A cloud-minded but detailed spiritual parable that eschews the trappings of hard SF.
Returning from a nature sabbatical, a young environmentalist finds almost all of humanity transformed into blissful digital life forms in Grusky’s (Silicon Sunset, 1998) SF tale.
In 2024, fantastically successful tech tycoon Chris Lapin and his team launch their latest innovation: a computer algorithm that simulates organic tissue. Lapin’s 25-year-old naturalist daughter, Anja Lapin, finds the idea of her father’s company’s raking in more riches repugnant, as the ills of income equality affect the entire planet. She goes on a sabbatical in the Transylvanian wilderness, causing her to be cut off from civilization. Meanwhile, Lapin’s group sees no reason to stop at making replacement organs; their algorithm can completely digitize an entire, live human, consciousness and all. Anja returns from her meditative trip to find that billions of people have chosen to become digital—or “zero percenters”—over the course of just days. Thus, a peaceful world no longer faces hunger, illness, aging, or even sleep, and everyone inhabits shape-changing new bodies that eliminate any need for commerce or environmental exploitation. However, it turns out that Chris and most of his workmates are dead from a mysterious drone attack. And because anti-capitalist Anja is regarded as the inspiration for her father’s making the process freely available, people are hailing her as the savior of the planet—and promptly elect her president of the new World Council. Yet she faces the dilemma of whether to remain a mortal, vulnerable, flesh-and-blood person herself—a situation that’s further complicated with the appearance of Gunnar Freesmith, an attractive, athletic man who also isn’t a zero percenter yet. The story is narrated by “Vicia Cassubica,” who readers come to understand is actually Anja’s newly assigned “concierge”—a faithful smartphone that’s been upgraded into a shape-shifter factotum (and whether Vicia has a soul becomes a matter of much discussion). Clearly, the tale isn’t based in hard science but rather in science that’s indistinguishable from mysticism. With utopia basically achieved in the book’s opening chapters, the author faces something of a problem—much as Richard Matheson did in 1978’s What Dreams May Come: how to describe heaven and how to create dramatic conflict in a place that passes for paradise. Yes, there is a villain slithering through this version of Eden, but both Anja and the author keep that character as ill-defined as possible. There’s also the inescapable notion that Anja and Gunnar will eventually find themselves in roles of the biblical Eve and Adam; however, they manage to talk their way around the matter until circumstances render it moot. Overall, the material is a close relation to the philosophical fantasy of bestselling author Richard Bach of Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970) fame; just as Bach’s repertoire returns, time and again, to backdrops of flight and aviation, Grusky offers scenes of mountaineering and skiing, with a meticulously described description of a hike in the Chilean Andes. However, this choice effectively relegates the startling transfiguration of all Homo sapiens to background detail.
A cloud-minded but detailed spiritual parable that eschews the trappings of hard SF.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9651190-4-7
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Furthest Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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