The Darwin Elevator by Jason M. Hough

Published by Del Rey on July 30, 2013

An alien disease has laid waste to Earth. The disease killed most people, but about 10 percent of its victims survive in a devolved, subhuman state. They are not zombies in name, but they act like zombies. It seems to be an unwritten law of the decade that no science fiction novel is complete without zombies. In any event, the only safe place on Earth is within the protective field that extends nine kilometers from the space elevator in Darwin, Australia. The elevator is a gift from aliens who never introduced themselves. The disease is also an alien gift. Why did the aliens deliver a gift that is both wondrous and destructive? More importantly, are they coming back? Unfortunately, most of the readers' questions go unanswered. Fortunately, The Darwin Elevator (book one of The Dire Earth cycle) is a promising start to a series that presumably will provide the answers before it ends.

Skyler Luiken and his crew are among the few who are immune to the disease. They are scavengers who travel outside the protective field to find goods they can sell to inhabitants of the Orbitals. The Orbitals can only be reached by the space elevator, but unexplained power fluctuations have shut it down. The man who decides whether to restart the elevator is Russell Blackfield, the evil administrator in charge of Nightcliff, the Darwin-based station that handles elevator transit. A good bit of political drama comes from the tension between the residents of Darwin, who depend on Orbital farms for food, and the residents of the Orbitals, who depend on Darwin for water and oxygen. Blackfield's position gives him a great deal of power, but like all evil administrators, he wants more.

Tania Sharma, an Orbital scientist, and her boss, Neil Platz (who, like Blackfield, is driven by an agenda of his own), have a theory about the aliens. To test the theory (based in part on knowledge of the aliens that Platz is keeping to himself), Tania needs data that can only be acquired outside the protective field. Skyler and his crew are called upon to undertake a dangerous mission to Japan to recover the data. The plot moves forward from there.

Two things make this story work. First, the characters are fun. They aren't deep, but they have enough personality to make it easy for a reader to cheer for, or root against, them. Russell is a power-hungry, nightmare bureaucrat, while Skyler is an insecure but basically decent adventurer. Second, while the story isn't entirely original and certainly isn't ground-breaking, it moves quickly enough to maintain interest. The story is more action-dependent than idea-dependent, but the mystery of the aliens' purpose in constructing the elevator and contaminating the Earth holds sufficient intrigue to feed the reader's imagination.

Jason Hough's writing style tends to be uninspired ("Skyler led the way, moving as fast as his legs would carry him") but it's serviceable. I could have lived without all the chase scenes involving zombies (excuse me, subhumans). They detract from the mild intelligence that otherwise characterizes the story, and the conflict between Russell and Platz generates enough action without tossing subhumans into the mix. Readers who can't get enough zombies will probably disagree. In any event, it's too soon to judge the subhuman plot element. Perhaps the next book will provide a more credible explanation for the subhumans than "readers really dig zombies." In any event, I look forward to reading it.

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Mission to Paris by Alan Furst

Published by Random House on June 12, 2012; released as a trade paperback on June 4, 2013

Jack Warner of Warner Brothers sends Fredric Stahl, an Austrian-born American actor, to Paris, where he will star in a French-made movie. The timing is unfortunate for Stahl. It's 1938 and Germany is engaged in political warfare, using a variety of resources to persuade the French that it would be futile to resist Hitler. Stahl, who has no love of swastikas, would prefer to avoid discussions of politics, but Germany wants to use him as an instrument of propaganda while America wants to use him ... not as a spy, exactly, but as a source of information. About halfway into the novel, Stahl's role changes.

Whether he's describing the contents of a cruise ship newsletter or the streets of Paris, Alan Furst's attention to detail is impressive. Stahl makes brief trips to Germany, Morocco, Hungary, and Romania, but it is Paris that comes alive. The characters are well-rounded, and if not exactly memorable, they all seem real.

Mission to Paris didn't hold me in the clutches of suspense as do Furst's best books, but it is a solid, entertaining novel. A love story that starts as a subplot but eventually takes center stage is more credible than most spy novel love stories. The novel's weakness is that Stahl never seems to be in real danger. Action scenes are subdued. Stahl's ability to waltz to a happy ending, untouched by the intrigue that surrounds him, makes the story less than gripping. Still, the intricacies of political warfare are fascinating, and Mission to Paris never failed to hold my interest.

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Creation by Adam Rutherford

Published by Current (Penguin) on June 13, 2013

Creation is brief and not overly academic, which is the way I like my science books. Part One provides an overview of current scientific thought about the origin of life. Part Two (to me, the more interesting part), subtitled "The Future of Life," discusses the creation of new, human-engineered life forms, a branch of science broadly known as synthetic biology.

