Sci-fi Challenge – Hull Zero Three

Dammit I’m late again. I actually finished this book a week ago but have only just got round to posting this. April’s Sci-fi challenge book was Hull Zero 3 by Greg Bear.

Another ‘proper’ Sci-fi story in that it’s set on a spaceship in space it that’s pretty much where any similarities to what I’ve read before end. A man swims into consciousness being dragged naked and cold by a small girl. The man is Teacher but all he knows is the little girl is desperately trying to help him survive by getting him somewhere warm. As they ‘chase the heat’ words and memories occur to him as they are prompted by new experiences and locations as they make their way through Ship. As these memories surface Teacher becomes aware that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong with the mission he thought he was on and Ship appears to be in the process of tearing itself and its inhabitants apart bit by bit. Along the way clues are left to the history of the voyage and what might be happening in various books put together by the people who went before him, a lot of whom appear to be him if the corridor full of mutilated bodies that resemble him is to be believed. Along the way he finds company with other, similarly confused beings and together they fight their way through against the viscous Factors, seemingly manufactured protectors of Ship, or minions of the mysterious Destination Guidance? Things come to a head in the untouched and dark Hull Zero 3

I wasn’t sure about the way this story was written at first, the descriptions of locations seemed maddeningly vague and overly complicated at the same time but then I found that this helped create the atmosphere of chaos that Teacher was going through and as he regained his memories and met up with other Characters the writing style seemed to become smoother. Every character in the story is looking for something, although they’re not sure what and they’re not even sure what side they should be on until they realise that they all hold important parts of the same puzzle and things start clicking into place. The final scenes tie things together nicely but still manage to include a final twist.

I liked it. 3/5

Sci-Fi Challenge – Oryx and Crake

For some reason I’ve never really read any of Atwood’s books. I read the Handmaid’s Tale at school and I remember enjoying it but have pretty much ignored her since. Perhaps it’s a hangover from being ‘forced’ to read an author. A shame really because I found myself enjoying Oryx and Crake as well.

Set in the not too distant future, it is a world where genetic modification is running wild and global warming is having a marked effect on the environment. Science companies house their employees in protected bio-dome compounds and unleash engineered viruses to sabotage each other’s genetic work. It follows the story of Jimmy, now known as Snowman, as he grows up and how he has become the guardian of a group of genetically engineered people called the Crakers. It is told mostly in flashback as Snowman makes his way back to the compound he shared with Oryx and Crake for supplies. Crake is Snowman’s childhood friend (perhaps his only friend) who goes on to become an important geneticist for one of the top companies while Snowman languishes in mediocrity. Oryx is the beautiful woman they both come to love.

As the flashbacks go on the story of Jimmy’s early life, how he became Snowman and almost the sole survivor of some terrible disaster is revealed. How he met Crake, the internet games they played, the porn and snuff sites they watched together, Snowman’s struggle with the disappearance of his mother and her subsequent ‘treason’ and execution, Crake’s rise to the top, Snowman’s disappointing adult life while watching Crake’s success, Crake’s plan to save humanity with his BlyssPluss pill and his devastating revenge when he discovers Oryx and Snowman’s affair.

The Crakers themselves are bred to be perfect beings with no conception of what Crake believes to be mankind’s problems, mainly sex. They have no conception of the love, jealousy, anger or longing that sex generates as the women are engineered to come into heat, mimicking mammals in the wild and have been taught to live off the land by Oryx, protected from the harsh environment the Earth has become by their augmented digestive systems and natural insect repellants bred into their perspiration . They have been left in Snowman’s care by Crake even though Snowman considered himself unequal to the task and looks after them as best he can, telling them stories of how Crake created them and building a mythos around him, saying he receives messages from him through his watch. It is ironic that despite all of Crake’s scientific posturing and dismissal of emotions all through the book he unleashes the end of the world because he cannot bear the thought of the woman he loves being with someone else, leaving that someone to look after his creation as a final revenge.

