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
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.
A novelist tries to adapt to her ever changing reality as her world slowly disappears.
Renowned Japanese author Ogawa (Revenge, 2013, etc.) opens her latest novel with what at first sounds like a sinister fairy tale told by a nameless mother to a nameless daughter: “Long ago, before you were born, there were many more things here…transparent things, fragrant things…fluttery ones, bright ones….It’s a shame that the people who live here haven’t been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that’s just the way it is on this island.” But rather than a twisted bedtime story, this depiction captures the realities of life on the narrator's unnamed island. The small population awakens some mornings with all knowledge of objects as mundane as stamps, valuable as emeralds, omnipresent as birds, or delightful as roses missing from their minds. They then proceed to discard all physical traces of the idea that has disappeared—often burning the lifeless ones and releasing the natural ones to the elements. The authoritarian Memory Police oversee this process of loss and elimination. Viewing “anything that fails to vanish when they say it should [as] inconceivable,” they drop into homes for inspections, seizing objects and rounding up anyone who refuses—or is simply unable—to follow the rules. Although, at the outset, the plot feels quite Orwellian, Ogawa employs a quiet, poetic prose to capture the diverse (and often unexpected) emotions of the people left behind rather than of those tormented and imprisoned by brutal authorities. Small acts of rebellion—as modest as a birthday party—do not come out of a commitment to a greater cause but instead originate from her characters’ kinship with one another. Technical details about the disappearances remain intentionally vague. The author instead stays close to her protagonist’s emotions and the disorientation she and her neighbors struggle with each day. Passages from the narrator’s developing novel also offer fascinating glimpses into the way the changing world affects her unconscious mind.
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-87060-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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