The Genome by Sergei Lukyanenko

First published in Russia in 1999; published in translation by Open Road Media on December 2, 2014

The Genome begins as Alex Romanov is discharged from a hospital on Quicksilver Pit. Alex is a master-pilot. He is also a genetically engineered "spesh" with a modified body and enhanced aptitudes and abilities. One of the modifications prevents him from experiencing love but that is offset by enhanced integrity, loyalty, and kindness. That's one of many interesting touches in this surprising novel.

Stuck on Quicksilver Pit after an accident that nearly killed him, Alex helps out a spesh named Kim O'Hara, a 14-year-old girl who is about to go through metamorphosis. Kim is carrying a stolen crystal, the contents of which are not immediately clear. She appears to be a fighter-spech but she also has a different set of spesh characteristics that are revealed about midway through the novel. Her true engineered nature is surprising and pretty cool.

Alex needs money. With an unbelievable stroke of luck he finds an unbelievably good job as a ship's captain -- unbelievable to Alex, who knows there must be a catch but doesn't know what it is. Sergei Lukyanenko writes some imaginative scenes about Alex bonding with his new ship, which becomes part of Alex (or Alex becomes part of the ship) when he interfaces with it. He also gives an original spin to the process of crew selection. The five crew members Alex selects (most have been genetically engineered for their jobs) give Lukyanenko the opportunity to mix together a number of conflicting personalities.

The universe Lukyanenko imagines is populated by alien races as well as humans who have colonized other worlds. A matched pair of politically important aliens are passengers on Alex's first voyage. This raises themes of racism and xenophobia that will be familiar to science fiction fans, but Lukyanenko handles them well. The morality of cloning is another familiar theme. One of Alex's crew considers herself a sworn enemy of the aliens and another hates clones, again creating the kind of conflicts that add interest to a story. By the novel's midpoint, something eventful has happened that turns The Genome into a whodunit. Solving the mystery (potentially with the help of a genetically engineered detective who calls himself Sherlock Holmes) may be the only way Alex can avert an interstellar war.

Lukyanenko adds a number of original and creative details that contribute to the story's sense of authenticity. I particularly liked the descriptions of piloting a ship. I'm not quite sure that I buy the logic used to expose the bad guy -- it isn't all that Holmesian -- but the story moves so quickly that it's easy to overlook its faults.

To a degree, The Genome endeavors to be an offbeat exploration of love. That aspect of the story is a bit heavy-handed, particularly at the end, but the novel never becomes a trashy sf romance. The Genome is also a philosophical exploration of free will and the morality of genetic programming that prevents the programmed from choosing a different kind of life. While none of those themes reveal fresh thinking, I give Lukyanenko credit for adding some meaningful thought to an entertaining mystery/space opera/action novel.

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The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins by Irvine Welsh

First published in Great Britain in 2014; published by Doubleday on February 3, 2015

Some books should probably come with a warning label. Consider yourself warned. When you read a novel by Irvine Welsh, you know you will encounter the F-word frequently. This one also stands out for its vividly detailed descriptions of sexual encounters that are (mostly) far from loving. If that puts you off, you should avoid The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins. For readers with fortitude, Welsh's latest caustic novel holds some rewards.

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins is set in Miami Beach, where -- as Welsh paints it -- shallowness is a lifestyle and fitness is the primary measurement of worth. To be obese or unattractive is to be shunned in the nightclubs and on the beaches where the city's beautiful people hook up.

As the novel opens, fitness trainer Lucy Brennan takes out her aggression on a man who tries to shoot the pedestrian who just collided with her car. An artist, Lena Sorenson, films the encounter on her cellphone. The nation proclaims Lucy a hero, which leads to fifteen minutes of pseudo-fame that soon becomes notoriety. Fame of that sort -- the kind that creates a "crass, leveling, bizarre democracy" -- is one of the book's themes.

Most of the novel is told from Lucy's point of view. Lucy's voice is not entirely convincing -- she seems like a man's bisexual fantasy girlfriend. She is obsessed with sex. She is also self-absorbed and self-righteous. She goes out of her way to be offensive (particularly toward the obese) and I imagine that many readers will find her attitude so disagreeable that they will hate her and the book she rode in on. Fortunately, she's so over-the-top that it's fun to watch her self-destruct.

