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Cosmocopia by Paul Di Filippo

First published in 2008; published digitally by Open Road Media on September 2, 2014

If Camus wrote science fiction, something like Cosmocopia might have been the result. Absurdist in approach, inventive in style, and imaginative in content, Cosmocopia is an offbeat novel that introduces the reader to a world that is recognizable for all its absurdity. It is, in fact, just as arbitrarily cruel and rewarding as the world we inhabit.

Cosmocopia is a parallel universe story. The “Cosmocopia” is, in fact, a collection of universes shaped like a horn of plenty. At the small end of the horn (or so the legend goes) resides the Conceptus, the creator of the Cosmocopia. Each new universe takes its place on the ever-expanding outer ring.

Frank Lazorg, an aging artist, has not produced any work since his stroke. He receives as a gift a package of powder from a rare beetle. He is told he can use it to produce a beautiful crimson paint. Feeling compelled to put a bit of the powder on his tongue, Lazord is instantly invigorated. After experimenting with the powder, he contacts his former model and lover, a young woman who abandoned him shortly after he lost his artistic powers. Lazorg, who wants to complete his masterpiece and needs her as his muse, does not react well when she rejects his plea. What follows can be described as an act of artistic inspiration … or desperation.

Meanwhile, Crutchsump and her pet wurzel live on a parallel world in Sidetrack City, where Crutchsump ekes out a meager living by collecting bones. The shifflet skeletons are easy to find but the monster that has recently haunted the Mudflats has deterred the other bonepickers. When Crutchsump encounters the monster … well, it isn’t what she expected.

For reasons that are only superficially explained, Lazorg comes to live in Crutchsump’s world. Crutchsump’s people are pretty much human except for a key anatomical difference. Unisexual genitals are located where a human's mouth would be.

Crutchsum's world is pretty much like Earth but for another key difference. Lazorg is frustrated to discover that he cannot paint because Crutchsump’s universe does not allow three dimensions to be represented as two. It is possible, however, to make sculptures out of a cosmic material that can be accessed with the right tool. Lazorg’s experimentation with the new art form is a transformative experience for both Lazorg and Crutchsump, but it is the transformation of Lazorg that underpins the novel.

By the end, Cosmocopia crosses the threshold from the strange to the bizarre. The point of the novel, apart from telling an amusing story, might lie in Crutchsump’s insistence, in the face of adversity, that we fashion our own destinies. In other words, it is pointless to blame Conceptus for problems that we bring about ourselves. On the other hand, a reader might find Lazorg’s point of view more convincing:  the universe is unfair and if Conceptus isn’t to blame for that, who is? Although Lazorg is confronted with a choice as the novel nears a resolution, Paul Di Filippo seems to suggest that there may be no reason to choose one philosophy over the other. Life unfolds. We influence some of it, some we can’t, and in the end, that’s life … whatever universe we happen to find ourselves in.

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Symbiont by Mira Grant

Published by Orbit on November 25, 2014

As we learned in Parasite, Sal the Tapeworm is inhabiting the body of Sally Mitchell the Dead Girl. Her identity crisis continues in Symbiont. Sal is a chimera, a genetic mixture of human and tapeworm. Most others who are being taken over by tapeworms lose their cognitive abilities as their brains are eaten, but Sal is a special case. In fact, most humans who have been taken over by tapeworms shamble, a sure sign that they are zombies, even if they are known here as "sleepwalkers." A zombie by another name ... Another clue to the zombie-like nature of sleepwalkers is their drive to gnaw on people who are not being controlled by tapeworms. Again, Sal feels no such urge.

Although a zombie apocalypse is unfolding in the background, Symbiont, like Parasite, isn't really a zombie novel. Since the world has enough zombie novels, readers should be grateful for that, although it isn't clear that the reading public's desire for zombies is satiable. Parasite was more of a medical thriller than a zombie novel while Symbiont is a compilation of chase scenes, escape scenes, and "am I human or am I a tapeworm?" scenes.

Symbiont feels like a bridge between the first and last novels. Given the novel's length, surprisingly little of significance happens. The meaningful aspects of the novel could have been distilled to 50 pages and incorporated into the last novel or the upcoming one. Mira Grant admits she intended to write a duology but ended up writing a trilogy (perhaps because book buyers like trilogies, making them easier to market). Most of Symbiont gives me the impression of filler designed to turn two books into three.

Sal spends the first part of the novel bonding with her tapeworm family and with her uninfected boyfriend while reminding the reader of her automobile phobia (a theme that recurs with tiresome regularity). The conflict that Sal feels -- she knows she's a tapeworm, sympathizes with tapeworms (to a degree), and even thinks from a tapeworm's perspective (although the perspective is informed by human intelligence) -- makes Sally a more interesting zombie than most. Later in the novel she confronts her daddy issues, daddy being a military researcher of infectious diseases who views Sally as a lab rat rather than a daughter. This leads to some weepy feeling on Sally's part and several repetitive scenes that could have been productively excised from the novel.

