his thematic collection focusing on the uses and misuses of genetic engineering reprints 11 stories that originally appeared in various magazines from 1961 to 1999, with the majority coming from the last two decades.
In Paul McAuley's "The Invisible Country," a muscle-for-hire street tough of uncommon intelligence, operating in a biologically diverse near-future, finds that his latest client holds the secret to refashioning mankind's basic nature. "The Kindly Isle," by Frederik Pohl, follows the exploits of a present-day real-estate speculator named Jerry Wenright on his business trip to a Caribbean island, where he encounters a figure from his past at a top-secret CBW lab. Greg Egan's "Chaff" drops its nasty assassin protagonist into an artificial rain forest setting, where the semi-aware jungle proves his undoing.
Eileen Gunn pens a Kafkaesque tale of the absurd and humiliating lengths to which eager yuppies will go in their corporate kowtowing, in her blackly comic "Stable Strategies for Middle Management." From the late John Brunner comes a vivid tale--"Good With Rice"--wherein an odd discovery in China, a mysterious plant both benign and malevolent, unfolds from the viewpoint of a local cop named Wang. "Sunken Gardens," by Bruce Sterling, takes place in his famous Shaper/Mechanist universe, spotlighting a terraforming competition on Mars among our posthuman heirs.
The deadly impact of the West's hypocritical fears and anxieties on the teeming Third World is examined in J.R. Dunn's "The Other Shore." Chris Lawson's "Written in Blood" fashions a unique look at the religious impacts of bioengineering, as holy texts become literally embodied. "The Pipes of Pan" is Brian Stableford's melancholy look at the fate of children during an era when artificial kids are the norm. An idyllic future far when reproduction is far removed from our own conventional means between two sexes is limned in Robert Reed's "Whiptail." Cordwainer Smith's classic "A Planet Named Shayol" details the bizarre fate of the most reviled criminals during the time known as the Instrumentality of Mankind, and their eventual redemption.
Dispatches from the DNA wars
This book is the 24th such compilation by the smoothly oiled anthologizing team of novelist Jack Dann and editor Gardner Dozois, and by now they have their act down to a fine science. A succinct preface and useful individual introductions offer a handy critical apparatus. Then, not only is every story herein a gem, but they all work synergistically.
Seasoned pros like Stableford, Pohl, Smith and Brunner form a firm foundation atop which rests a middle generation of writers--McAuley, Sterling, Reed and Egan--who in turn support newcomers like Dunn and Lawson. In tone and theme and subject matter, the stories play nicely off each other as well. Tales where the entire world is turned upside down before our eyes--"Chaff," "Good With Rice," "The Kindly Isle" and "The Invisible Country"--contrast with ones where all the major paradigm shifts are in the past, and we see daily life going on: "Whiptail," "The Pipes of Pan" and "A Planet Named Shayol." Then come the slice-of-life stories zeroing in more on personal dilemmas, such as "Written in Blood" and "The Other Shore."
The editors have assured a balance of outlooks and settings as well. The authors assembled here argue variously for both dystopias and utopias and all varieties of outcome between those poles, around the globe and down the centuries. Sometimes, as with McAuley and Egan, what appears to be one scenario flip-flops interestingly at the end to another. What they all share, however, is a belief that humanity is bound to change itself through the biological sciences. There are no scenarios here which posit a backlash and moratorium on tinkering, occasioned by a wary public--a possibility actually hinted at by recent headlines.
If I had to pick a favorite here, it would be the Smith entry. Even amidst the dazzling array of contemporary authors assembled here, this 40-year-old story manages to shine, conveying plentiful insights into the issues of crime and punishment, bodily integrity and survival of the soul, as well as delivering more basic human sentiment than any other piece.
