A thematically rich and riveting futuristic tale.
Earthlings struggle to adapt to a strange planet and their new synthetic bodies in this second installment of an SF series.
Dr. Evan Feldman is the first human to inhabit a synthetic body and brain. With a genetic defect plaguing humanity on Earth, he and Aneni and Christian, two artificial intelligence–powered synths, travel to the habitable planet Gaia in 2098. They’re transporting over 4,000 human “consciousnesses” for transfer into synthetic bodies, which isn’t always a successful process. Once on Gaia, Evan and his AI companions “restore” some friends and family, including his tech-company CEO daughter, Lily Harris. She actually created Aneni, whose mission is to find a cure for the genetic disease and establish a colony on Gaia. But Lily seems extremely disturbed after learning the humans’ new bodies aren’t organic. Aneni later expresses her concern to Evan that Lily, certain the AI is “off mission,” plans to alter her programming. This could affect her negatively: Aneni is the one overseeing nearly every aspect of the colony’s founding. And that, according to Lily, is another problem. Since Aneni has access to everything, including the colonists’ synthetic brains, could she somehow be manipulating their very thoughts? There’s a lot going on in McWhorter’s sequel to Restoration (2019), not the least of which is the presence of several humanoid species already on Gaia. But this gripping installment centers on the conflict between Lily and Aneni while introducing a host of profound themes, such as creation. Lily made Aneni, but the AI fashioned the colonists’ synthetic bodies. Relentless unease propels the narrative. It’s hard to determine if hijacking Aneni’s code will benefit the humans or endanger them. This situation predictably generates characters discussing technical details in the novel’s latter half; though the particulars are abundant, the sharp, intelligent prose keeps the story free of tedium. The ending leaves no doubt that McWhorter has another volume planned, with plenty of intriguing narrative avenues to explore.
A thematically rich and riveting futuristic tale. (dedication, afterword, author bio)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64704-194-6
Page Count: 393
Publisher: Underhill Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
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One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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