On the other hand, chubby Lena is a likable, sympathetic, and evolving character. She plays a secondary role in the novel's first half but slowly acquires a voice of her own, revealed in the latest Miami Beach trend of writing diary-like "Morning Pages." Lucy's overboard effort to change Lena's shape (and life) provides most of the novel's comedy but Lena's description of the events that added a hundred pounds to her frame gives the novel its weight (pardon the expression).

A reviewer lacking patience might give this book a typical Amazon 1-star review that reads "I read 30 pages before throwing it against the wall." I was tempted to set the book aside in its early chapters. The unlikable, offensive protagonist and the story's apparent pointlessness almost overcame my curiosity about the path the novel would follow. Fortunately, the bleeding dark humor kept me engaged until Lena begins to give the story its heart.

Welsh aptly terms Miami "a ghost town in the sun" while lovingly describing its sleaze. More importantly, the novel has much to say about shallow people who extoll their own virtues while judging others. Lena may not be physically fit or confident but she is a much better person than Lucy, a truth that Lucy, focused on her defining characteristic (fitness) to the exclusion of all others, is incapable of perceiving. As Lena discovers, people like Lucy who mistake domination for strength are usually "weak, vain, and scared."

At the same time, Welsh uses Lucy to make the point that people who use food or self-pity as a crutch would benefit from taking control of their lives. If Lucy and Lena could be merged -- not as Siamese twins but into a single, reasonably fit body -- the result would be a happy, well-adjusted person. I think the need for balance is the ultimate point of The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins.

The novel's closing act turns into a feel-good story, to a degree that feels like a cop-out designed to please readers. Still, the ending is clever. Sex Lives isn't a perfect novel but most of it is fun and it shows flashes of Welsh's unorthodox literary brilliance.

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Worlds by Joe Haldeman

First published in 1981; published digitally by Open Road Media on December 2, 2014

First published in 1981, Worlds imagined mankind's presence in space by the early twenty-first century, not to mention limitless fusion energy. Like a lot of older sf, you can advance the dates by a few (or several) decades and the story will still work.

New New York, a mining asteroid forced into Earth orbit, is the most prosperous of several Worlds that all share a dependence on Earth for the basic resources they need to sustain life. Nations on Earth have also become dependent upon the Worlds for raw materials and energy. That balance (or imbalance) is threatened by a discovery that could allow the Worlds to become independent of Earth. Chaos ensues.

Marianne O'Hara, a young woman born in New New York, goes to Earth for a year of study. Much of the first quarter of the novel, in diary or letter form, presents Marianne's thoughts about Earth in comparison to New New York (shorter version: Earth is exciting but vile). After that, Marianne becomes involved with a group that wants to foment revolution using means that are not immediately made known to her. Eventually her involvement iwith that group puts Marianne at risk while the group itself puts the orbiting Worlds (and the Earth itself) at risk.

Haldeman advances some clever ideas in Worlds, including the notion of "line families" that are essentially families that have incorporated and merged in order to avoid estate taxes. America has experienced a lower middle class revolution called "People's Capitalism." Citizens must join a lobby to vote (which police and soldiers cannot do, giving them effective control of guns but not of politicians).

Much of Worlds feels like a set-up for a plot that only gets underway in the last third of the novel. Worlds is the first novel in a trilogy, which explains the unresolved feeling when the novel abruptly ends. As a "teaser," I found the political background of Worlds (and, to a lesser extent, the characters) sufficiently intriguing to motivate me to read the remaining volumes. Because Worlds does not work well as a stand-alone novel, I would not recommend it unless you are prepared to read the entire trilogy.

The Open Road edition of Worlds contains a brief biography of Joe Haldeman as well as some photographs that chronicle his life and hair loss. A couple of other (aging) sf writers show up in snapshots taken at awards ceremonies. The Open Road edition also includes the first several pages of the second novel in the trilogy, Worlds Apart.

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The Happiest People in the World by Brock Clarke

Published by Algonquin Books on November 4, 2014

After the controversy surrounding the Jyllands-Posten publication of twelve cartoons depicting Mohammed rattles Denmark, Jens Baedrup, the editorial cartoonist for a small Danish newspaper, is ordered to draw a similar cartoon. After a couple of teens burn down his house, the Danish authorities announce that Jens died in the fire and place him into witness protection. Whether Jens' wife will miss him seems doubtful. Lorraine Callahan, a CIA agent who is guarding Jens, decides to send him to Broomeville, New York to work with Matty Klock, the school principal with whom she once had an affair. Matty fires a drunken guidance counselor and gives the job to Jens, who is now known as Henry.

