ruminates on free choice and politics from a pampered, Tibetan mountaintop estate.

Dinero finds Frequencies "worth reading, if for nothing else than to see how the New Age cognoscenti view science fiction [...]." For users of this Wiki it might be a useful work, to see a number of old motifs, icons, tropes — whatever term — brought together and recycled at the turn of the 20th to 21st centuries. E.g., in addition to those mentioned above — and adding some original points:

A brief scene of torture, supplemented by brain invasion as with the "extraction" in John Shirley's Eclipse Trilogy / A Song Called Youth, but much messier (p. 233; ch. 12

Interrogation with a kind of medium-size screen lie-detection, somewhat similar to the court testimony of the protagonist in Vonnegut's Player Piano (p. 261; ch. 13)

An AI house with android extensions that can move long distances, with the house as such in a tradition going back to THE AUTOMATIC HOUSE of 1915 through Kate Wilhelm's Smart House,[6] and with the androids more organic-ish (and versatile, mobile, and perhaps reliable) variations on the theme of Asimov's house robots, e.g, in The Naked Sun (passim). Note that one scene at the house, Xanadeux (sic) is set in its "subterranean nerve center," bringing together the cybernetic and biological — cf. "biochips" (passim) — and the motif of the mechanized, or in this case cybernetic, underworld (p. 231; ch. 12), a motif going back to The Time Machine and "The Machine Stops."

An ad projected on the Moon for Coca-Cola (p. 289; ch 13).[7][8]

A "cloaking field" explicitly alluding to Star Trek (p. 209; ch. 10).

Immersion in protective, cybernetically-connected suit in an "intelligent fluid" (a "transmutable fluid solid") to enter an "immersible" for a VR experience that turns into an Arthurian duel something like the sagas of the opening of The City and the Stars," combined with the dragon fight in Beowulf, with a touch of the duel with the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail[9] (pp. 239-57; ch 12).

Xanadeux as an AI house is seen and raised, so to speak, by the "palace" (p. [328]; ch. 16) and aristocratic estate in Tibet (apparently called "Is") owned by the father of Xanadeux's owner, seen by the granddaughter of the estate owner as "like the ultimate nanotech heaven" (p. 303; ch. 14) and by her lover as a place where the owner "can play God with your fuckin' molecules" (p. [304]). 
A "nanotech wardrobe" provided by Is or other cybernetic mechanism, for which cf. and contrast the "nano forges" in Forever Peace.
An apparent "looking glass" that acts as a kind of transporter portal (p. [334]).
 — For which see Clarke's Third Law, that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,"[10] or, in this case, divine action. 

At Is, there are robust experiments "to explore the possibilities that technology presents to us," including the trans- or posthumanizing one of uploading a person's "consciousness into a CPU," i.e., Central Processing Unit of a computer (p. [306])— apparently successful, with the consciousness then downloaded into a clone (p. [340]).
Also experiments to "upload our [human species' or more limited] intelligence into von Neumann probes" to be sent out to colonize, or virally infect, the galaxy (pp. [306]-307). Cf. and contrast Manseed, "Long Shot," and the mocking of such ideas in The Iron Dream.

The removal of an implant by a very high-tech version of something like sucking out snake venom (p. [324]; ch 15).

A "birdie" drone functioning as an eye-in-the-sky for surveillance. Cf and contrast the helicopter at the beginning of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the surveillance in, for a more recent, kinder, gentler example, The Circle as novel.

In a conversation between two generations of the central oligarchic family, we get the theory that their enemy "existed only within cyberspace" as "a creation which had no corporeal, real time form . . . A true ghost in the machine" ([p. 336]; ch. 15).[11]

Cautions: • At least in the 2003 Jodere printing, there are interesting experiments in altering fonts, not all of which are successful. Most especially, in the volume we examined a number of the headnotes are unreadable, or at least unreadable without a bright light and a magnifying glass.

• In chapter 13 there is the assumption that people ca. 2053 would still be smoking dope (as some — including a positively-featured character — get nicotine from smoking cigarettes), plus what might be called, politely, unhelpful comments against condoms and for a conspiracy theory of the spread, in this future world, of AIDS (pp. [286]-287).

• Again, the novel may not begin by jumping "into the midst of things," but it does end "in the midst of things"; if you're still angry over no conclusion to the Game of Thrones novel series, Frequencies may prove frustrating.

RDE, finishing, 20Jul21, 28Jul21, 30Jul21