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
Outrageous, darkly comic fun of the sort you’d expect from Palahniuk.
The latest comic outrage from Palahniuk (Choke, 2001, etc.) concerns a lethal African poem, an unwitting serial killer, a haunted-house broker, and a frozen baby. In other words, the usual Palahniuk fare.
Carl Streator is a grizzled City Desk reporter whose outlook on life has a lot to do with years of interviewing grief-stricken parents, spouses, children, victims, and survivors. His latest investigation is a series of crib deaths. A very good reporter, one thing he’s got is an eye for detail, and he notices that there’s always a copy of the same book (Poems and Rhymes Around the World) at the scene of these deaths. In fact, more often than not, the book is open to an African nursery rhyme called a “culling chant.” A deadly lullaby? It sounds crazy, but Carl discovers that simply by thinking about someone while reciting the poem he can knock him off in no time at all. First, his editor dies. Then an annoying radio host named Dr. Sara. It’s too much to be a coincidence: Carl needs help—and fast, before he kills off everyone he knows. He investigates the book and finds that it was published in a small edition now mainly held in public libraries, so he begins by tracking down everyone known to have checked the book out. This brings him to the office of Helen Hoover Boyle, a realtor who makes a good living selling haunted houses—and reselling them a few months later after the owners move out. A son of Helen’s died of crib death about 20 years ago, and she’s reluctant to talk to Carl until he gains the confidence of her Wiccan secretary, Mona Sabbat. Together, Carl, Helen, Mona, and Mona’s ecoterrorist/scam-artist boyfriend Oyster set out across the country to find and destroy every one of the 200-plus remaining copies of Poems and Rhymes. But can Carl (and Helen) forget the chant themselves? Pandora never did manage to get her box shut, after all.
Outrageous, darkly comic fun of the sort you’d expect from Palahniuk.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2002
ISBN: 0-385-50447-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
A fable about the consolatory and strengthening powers of religion flounders about somewhere inside this unconventional coming-of-age tale, which was shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Award. The story is told in retrospect by Piscine Molitor Patel (named for a swimming pool, thereafter fortuitously nicknamed “Pi”), years after he was shipwrecked when his parents, who owned a zoo in India, were attempting to emigrate, with their menagerie, to Canada. During 227 days at sea spent in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger (mostly with the latter, which had efficiently slaughtered its fellow beasts), Pi found serenity and courage in his faith: a frequently reiterated amalgam of Muslim, Hindu, and Christian beliefs. The story of his later life, education, and mission rounds out, but does not improve upon, the alternately suspenseful and whimsical account of Pi’s ordeal at sea—which offers the best reason for reading this otherwise preachy and somewhat redundant story of his Life.
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-100811-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
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