The evil scientist who still thinks he can profit from the zombie apocalypse (apparently failing to realize that zombies have no buying power) is too daft to take seriously. Surviving consumers will be eager have tapeworms implanted in their bodies, knowing that tapeworm-infected people wiped out San Francisco? I don't see it.

There are, however, some clever moments in Symbiont. I particularly liked the notion of crows luring sleepwalkers to their deaths as they tumble from a bridge, where waiting sharks put an end to their miserable lives. I also like Sal's divided loyalty between humans and tapeworms. Grant's writing style is fluid and she avoids the worst excesses of zombie novels. Although I was indifferent to most of the novel, I'm looking forward to the final book's resolution of the mess that Sal's creators have made.

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Tokyo Kill by Barry Lancet

Published by Simon & Schuster on September 9, 2014

Akira Miura believes the Chinese Triad is after him because of a position he held with the Japanese government in the 1940s. A number of his colleagues have recently died. Miura's son insists that he seek the help of Jim Brodie, an American antiques dealer who doubles as a security consultant/private eye in Tokyo. Miura might be paranoid but that possibility seems less likely after his son is hacked to death, a signature of Triad assassins.

In the tradition of private eye noir, Brodie takes a few beatings as he searches for the killer. The beatings differ from most private eye fistfights in that Brodie is proficient at kendo. Unfortunately for Brodie, so are the people who fight him. After attacks on Brodie become more deadly, he meets an old Chinese guy who tells him about Chinese villages destroyed by the Japanese. Brodie then finds himself in the difficult position of working to correct injustices of the past.

The plot offers an interesting look at the intersection of Japanese and Chinese history. It leads to a surprising reveal. Character development is weak but the pace is swift. The story provides a convincing amount of local color in Tokyo, Miami, and Barbados. Swordplay at the novel's end is a welcome departure from the shootouts that provide the action in most thrillers. Tokyo Kill is also more believable than most modern thrillers. It's the kind of entertaining book that makes for good airplane reading but it's also the kind of book that is easily forgotten when the plane lands.

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A Calculated Life by Anne Charnock

Published by 47North on September 24, 2013

What does it mean to live a "normal" life? Anne Charnock sheds light on human existence by looking at "normal" humans from the perspective of a genetically engineered human -- one who is designed to function without emotions or a sense of wonder.

Jayna is an analyst living in a near future England. She looks for correlations: crime and wind direction, a company's use of nautical metaphors and its stock performance, hydrogen consumption and anything. She is a biological simulant, more advanced than earlier models, more personable, more empathic, better able to fit in with organic workers. She studies stick insects as a hobby and spends her weekends in conversation (mostly about statistics) with the other simulants who share her segregated residential building.

In an effort to improve her analytic ability (as much a function of intuition as mathematics), Jayna decides to broaden her life experience by introducing random activities into her invariable daily routine. She must exercise caution because unpredictable behavior may cause the Constructors to reboot her. That happened to another simulant who decided to enter a new restaurant simply to taste the flavor of food he had not experienced. Even more shocking was the simulant who developed a sex drive. Jayna reasons that turning on the sense of smell in the new generation of simulants may be responsible for these undesirable traits.

By watching children at play and organic co-workers in their home environments, and by conducting small experiments, Jayna develops some theories about organic human behavior, although she has more questions than theories. Why do children incorporate stealing from each other into a game that involves negotiation and trading? How are children able to fight and then quickly become best friends again? Why do adults at a barbeque spend so much time talking about food? Why is vandalism so satisfying? Do humans evolve and devolve in a way that mimics stick insects?

A Calculated Life isn't necessarily a dystopian novel -- this is a future in which everyone has food and shelter and crime rates are low -- but the society it depicts is far from ideal. People are pigeonholed by a controlling government, channeled into careers they might find unsatisfying. Individuality is not valued, in organics or in simulants. Most organic humans have implants that make them behave sensibly, never losing their tempers, assuring a long productive life in middle management. It is this background, presented with a minimum of exposition, that makes A Calculated Life an intriguing novel.

The "robot yearning to be free" plot is conventional in science fiction but Charnock makes it seem fresh. A Calculated Life is a novel of observation rather than action, a quiet novel that leads to a contemplative resolution. Yet Charnock manages to build tension over the course of this short novel as Jayna experiences a growing sense of desperation while blossoming with the realization of human potential. There is a degree of elegance in the uncluttered prose that Charnock wields to introduce optimism into a pessimistic view of the future. The novel's message -- humans can be oppressed but human nature cannot be suppressed -- resonates in this skillfully told tale.

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