Creation begins with a brief history of biological science as it pertains to the discovery of cells as the basic component of living things. Cell theory and Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection both speak to the fundamental truth that "life is the adapted continuation of what came before." Does this mean that all life -- spiders and turnips and bacteria -- can be traced to a common origin, even to a single cell? To answer to that question, Adam Rutherford discusses the history of genetics, explains how DNA works, and argues that the merger of two single cell organisms (an archaea swallowing a bacteria) began the creation of complex life two billion years ago. Rutherford proffers the "left-handed" nature of the proteins that make up life as forceful evidence that "life is of a single origin." That originating entity, the Last Universal Common Ancestor (nicknamed "Luca"), is where you, as a living being, began, existing in your present form "via a colossal series of iterations." But if Luca started it all, how was Luca created?

The question takes Rutherford back 4.5 billion years, to the Earth's creation. The influence of geology on biology takes up a good chunk of the ensuing narrative, culminating in a dissection (and rejection) of Darwin's concept of a "primordial soup" as the origin of life. This leads to an even more fundamental question: "What is life?" Rutherford argues that life is not just the checklist of characteristics (like movement and reproduction) that we learned in school. His alternative answer (life is something that is capable of evolving) strikes me as just another characteristic, as do the additional "behaviors" of life (such as "the continual maintenance of energy imbalance" or "a process that stops your molecules from decaying") that Rutherford identifies, but that's probably a semantic issue. In any event, Rutherford next explores (and largely rejects) the possibility that life has an extraterrestrial origin. All of this leads Rutherford to research suggesting that Luca, unlike its progeny, may not have been a membrane-bound cell at all, but existed "inside the rocky shell" of alkaline underwater vents. I think I'll have to wait for the movie before I can grasp that picture.

So much of part one seemed like a refresher in freshman biology that a more sophisticated audience will probably decry Rutherford's book as unworthy of attention. It's clearly geared to people (like me) who don't have a doctorate in biochemistry. And while some of part one was familiar, enough was new (to me) to keep the discussion interesting. In that regard, Rutherford's lively writing style is a plus.

Still, I was more engaged by part two, which introduces a goat that produces spider silk in its milk (an example of a transgenic organism), synthetic yeast cells that leak a relatively clean version of diesel fuel, and vitamin-enhanced rice (modified with genes from a daffodil). These examples of genetic engineering are the early efforts of synthetic biology, the means by which scientists hope to create "new life forms whose circuitry and programming is clear, simple, and, crucially, built not for survival but for purpose." DNA might be programmed, for instance, to make a protein that kills cancer cells while leaving noncancerous cells untouched. For diabetics, a "synthetic cellular circuit" might produce insulin as the body needs it.

While the potential applications of synthetic biology are among the most interesting discussions in Creation, the least interesting are Rutherford's observations about the difficulty of applying intellectual property laws (patents) to living organisms. The discussion doesn't begin to capture the complexity of the issues involved. On the other hand, the policy debates stimulated by synthetic biology are fascinating, even if Rutherford doesn't quite do them justice. For instance, Rutherford's examination of the controversy surrounding genetically modified food products (which he tends to characterize as PR-driven hysteria) is too dismissive to be useful.

Rutherford's conclusion about the perils of synthetic biology, which amounts to "don't stand in the way of progress," is unduly optimistic given his recognition in an earlier chapter that "progress" -- as in the case of thalidomide -- can have devastating consequences. I can't agree with Rutherford that it is always wrong to "fixate on a threat" and I'm confident that the thalidomide debacle effectively refutes his suggestion that "market forces" can provide effective scrutiny of new technologies. He also seems to suggest that regulation is only appropriate after the damage has been done (as was the case with thalidomide) rather than "preemptively in a way that could prohibit progress." If prohibiting progress means thwarting catastrophe, I can't agree that preemptive regulation is undesirable. If, as Rutherford acknowledges, "synthetic biology is moving at such a fast pace that many scientists are bewildered by its progress," slowing that pace with more regulatory oversight might be the correct response.

These are not easy issues and, to be fair, I'm oversimplifying Rutherford's position, but Rutherford oversimplifies a serious debate. I appreciated his recognition that the science he lauds can be used to create weapons of bioterror, but I was only mildly comforted by his assurance that it would be very difficult for terrorists to create a pandemic by weaponizing a flu strain. At one point it would have been thought difficult to fly hijacked jets into the World Trade Center, but that didn't stop it from happening. In any event, I'm more concerned about the unforeseen consequences of developing new life forms than the potential consequences that scientists are able to recognize and minimize. While I sympathize and largely agree with the view that the potential benefits of synthetic biology (including the eradication of certain diseases and even of famine) will often outweigh its risks, I wonder if there is reason to tread more carefully, and with greater oversight, than Rutherford would like.

