Mark Budz debuted with the novel Clade just last year. This sequel features an entirely new cast of characters and a plot at angles to its predecessor—but a pivotal event from the first book does play an important role here.

Clade introduced us to the world circa 2100, which is dominated by weird new sciences and technologies centering around biology. Intervening between our era and 2100 was the ecocaust, a time when the vast majority of Earth's life forms died in a mass extinction event. Hastily, the world's "politicorps" and various agencies, such as BEAN—the Bureau of Ecotectural Assimilation and Naturalization—threw together the clade system: hundreds of artificial biomes whose inhabitants were molecularly bonded to their new environments. Moving from one clade to another requires a metabolic makeover and is discouraged. Now the Earth is a patchwork of oddball artificial life forms, and even the definition of humanity has changed. For instance, no human is considered complete without his or her Information Agent. These intelligent and quirky "IAs" are bonded to the physiology of the individual and whisper directly into their auditory nerves.

In the first book, mankind was moving out to colonize the Kuiper Belt, that collection of resource-rich asteroids far off beyond Pluto. A test asteroid, Tiresias, had been brought into Earth orbit. But the experimental refit of Tiresias resulted in its partial destruction, with pieces of the rock plunging to Earth. Nonetheless, when the current book opens, the movement to expand into this new frontier is well underway. An orbital construction station hovers above the Kuiper asteroid known as Mymercia. The techs are busy implanting the environment of warm-blooded plants and other strange organisms that will support the colonists. Fola Hanani, with her IA Pheidoh, is one of these techs. Fola has led a checkered past, having been part of a Christian cult before she was deprogrammed by an equally shadowy underground organization. She still clings to a few of her old beliefs—beliefs that will undergo a testing when the Mymercia ecotecture begins to disintegrate around her, apparent victim of untraceable sabotage.

Meanwhile, a burnt-out genetic engineer called Adipose Rexx is wasting away his days under the influence of a drug called White Rain. Rexx has no plans to salvage his life—ruined by the deaths of his wife and son—until he is enlisted to solve the sabotage of Mymercia. Journeying to the Kuiper Belt, Rexx will encounter danger from an unsuspected source—his own IA, Ida.

And back on Earth, an unassuming migrant worker known as L. Mariachi finds that his past is catching up to him. Twenty years ago, he was a pop star with a single hit, "SoulR Byrne." But he gave up that life when he was mysteriously crippled. Now a bruja insists that he take up the guitar once more, for only his old song can cure a patient. But L. Mariachi will discover that his song also improbably holds the key to saving Mymercia and Fola and Rexx, as well as all the IAs.

A savvy, thrilling adventure

Post-cyberpunk science fiction continues to exfoliate into such divergent forms as the work of Cory Doctorow, Richard Morgan and Charles Stross. One form, which is the impulse to mix "lowlifes and high tech" in a hip, suspenseful fashion, might be dubbed "biopunk," from the cover blurb herewith provided by Kevin J. Anderson. Or, to use another term that I coined some 15 years ago, "ribofunk." This type of fiction features the noir stylings of cyberpunk ameliorated by the jazzy panache of tropical rhythms, all centering around advances on the biological frontier. Examples of practitioners of this subgenre would include Peter Watts, Linda Nagata, Kathleen Goonan and perhaps even Howard Hendrix. Now, Mark Budz arrives to add his voice, in a very commendable and admirable fashion.

Budz exhibits lots of virtues. His characters are all lively and distinct. In both books, he's employed Hispanic culture to good effect, recognizing that the future will not be an utterly Anglo-Saxon affair. His pacing is swift and his action sequences taut. His descriptive powers are vivid. In short, all the bedrock attributes of a good fiction writer of any stripe are present. As for his speculative elements, Budz seems to know his stuff. His ideas come thick and furious, rewarding close attention on the reader's part. Sometimes he seems to strain to convey more than he quite fathoms himself. For instance, the definition of a "crache": "A recombinant cache ... An unstable dataspace where information can be exchanged and combined in different patterns or modalities ... to create virtual allotropes. Information or data elements that have two or more structural forms." Well, OK, I think I know what's being described here. But who cares, after all, in the face of killer scenes like Mymercia being inundated by an info-virus that manifests as human lips growing from the walls?

Sometimes Budz tries too hard for a world-weary, cynical, jaded tone of angst and ennui. Is life really as grim as it seems for every inhabitant of this future? But then a welcome dose of humor will intervene: A BEAN agent, interrogating L. Mariachi, tries to look tough by kicking a piece of furniture—then hops around with an injured foot. Also, Budz tries to inject a certain "dangerous" sexual dimension into his future with various metaphors—"ass-crack of a barrio," etc.—but there's not much actual coupling going on here (although the first book had a little more, in the relationship between the protagonist Rigo and his girlfriend). It sometimes sounds like a horny teen trying to talk dirty to impress his buddies.

But if you're keen to read a savvy, thrilling adventure that depicts a weird "wet" future where, say, the bite of a parrot made of programmable atoms can confer superhuman abilities, then this Budz is for you.