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Cargando... Nothing Humanpor Nancy Kress
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. 169 I'm a fan of Nancy Kress, and this novel is one of her best. It starts a bit like Beggars in Spain. Human children are genetically changed in a small (for science fiction) way: the portion of their brain for smells is significantly enhanced. The novel is told via a handful of third-person perspectives, with just one perspective repeating. The opening is from the perspective of a surrogate parent for one of those children. As with Beggars in Spain, the big issue at first is how these children are and are not accepted and/or feared by the rest of society. Things take a more SFnal turn when it becomes clear that "alien" intervention is responsible. The children have been designed to receive pheromonal communications. The first big message: the "aliens" are coming. "Alien" is in quotes because they claim to be humans, just very advanced, particularly in genetics, or what they call "the right way." The title is taken from Terence's "Nothing human is alien to me," and the book plays brilliantly on possible interpretations of that claim. In the second perspective, we follow one of the children, now in their early teens, as they are taken aboard the "alien" spaceship and educated. This section is very much in the vein of Butler's Xenogenesis books, as humans are pawns to an alien agenda, supposedly for the good of humanity. As with Butler, sex is a prime element in the alien toolbox. The remainder of the book returns to Earth, with Earth in serious trouble, due to climate change, and humanity in retrenchment, a la Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, though this book came first. The other big theme that permeates the novel is parenting -- good, bad, indifferent, challenged, rewarded. Pretty much everyone of note becomes a parent, and every perspective dwells on the topic, analyzing and compare how they parent with how others do. As I neared the end of the book -- no spoilers! -- I worried whether Kress could stick the landing. The answer is no, but the flaws are acceptable. Basically, she goes on about 4 chapters too long. She had a perfect ending, but then she wanted to show what happens next. The concluding chapters should have opened the sequel this book deserves. There's an epilogue that finally raises a central difficulty that had been bothering me about the whole pheromonal communication idea. But it is a quick throwaway that again begs for exploration in a sequel. Also hurting the final chapters is a 2-page meditation on what it means to be human. This would have been better in a rreader's guide. Had the book stopped a few chapters earlier, I would've gone for four and half stars. But even so, this novel is highly recommended to all readers of hard-core science fiction. I really liked this novel alot. It reminded me quite a bit of Octavia Butlers Xenogenesis series. The novel covers a span of 100 years and four generations. The first generation are children concieved through invitro fertilization. Nothing special about them until they all fall into comas at the exact same time-when they wake up they all have the same message-the Pribir are coming. The Pribir are aliens-they insist that they are advanced humans coming to help earthlings find "the right way" through genetics. Lillie is a first generation child of invitro fertilization, the novel follows her relationship with the Pribir and that of her children and grand children. Fascinating novel about what makes us human and what could happen to our species if we do not clean up our act. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Pertenece a las series editorialesGolden Gryphon (27) Distinciones
Told from the perspective of several generations of teenagers, this science fiction novel involves an Earth ravaged by mankind, high-tech manipulative aliens, and advanced genetics. Early in the 21st century, global warming has caused sickness and death among plants, animals, and humans. Suddenly aliens contact and genetically modify a group of 14-year-olds, inviting them to visit their spacecraft. After several months of living among the aliens and studying genetics, the students discover that the aliens have been manipulating them and rebel. Upon their return to Earth, the girls in the group discover that they are pregnant and can only wonder what form their unborn children will take. Generations later, the offspring of these children seek to use their alien knowledge to change their genetic code, to allow them to live and prosper in an environment that is quickly becoming uninhabitable from the dual scourges of global warming and biowarfare. But after all the generations of change, will the genetically modified creatures resemble their ancestors, or will nothing human remain? No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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