STILLED

In this SF novel, machine/human hybrids try to prevent a takeover of Earth.

Millennia ago, a being called Sean became the “Father of Humans” and also programmed the first Plythi’i, biologically engineered micromechanical humanoids. Since their creation, humans and Plythi’i have also hybridized in a form named Huply. All three races once lived peacefully on a home world called Ply’, but the Shepherds, a rogue cell of Huply, favor their human ancestry. They revolted against the Plythi’i and were exiled. Establishing a new home planet, the Shepherds became determined to purify themselves of Plythi’i blood. They attempted unsuccessfully to conquer Ply’ and then Earth when the Plythi’i/Huply moved there. About 15,000 years ago, they almost succeeded; now, in 2020, they’re trying again. Only a Savior called the Tsr’ Yyd can rise again, as he has in cycles past, to thwart the Shepherds. A key to that struggle is Inklebrawt Winklehank, a 27-year-old genius who works at an Attleboro Falls, Massachusetts, company where he develops software that could lead to “intelligent molecular machinery in space.” Though fit and good-looking with ash-blond hair and “crystal blue eyes,” he’s socially awkward and has never even kissed a girl. When he runs into Maggie Henderson, a former high school acquaintance, she seems strangely familiar as well as attractive—also ash-blond, with green eyes. Meanwhile, David R. Wessel, an ash-blond United States Navy SEAL sniper in Afghanistan, has been following instructions to kill not the Taliban but men in gray suits. Inklebrawt, code-named Golf-1, tells Wessel the men in gray are extremely dangerous. It turns out these three as well as others have intertwined histories and fates that will give them important roles to play in protecting citizens against the Shepherds, who have been in deep cover on Earth. Beginning their attack, the Shepherds target human women for their intended breeding program, placing them in a horrific floating paralysis later called The Stillness Disease. Everything depends on deploying code written by Inklebrawt—but time is running out.

Estvander, a cell biologist and neuropharmacologist, writes an ambitious story that spans worlds and millennia. He provides a complex background, with the tale weaving in and out among the speculative and real worlds. The novel can become abstract, but the author develops backstories for his characters that help make them more engaging. This is especially so for Inklebrawt. Though a brilliant prodigy, he’s moved by beauty, and his childhood toys—LEGO bricks and a stuffed animal, Blue Doggie—are dear, essential features of his inner landscape. Unfortunately, the book lacks a glossary, and the plethora of unfamiliar terminology can be very rough going, whether alien vocabulary or scientific: “Nature’s chiral stereochemical makeup,” the “enantiomer of natural law, biological or chemical chirality.” Too often, the story is marred by odd or unfortunate phrasing, as in “his blue eyes portrayed a gentle gleam, but trained sharpened focus festered behind them, perhaps scaring the elongation of hair growth for his flat top.”

An imaginative and dramatic alien tale with poignancy and humor but sometimes hampered by awkward writing.