Blood Music by Greg Bear
My rating: 3/5 cats
I HAVE BEEN TOLD THIS REVIEW IS SPOILERY!! I DISAGREE, BUT BEWARE!!
(dude, you seriously want an audio version of this??)
so i read this because bird-brian told me to.
i don’t know that i am the best person to review sci-fi books. i have zero background in the genre, but for whatever reason, brian thought it would be amusing if i reviewed this.
so i will try.
soooo – okay – quick plot for you plotty folks out there – genius bad boy scientist gets fired from job for meddling with mammalian cells and conducting experiments outside of his job description. before he gets booted to the curb with his cardboard box, he surreptitiously injects many of his little cells into his own body so he can continue his experiments in the privacy of his own home.
oops.
once inside his body, they start housekeeping a little. they are like sentient little roombas, fixing his allergies and his eyesight – gentrifying his insides so the nice noocytes can move in and go condo. they make it all better, like when my super put potted plants in my foyer. suddenly, he is stronger and thinner and he can have sexual intercourse FOUR times in a single evening with a girl who approaches him in a bar and then moves in!! he is like jeff goldblum in The Fly – he is better than human; he contains multitudes!! and they communicate with him in his miiiind!! but then, much like poor jeff goldblum, he begins to deteriorate. but in this book, he takes everyone with him.
and the world goes ffwwoosshh.
and that’s when it gets a little “huh?” for me.
so north america is pretty much gone. people turn into like jello?? and so this “slow” girl survives. why?? no one knows – i guess she is the only sped in north america and the noocytes can’t be bothered fixing her, and then the mother of the now-gelatinized bad boy scientist – she survives because… yeah, well no one knows, and then twin brothers (eeeek) survive because they have a lot of pesticide-exposure?? okay, i can buy that. and then the twins meet up with old science-mama as they flee the rapidly-changing landscape?? sure, makes sense – the USA is not that big after all.
but slow girl goes to live in the world trade center (i pour out my 40-ounce) where she is visited by three ghosts who bring her food and… yeah, i don’t understand any of this part.
again – i don’t read a lot of sci-fi. is it traditional in sci-fi that the sci- takes over the more traditional elements of storytelling like characterization?? or is this more of a criticism of a particular kind of science fiction from a particular time (the eighties). because these characters were pretty one-dimensional. and there isn’t really a main character because the one you assume will be the main character knocks off pretty quickly… as do the rest…it reminded me a lot of On the Beach, which book seemed so unrealistic to me in the way that people just quietly accepted their fate without changing their day-to-day routines… dummies.
i have to confess – i have no idea what happened in the post-noocyte takeover of north america. why there were four people left knocking around the whole fucking continent – what their stories were meant to contribute to the greater story – i am at a loss here, guys…
i am also at a loss here:
“First you need to find a length of viral DNA that codes for topoisomerases and gyrases. You attach this segment to your target DNA and make it easier to lower the linking number – to negatively supercoil your target molecule. I used ethidium in some earlier experiments…”
*zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*
“What you want is to add and subtract lengths of input DNA easily, and the feedback enzyme arrangement does this. When the feedback enzyme is in place, the molecule will open itself up for transcription much more easily, and more rapidly. Your program will be transcribed onto two strings of RNA. One of the RNA strings will go to a reader – a ribosome – for translation into a protein. initially, the first RNA will carry a simple start-up code.”
sorry, i totally drifted off there, greg bear.
(greg bear also wrote the book Moving Mars which greg stahl is always talking about. we saw it yesterday during our bookstore jaunting. this is an aside)
i don’t know… i don’t know where this falls in the greater scheme of science fiction, or what i am supposed to have gotten out of it all. i assume it is a cautionary tale about not taking your work home with you, right?? (although if i ever get fired, i am going to inject SO MANY books under my skin so i can read them when i get home. oh god if i got fired, i would have so much free time… kind of tempting…) and the more likely cold-war stuff, but that part is less fun and more blowy-uppy.
i did learn that greg bear likes the word “cocantenations” as much as proust.
and that’s all i got.
oh, i almost forgot my most favorite bit of dialogue:
“I’ll never be rid of you,” Bernard said. “You always represented something important to me.” She swiveled on her high heels and presented the rear of an immaculately tailored blue suit. he grabbed her arm none too gently and brought her around to face him. “You were my last chance at being normal. I’ll never love another woman like I did you. You burned. I’ll like women, but I’ll never commit to them; I’ll never be naive with them.”
hahahahahaha
