THE ALIEN LANGUAGE

In Kembaren’s SF novel, gifted individuals confront revolting AI robots, a techno-conspiracy, and an impending planetary catastrophe.

The author continues her Pretenders series, opening with the apparent assassination (via machine gun) of the previous installment’s polymath hero, space pilot Eledon Smith. Someone shoots him on a Long Island beach, where he had just erected a spiral building with a design inspired by both sea life and UFOs. Smith is one of the “Pretenders,” described as amazingly gifted “beings from the future.” Barely surviving this attack is another superhero-type, a young physicist called Jazz, who is also Smith’s lover. Just a day later, Jazz is caught in a strange explosion that levels the Great Gallery of Evolution in the Museum of Natural History. Jazz pragmatically accepts a job from the mysterious Dess T. to teach human language (and human thinking) to newly developed AIs and shape-shifting androids. The work Jazz does seems to consist mostly of engaging in contentious and mystifying dialogues. Jazz thinks Dess T. seems less like a normal human and more like some kind of simulacrum—but still pretty sexy. Meanwhile, the hunt is on for files related to Smith’s last project, a space-based next-generation Internet of immense power. Can even Jazz be trusted with its secrets? And what if Smith isn’t dead? This compelling bumper-car narrative, with its lurching shifts across time and place, embraces oddball prose replete with eccentric grammar and syntax, bardic-refrain nicknames for key characters (“the man with the massive figure”; “the woman with solar hair”), and swear words sometimes prudishly redacted while others are spelled out. The author drops assorted great names from science and popular culture (from Blaise Pascal to Harry Potter), provides deep-dish discussions of data engineering, and introduces provocative scientific notions, such as terraforming planets by starting with their molten cores. Even with its comic-book action scenes and torrid sex, the content presents a formidable learning curve.

Provocative, brainy concepts drive this semi-opaque SF thriller narrative.