This book kept me hooked all the way through, the pace slow to start with and building all the way to the end. As each flashback section ended I kept thinking “but what happened?!” each flashback giving a tantalising glimpse of what was coming but never quite revealing it. The ‘realtime’ sections were a nice contrast as well, the sorry state Snowman finds himself in but dealing with it and carrying on for the love of Oryx. He laments the fact that even though the Crakers have no concept of religion they revere Crake as the creator, Oryx the teacher and Snowman only their messenger but he is shocked to find on his return from the compound that they have made an idol of him and are chanting before it ‘to guide him home’ and he realises he is important to them as well. The very end, when the Crakers tell him there are other people have appeared while he has been away hangs in the balance. Will Snowman abandon the Crakers for his own kind or protect them?

Rating –  It’s a great read and all too plausible, especially as when I was halfway through it I read a news story that the go-ahead had been given for tests to take place using wheat that has been engineered to produce its own pesticides. 4/5

 

Sci-Fi Challenge – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Ah, now this is more familiar sci-fi territory for me after last month’s Zoo City. The future (compared to when it was written anyway), colonies on Mars, androids, laser guns. For February’s Not Just For Stormtroopers reading challenge it was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

Earth has been ravaged by nuclear war and the only people left are those too poor, too stubborn or too ‘special’ to join the colonies out on Mars. Rick Deckard, being a bounty hunter for the San Francisco police, is possibly a little of the first and some of the second. He lives in an apartment with his wife, an electric sheep on the roof and hunts rogue androids for a living, receiving a $1000 for each one he ‘retires’  to supplement his meagre salary.

It’s a melancholic story. The Earth is effectively dead because of the radioactive fallout, most species of animals are extinct and those that are left are so rare that it is considered a civic duty to keep a pet. If you can’t afford a real one, or yours should die, electric versions are available to save face. It’s a depressing place but your trusty Penfield Mood Organ can solve that with a quick dial to any mood you could want. The fact that police departments have bounty hunters on their books and people need a device to alter their mood tells you what kind of place it is.

Deckard himself is a melancholy character, he wonders if he should have left his wife when he had the chance and obsesses about buying a real animal to replace his electric sheep. His chance comes when the senior bounty hunter is injured by a new type of android and he is tasked with retiring it and the other six in the group. In the process and through the androids and humans he meets he starts questioning himself and whether or not he is a good bounty hunter.

Empathy is a running theme. The androids can not feel empathy for anything, even amongst themselves and this is what gives them away in the test Deckard uses on them. When Deckard tests himself he finds he is capable of empathising with the androids yet he seems detached from his wife and the empathy-based religion, Mercerism, that humans have embraced after the war. As a reader I could feel myself empathising with the androids, especially Pris, who at first seems so scared and vulnerable when discovered by J. R. Isodore that while I was sure she was an android I almost hoped she wasn’t. It isn’t until the scene with the spider that you realise how cold and unfeeling the androids actually are and any sympathy for them dies away. JR is possibly the most empathic character in the story. On the surface a ‘chickenhead’, a human rendered special by the radioactive dust and deemed unsuitable for emigration he is still useful enough to be a driver for one of the electric animal ‘vet’ companies. He finds Pris living in his apartment block and takes pity on her, wanting to look after her. Once he learns the truth about her and the other androids he feels he should protect them all, until they take his spider from him and he lets Deckard do his job. He is the most human out of all of them and he was the one I found myself rooting for as his hopes and fears were the most simple and most honest somehow. He finds a group of friends and wants to look after them, it doesn’t matter to him if they are real people or not.

This is one of those books that managed to suck me in and want to keep reading long past the time I should have closed the book and got on with something else and one I found myself thinking about after I did. How different is Deckard from the androids he hunts really? Does it matter that Mercerism is a fake? How many other public figures are actually androids? It’s a deep and troubling story that has stayed with me for days after I finished reading it.

I’ve managed to get this far without mentioning that this is the book Blade Runner was based on. I’m sure I watched the film when I was younger but I remember very little about it. It is now on order from Amazon so it will be interesting to see how they compare.

Rating – For the effect and the trains of thought it has prompted in me, it couldn’t be much else really – 5/5