Exogene by T.C. McCarthy

Published by Orbit on March 1, 2012

Germline, the first novel of The Subterrene War series, told the story of a journalist who became a part of the war he was covering, participating in battles and growing emotionally attached to genetically bred female soldiers called Germlines.  In Exogene, the second novel in the series, the focus is on one of the Germlines, a genetic named Catherine.  “Faith and death” is the genetic creed.  Combat is a test of faith; death is the welcome reward, the entrance to a promised afterlife.  Yet the reality of war changes people, even people who have been nurtured in vats and programmed to kill.

Catherine is a perfect killer. At 16 1/2, she is the finest genetic soldier ever produced in America.  Yet Catherine begins to feel an unnatural (for a genetic) will to survive, a fear of death that may or may not be an early onset of the “spoiling” that awaits her at the end of her service.  We know from the first novel that Germlines begin to rot away when they turn eighteen.  We also know that despite being conditioned to accept that fate (while craving a more meaningful death on the battlefield), genetics occasionally try to run, to escape the war before reaching their expiration date, an effort that will prove to be futile -- or so they are told by their human creators.

Catherine’s story initially centers on her attempt to escape her makers and her engineered fate.  She eventually falls into the hands of male genetics bred as Russian soldiers.  The Russians are working on something new -- an Exogenic Enhancement, a hybrid of human and machine -- and who knows what the Chinese are doing (not to mention the Koreans).  Hating Americans and Russians about equally, Catherine must make a choice about her future, and it is that choice that drives the novel’s second half.  Since Catherine is handicapped by hallucinations in the form of flashbacks as her mind begins to erode, the second half blends Catherine’s present with snatches of her gritty past.  Yet as the story unfolds and as Catherine’s conception of her purpose evolves, we begin to suspect that Catherine’s moments of superficial clarity are unhinged from reality.  Whether due to spoiling or the drugs she was given or religious rhapsody, Catherine sometimes seems a tad crazy.  That, of course, makes her an interesting character.

While T.C. McCarthy writes combat scenes that are as vivid and exciting as nearly any I’ve encountered in military science fiction, he also writes with poignancy that is too often missing from the genre’s war stories.  McCarthy imbues his characters with greater depth than is common in action-driven stories.  His vision of the future is interesting and more credible than most military sf novels I’ve read.

McCarthy makes impressive use of religion as the force that motivates the Germlines.  The belief that killing is the path to salvation is a common feature of religious zealotry, a point that has been made often enough in fiction, but McCarthy takes it a step beyond the ordinary:  What happens when a zealot begins to suspect that she is not serving God but is killing to serve secular masters? Or, in terms of McCarthy’s story, what happens when a genetic begins to worry that she is not a perfect instrument of God, but a flawed creation of man?  When a genetic who is conditioned to hope the war will never end begins to long for -- not exactly peace, but a chance to kill on her own terms, to destroy an enemy of her own choosing?  There is something both intellectually and emotionally engaging about Catherine’s redefinition of her life’s purpose.  Perhaps Exogene is about the true meaning of freedom (nothing left to lose?) but I think its meaning is open to other interpretations, particularly in light of an unexpected ending that made me question my understanding of Catherine.  That’s one of the things I like about Exogene and Germline:  the novels work as high energy action stories but they operate on other levels as well, giving the reader political and philosophical meat to chew upon.

I felt for the journalist in Germline more deeply than I connected with Catherine, but I think Exogene is in many ways a more cohesive work than its predecessor, and the better of the two novels, albeit only slightly.  Both are worth reading, and I look forward to the next installment.