Kudos to Rutherford, however, for calling attention to those issues. I might not entirely agree with his policy analyses, but I'm not denying Creation's value. It's readable, informative, and stimulating, and it contributes to a debate that needs to be robust.

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Three by Jay Posey

Published by Angry Robot on July 30, 2013

The good news is that Three is a post-apocalyptic novel with no zombies. The bad news is that Three is a post-apocalyptic novel with the Weir ... which are kinda like zombies. Fortunately, there is more to the story than the Weir. Jay Posey has populated a "wild West" landscape with people who have chemically and mechanically enhanced abilities, most of which -- like the Weir -- aren't explained. Nearly everyone has an embedded wireless connection to a satellite (handy if you need GPS or want to check the time) and they can download themselves if they're about to die (handy if you're about to die). A technological people "living rough" in a post-apocalyptic environment is an unusual concept, but again, it's given no context. We are left to imagine why the world is as it is, perhaps because Posey couldn't concoct a satisfying explanation.

The setting is interesting and the story is packed with action, but the novel works because of the characters. Cass needs drugs to function, but when she has them, she's dynamite. Her son, Wren, is a scared little boy most of the time, but he's gifted in ways that aren't immediately obvious. They've escaped from RushRuin, fleeing from a group of brainhackers who want them back -- or, at least, they want Wren.

Three is the classic silent hero, the Clint Eastwood of Spaghetti Westerns who rides into town, squints, and kills everyone who is foolish enough to mess with him. Three is a bounty hunter, a loner who (in classic Clint Eastwood fashion) finds himself doing unselfish things to help a pretty lady and her innocent child even though he'd prefer not get drawn into anyone else's drama. The familiarity of the character makes him no less appealing.

Posey writes with pace and enough power to give the story a serious kick. On occasion his prose is a little corny and sometimes the story is too hokey, but for the most part it avoids going over-the-top. Parts of the story are formulaic, particularly those involving Wren, and some of the fight scenes have a generic quality. The post-apocalyptic Western motif is far from new, although Posey repackages the story with some interesting twists. Three and Cass fighting off wave after wave of Weir is hard to swallow (although if you're prepared to swallow the existence of the Weir, perhaps it makes sense to swallow the rest of the plot, as well). Some aspects of the story are predictable, although the ending is not.

On the whole, Three is the kind of action-driven, emotion-stimulating novel that's fun to read as long as you're prepared to shut down the analytical side of your brain. If you don't think about it too much, you'll enjoy it more, particularly if you're a fan of the early Clint Eastwood westerns.

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Brief Encounters with the Enemy by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

Published by The Dial Press on August 13, 2013

The characters in Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's stories live in a gloomy world. They are divided by race and religion. Business is bad. Factories have killed all the fish. A war is coming; the war has started; the war will never end. One day we are winning the war; the next day we are losing. It's too hot; it's too cold; it's always raining; cars are buried in snow. To returning soldiers, people say "thank you for your service" and "you're really special" and "you're our hero" because that's what everyone else says, even though they barely know the guy and don't honestly care about him. The young men who don't enlist, who stay stuck in their jobs, are jealous of the attention heaped on the returning veterans.

Sayrafiezadeh's best stories focus on the workplace. Most of his characters are stuck in lives that are going nowhere. In "Cartographer," a bus strike becomes a metaphor for the narrator's motionless life. The short order cook in "Appetite," feeling more machine than human, worries that he will never become an adult, that he'll always be burning grilled cheese sandwiches. While his friends go off to fight a war, the Walmart assistant manager in "Associates" fantasizes about the daughter of the fence to whom he sells merchandise he's stolen from his store. The one bright spot belongs to the disabled janitor in "Victory" who feels fortunate when he starts dating a kleptomaniac who steals from the store where he works.

Some stories are grounded in the surrealistic war that the United States is fighting against an unnamed country. A soldier in "A Brief Encounter With the Enemy" behaves unheroically. Resentful of the pride his boss and co-workers express in his friend upon his return from service, the narrator of "Operators" makes an impulsive decision to enlist that he soon second-guesses. Armed with platitudes, a teacher in "Enchantment" returns home from the war, resuming his teaching job and his affair with a married women.

The only story that doesn't fit within either of those groups, "Paranoia," tells of the narrator's interrupted friendship with an undocumented immigrant.

Although none of these stories grabbed me on an emotional level, they're intellectually satisfying and laced with understated humor. The humor gains force as the same clichéd platitudes appear in multiple stories. Sayrafiezadeh is particularly adept at portraying the dreariness and soul-robbing impact of low-paying jobs. When the focus shifts to the war, the stories become less effective, in part because the nature of the war is so vague (although I suppose that's the point). No story stands out but collectively they humanize the marginalized, encouraging the reader to see the people we pass every day but never notice.

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