The central issue of Hard-Wired is the mind of Andy Palinkas and his struggles: with his existence as an individual in society, with maintaining his personal sense of authenticity, and with, y’know… /boy/ stuff. And the intersection of the inner life, personal integrity, the overreach of the state, and quite literal boy stuff is laid out right in the opening. No attempts to bait and switch, the reader is told what they are in for.

Andy is one of those literary characters for whom it is not that unlikely for the reader, in reading their various exploits, to possibly want to smack them upside the head once or twice. But the intimacy with which he opens up in this story is just enough that that impulse doesn’t lead one to cast the book aside. Verbal ecdysis is one of Joseph Dobrian’s strengths, and he brings it.here. We end up knowing Andy too well to throw the exposed baby out with the awkward bathwater.

This work on the youthful psyche of Andy Palinkas (a psyche Andy himself believes will dominate his destiny) also further expands Dobrian’s fictional universe of State City, shown in his novel Ambitions.