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Midworld by Alan Dean Foster

First published in 1975

Long before the concept of world building gained currency among science fiction fans, Alan Dean Foster built one of the most imaginative worlds in the genre.  Midworld takes place on an unnamed planet covered with dense vegetation, rising from the surface (Lower Hell) to the sky (Upper Hell) in seven layers.  Although it is filled with predatory plants and animals, humans -- the descendants of a crashed spacecraft -- have carved out a niche in the middle levels.  They have adapted to the world to such an extent that they seem to communicate in an almost worshipful way with the trees and vegetation that make their survival possible.  They “emfol” with plant life, an empathic form of communication that assures the plant’s willingness to be used for their purposes.  A science station, illegally established on the world by a corporate entity, is unaware of the world’s human population until a skimmer flown by two scientists is swatted from the air by a flying nightmare.  The scientists -- Logan and Cohoma -- are saved by Born, who eventually leads them on a dangerous journey back to their station.  When Born learns what the science station is doing, conflict ensues.

Midworld combines a nifty story of corporate greed with a lost world adventure.  Most of the novel -- the best part of the novel -- pits humans against the many dangers that Foster imagines on a world that is both treacherous and (for those who understand it) welcoming.  In the final quarter of the novel, the humans who have adapted to the world and the newcomers who want to exploit it are not playing well together.  In that regard, Midworld develops a less-than-subtle pro-environmentalist message, one that cleverly transplants the Gaia theory to an alien world.  The human inhabitants of the world take only what they need, and only after they emfol with the plant life to determine whether the plant is ready to be taken.  The corporate outsiders are, of course, taking whatever they want, without regard to the world’s needs, and are thus (at least in Born’s opinion) set on a path that will lead to the world’s destruction.  The heavy-handedness of the “good versus evil” storyline is offset in the final pages, which challenge the reader to reconsider the nature of good and evil in the circumstances that Foster imagines.

Foster’s writing style is lively; it occasionally has a literary feel that is uncommon in genre fiction.  For that reason, and for the brilliantly conceived world that Foster envisions, this largely forgotten novel comes close to meriting the status of a science fiction classic.

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The Detour by Andromeda Romano-Lax

Published by Soho Press on February 14, 2012

Ten years after leaving Italy, Ernst Vogler returns to the country where he spent five eventful days. To tell the story of those days, The Detour returns to 1938. Vogler is on the curatorial staff for the Sonderprojekt, acquiring art for the Reich, particularly art that is pleasing to the Führer. His mentor, Gerhard, has been seized and taken to Dachau, imprisoned for the crime of having opinions. It is unwise, in this era, to ask the wrong questions, particularly if one questions the wisdom of concentrating all of Europe's most valued art in Germany and Austria, and so Vogler keeps that question to himself. In Gerhard's absence, Vogler is next in line for an important assignment: travel to Rome to transport a priceless sculpture, Myron's Discus Thrower, back to Germany.

Vogler begins a cross-country trip to the German border, accompanied by the sculpture and the brothers Cosimo and Enzo. As the miles fly past, we learn more about Vogler's life: his difficult relationship with the father he continually disappointed; the "strange variation" that set him apart from other children; the source of the scar that makes him so self-conscious; his loss of passion for anything but art, "itself a substitution for other losses." As the trip continues, Vogler learns that the route has been planned so that Enzo can make a romantic detour. One detour leads to another until Vogler meets the brothers' family, including their sister Rosina.

The Detour tells a story that fascinates in multiple ways. On its simplest level, the novel builds thriller-like tension as the reader wonders about the fate of Discus Thrower and the men who are bringing it to the border. The tension builds to a dramatic climax that I didn't anticipate. The Detour also works as an unusual love story in a time of war: "War takes away nearly everything, but perhaps not that final illogical tendency [the possibility of romance] that allows us to continue living." Actually, there are two love stories: one, involving the brothers, is told obliquely; the other, involving Vogler, is eventful but a bit predictable.

From a more intellectual perspective, The Detour looks at pre-war Europe through the lens of art as Vogler and Rosina argue about whether Discus Thrower represents an ideal: the German loves the sculpture's physical perfection while the Italian despises its failure to represent emotion and individuality. Vogler admires the perfection of the human form -- a notion of the Übermensch that the Nazis recast in racial terms -- and seeks it out in art, yet he was raised with an acute understanding of his own physical imperfection and has carried the shame of that defect throughout his life. Rosina, of course, sees things quite differently.