We are told repeatedly that Danes are the happiest people in the world. Americans clearly are not. Lorraine wants to be sleeping with Matty, who still pines for Lorraine although he sort of wants to be faithful to his unforgiving wife Ellen, who wants to sleep with Jens. Also unhappy is a guy named Capo who is monitoring all of these shenanigans for reasons that are not immediately revealed to the reader.

Another plot thread concerns Soren, one of the teens who holds himself responsible for (what he believes to be) Jens' death. Despite his experimentation with arson, Soren is a likable character who enters into an unlikely alliance with another of the novel's central characters.

Brock Clarke gets comic mileage from a Denmark that he portrays as populated by people who feel guilty about the religious stereotypes to which they subscribe while making no effort to overcome them. He also has fun with the unspoken thoughts that race through his characters' brains. As is common with unspoken thoughts, they tend to be ridiculous and are wisely left unspoken. But they are also very funny.

You might need Venn diagrams to keep track of all the characters and their relationships to each other. None are developed in great depth but they are deep enough to carry a comedy. This is a dark comedy but the story is heartening in many ways, including its depiction of father's admiration of his son. That he admires his son's ability to buy an illicit gun in Copenhagen merely adds to the story's amusement.

For a novel that is marketed as having great political depth, The Happiest People is surprisingly light, yet I did not regard that as a fault by the time I finished reading it. Perhaps it has hidden depths, but I enjoyed it as a fairly superficial look at the ways in which life (and people) can become utterly strange.

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Mobile Library by David Whitehouse

Published by Scribner on January 20, 2015

Mobile Library begins at the end. A mobile library sits on the edge of a cliff, surrounded by police cars. Detective Jimmy Samas is worried that the woman at the wheel might drive over the cliff. He believes two missing kids are in the mobile library with the driver and a dangerous adult passenger.

To explain the scenario that confronts Samas, the story backtracks to follow the young life of Bobby Nusko, a bullied child with an abusive father who wonders where his mother went. Bobby meets a mentally challenged girl named Rosa who is also the victim of bullying. Soon thereafter he meets Rosa's mother, Val Reed, whose job is to give a mobile library its weekly cleaning. Val and Rosa become his surrogate family and the mobile library his adopted home. Until meeting Rosa and Val, Bobby's only friend was a boy who made a painful attempt to turn himself into a cyborg to protect Bobby from harm.

From time to time, the story backtracks further to give the reader some insight into Bobby's sad family history, including the truth about his mother's absence, colored by memories that are "indelibly written in love's stubborn ink." Eventually Bobby finds himself running from his past, sending him on a road trip in the mobile library with Rosa and Val.

The fourth significant character is Joe, a Scot who is living in the woods until he becomes part of the mobile library family. Joe has anger management issues. Whether he will be a good or bad traveling companion is not immediately apparent.

The conception of family as "a puzzle of people" is the novel's theme. Mobile Library suggests that the families we assemble for ourselves are sometimes better than those into which we are born.

Although Mobile Library starts at the end, it is filled with surprises, particularly after Joe joins the party. Even minor characters are easy to visualize, full of quirks and tics that bring them to life. Perhaps the purity of the characters (they tend to be purely good or purely evil) sets them apart from reality, but I don't think that's a problem in a story that uses the purity of characters to illustrate lessons about the qualities of human nature.

David Whitehouse's prose is just as surprising as the plot. There is a lot of charm in Mobile Library and more than a little truth. It is more engaging than Bed, another Whitehouse novel that explores human nature by examining damaged characters who struggle with their unconventional lives.

Val tells Bobby that "in every book there is a clue about life." The clue in Mobile Library might be that hope, the "pilot light in the soul," is the flame people use to warm their hands on days when they have nothing else. Or it might be that life is like a book -- it begins and ends but it is part of a larger story told in other books, a story that will carry on beyond the "tiny window of time" through which we peer. Or your life is yours to live as you choose, parentage notwithstanding. Or life moves forward no matter how much we want to stay rooted or return to a happier past. Or maybe the clue is that if you feel a need to escape from your life, there are worse places to spend your time than in a mobile library.

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