At its best, The Detour is a character study that illustrates the conflict many German citizens experienced during and after Hitler's rise to power. Vogler sees things (like Gerhard's arrest) that he knows are wrong but does nothing to prevent them. He signs onto "the pact of silent paralysis that is to blame for everything." He maintains a sincere sense of duty and loyalty but resents "unity-building drivel." Ultimately the reader wonders whether Vogler can overcome his sense of obedience and order, whether he can make a decision -- the correct decision -- based solely on an emotional understanding of right and wrong.

The Detour is a sophisticated, sobering novel told in a compelling voice. There's a bit too much exposition at the end as the story circles back to the present. The final scene is too obvious; it detracts from the story that precedes it. The novel is well worth reading for the events that occur in 1938, not so much for the much shorter passages devoted to 1948.

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Oath of Office by Michael Palmer

Published by St. Martin's Press on February 14, 2012

The doctors in Oath of Office aren’t Marcus Welby.  They have problems.  Serious problems.  Dr. John Meacham, fearful of losing his license after yelling at yet another patient, kills seven people in his office before trying to kill himself -- a fairly clear violation of the Hippocratic Oath, to which the title refers.  Dr. Lou Welcome’s license was once suspended for self-prescribing amphetamines.  Having been helped through recovery by a physician’s wellness program, Welcome took a part-time job with the program in addition to his part-time position in an ER.  Meacham was one of Welcome’s clients.  Welcome is now in trouble with his boss, who blames Welcome for failing to demand more aggressive treatment of Meacham’s mental instability.  When the doctors treating Meacham all behave negligently, when Meacham’s widow endangers Welcome with her bizarrely fixated behavior, and when a chef at a local eatery sticks his thumb on a chopping block, Welcome begins to wonder whether the whole town has gone batty.

Developing alongside Welcome’s story is one involving the president, his wife, and a disgraced Secretary of Agriculture who resigned after being photographed with a naked teenage girl inside a motel room.  The First Lady rather bizarrely agrees to assist an unknown Mystery Man in an effort to clear the SecAg’s name and obtain his reinstatement to his former position.  To reveal how these two storylines converge would risk spoiling a clever plot; suffice it to say that you might learn more about agriculture than you knew before you began reading.

Oath of Office pairs a medical mystery with a story of political intrigue.  The plot is intellectually engaging and sufficiently fast moving to keep thriller fans happy.   The story seems plausible (an increasing rarity in the world of thrillers) although I’m not a scientist and might be easily fooled.  The source of the bizarre behavior isn’t much of a mystery; it’s fairly obvious by the novel’s midway point.  There are times when the villains do remarkably stupid things for the sake of moving the plot along, but those lapses of logic are forgivable.  An improbable romantic subplot neither adds nor detracts from the story.  A couple of plot twists toward the end are nifty if not entirely unexpected.  One of the final scenes will appeal to fans of gruesome.

Michael Palmer’s characters are adequate if not particularly memorable.  Characters who attend AA and reverently recite the serenity prayer are standard fixtures in thrillers.  Like many of those characters, Welcome is a bit too self-righteous about his day-to-day sobriety.  However justified it might be in the real world, pride is a deadly sin when exhibited in fiction.

The dialog Palmer gives to members of the medical community is convincing.  Dialog spoken by streetwise characters suggests that Palmer has spent more time in an office than hanging out on the streets.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Palmer’s best scenes showcase Welcome’s skillful response to medical emergencies.  Those passages are captivating, filled with tension and urgency.  The rest of the novel is written in a capable if unremarkable prose style.  One of the primary action scenes is unoriginal:  any thriller set in the heartland seems to feature characters running through a cornfield while being chased by a thresher.  A couple of times the narrative gets bogged down in discussions about the efficacy of AA versus psychotherapy as a treatment for substance abuse.  Recovery wonks might find the discussions fascinating but I thought they were distracting.  Fortunately those shortcomings are more than offset by Palmer’s creative story.  On the strength of its plot and its fast-moving action, Oath of Office is a novel that most thriller fans (not just medical thriller fans) should enjoy.

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Pure by Julianna Baggott

Published by Grand Central Publishing on February 8, 2012

Nine years after the Detonations, Pressia (who has a doll's head where her hand should be) is about to turn sixteen and is worried that she'll be picked up by the revolutionary group OSR and turned into a killer ... or perhaps a target. Her story initially alternates with that of Partridge, a boy who, though fortunate to live inside the Dome, resents his powerful father and wonders about his mother's fate. Inhabitants of the Dome think of those who live outside the dome as "wretches." The wretches disparagingly refer to those who live inside the Dome as "Pures." The wretches improbably experienced "mutations" during the Detonations; things they were carrying are now bonded with their bodies. Some less fortunate wretches fused with the earth, some fused with buildings, some with animals, some with machinery, some with other people (collections of people all fused together are called "Groupies"). All this fusing is supposedly the result of bombs that "disrupted cellular structures" combined with "nanotechnology that promotes the self-assembly of molecules." I'm not a scientist but his sounds more like doubletalk than science to me. If you can swallow the premise -- and it's difficult to take seriously a novel that gives new meaning to My Mother the Car -- Pure tells a surprisingly entertaining story.

Believing that his mother might still be alive, Partridge does the unthinkable: he leaves the Dome to search for her. It is of course inevitable that Pressia, fleeing from the OSR, will encounter Partridge, fleeing from the Dome. Although it seems that the story depends upon this fortuitous (and formulaic) coincidence, the plot is more complex than it first appears.

Pure is difficult to pigeonhole. It combines elements of a horror story (a wolfman carries off a child, a Dust creature reaches up from the ground to snatch Partridge) with a fantasy (the fused people strike me as more fantasy than science fiction), blends in a family drama, adds action scenes that echo The Hunger Games with a twist of Escape from New York, incorporates some Soviet-style darkness balanced with stirring heroism, and even sneaks in romantic subplots.

What to make of the resulting mashup? Labels aside, Pure is an appealing, smart, quirky addition to the ever-growing field of post-apocalyptic fiction. Although the plot is often derivative, the novel's strength lies in its characters. Except for a fused character who is very much like a two-headed character Harlan Ellison created for a short story and reprised in an episode of Masters of Science Fiction, Julianna Baggott's leading characters are unique individuals with surprisingly well developed personalities (something that is far too rare in fantasy and science fiction).

Dystopian fiction often offers a political point of view but it's rather subdued in Pure. In that regard, Baggott's best thought is that the prisons and "rehabilitation centers" of the future are built tall so that people know "that you live under their roof or in their shadow." Some of the wretches have developed odd religious beliefs -- they consider the Detonations to be punishment for their sins -- that cleverly reflect the oddness of some contemporary religious dogma. A group of (for lack of a better term) feminist wretches blame the mess that has been made of the world on men (a gender whose members are known to the women as "Deaths"); they prefer to live in a heavily armed collective. The mess came about, in part, because of the convolution of church and state. While all of this is interesting if not entirely original, the novel's larger message, I think, is that "when you live in a place of safety and comfort," it's easy to ignore the less fortunate who are hidden from your view. That's always worth remembering.

Still, Pure is more a well told story about troubled people than a novel of ideas. Neat plot twists require the characters to rethink their lives. Pressia's descriptions of her "heart-pounding" feelings for Bradwell occasionally come a bit too close to chick lit for my taste, but in most respects the writing is solid. Despite her deceptively ordinary prose, there's a poignancy in Baggott's writing that's rare in science fiction. Pure is a fine novel, one that makes me look forward to the remaining installments of Baggott's trilogy.

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