entrifuge Labs is a small, private laboratory working on a federally funded project to develop procedures for storing computer data on encoded protein molecules. Because viruses use protein molecules to feed information into the cells they infect, the lab carefully monitors various virus strains to determine how this exchange of information takes place. With a background in insect communication, scientist Gary Bracken is particularly interested in the "communication" that occurs between the virus and its host.
Progress is slow until one of Gary's tests reveals that viruses do not limit information transfer to their hosts, but also communicate among themselves. Armed with proof that viruses are talking to each other, Gary becomes obsessed with trying to find out just exactly what they're saying. Unknown to him, they are relaying, through successive generations, a molecularly-encoded plan that has remained unchanged since they came to Earth, via asteroid, billions of years ago. As the first genetic engineers, the "virus clans" patiently promote, adapt and improve the evolutionary process begun when life was created.
The clans' work is not yet complete, and while Gary frantically searches for a molecular "Rosetta Stone" to interpret the virus code, the Centers for Disease Control receives disturbing news about changes in the brain waves of newborn infants. When an unprecedented number of adults begin to go insane, authorities acknowledge that viral infections of the cerebral cortex are to blame. A great change is coming, and medical science must either stop the microscopic invaders or accept the next step in the virus clans' evolutionary plan.
A serious infection
Michael Kanaly, the author of Thoughts of God, delivers a one-two punch to the popular science fiction topics of evolution and alien invasion in this, his second novel. No need to search the heavens with a telescope to explore alien life here. Instead, Kanaly prefers the electron microscope, which reveals another universe as vast as the stars above. Thankfully, this is not a re-hash of Invasion of the Body Snatchers but rather a thoughtful examination of preconceptions regarding life, intelligence and time.
The depiction of common viruses as alien invaders is a clever idea that can easily be appreciated by any reader who has ever suffered from a viral infection. However, it's the structure of this story that makes it work so well. The main story line, which takes place in present-day America, is interspersed with short vignettes describing how the work of the virus clans has affected individual lives down through time. This provides an extra sense of urgency about the possible outcomes of the virus clans' manipulations, keeping things interesting.
Kanaly's skill as a storyteller is evident as he whisks readers in and out of different times and places without losing momentum or equilibrium. His approach to aliens and evolution is definitely different and well worth the time investment; the symbiotic relationship between virus and host carries infinite possibilities ranging from total annihilation to enlightened synergy for both sides. The question is, who's the host and who's the virus?
risoner of Conscience has a lot in common with the movie The Shawshank Redemption: a man risks everything to expose corruption and brutality at a prison. But the protagonist of Susan Matthews' sequel to her 1997 novel, An Exchange of Hostages, is not an innocent man wrongly imprisoned. On a backwater planet in the distant future, Andrej Koscuisko is the Inquisitor of Domitt Prison, responsible for the interrogation, torture and, often, the execution of selected prisoners.
Off the job, Koscuisko is compassionate and generous. Trained as a neurosurgeon, he only became an Inquisitor because his politically powerful father forced him to. Resignation is not an option. The penalty for walking off the job before his tour of duty expires is death. Yet Koscuisko, introduced in An Exchange of Hostages, came to love his work, finding the pain of his victims a potent intoxicant and aphrodisiac.
At Domitt Prison Koscuisko becomes absorbed in his duties--and in his remorse and grief over the death of a beloved servant. He falls behind on his paperwork, drinks too much, and is slow to realize that things at Domitt Prison are not what they seem. When he finally starts putting the clues together, Koscuisko uncovers horrors that exceed even those of his own making.
He has to send word to the authorities about the atrocities, but before he can do that Koscuisko becomes a prisoner himself, locked in his luxurious apartment on the prison grounds until the damning evidence can be erased.
Sympathy for the devil?
Like its predecessor, Prisoner of Conscience is disturbing and psychologically intense. The plotting is tighter this time around, and Matthews' writing is evolving beyond the starkly functional prose that gave An Exchange of Hostages a curiously antiseptic quality. As before, the backdrop is a hazily described galactic empire in a surprisingly low-tech future. The science fictional elements of Prisoner are mere scene dressing, and the novel could probably be set in virtually any time period without doing much violence to the story. It is the characters that drive the novel.
Koscuisko remains a complex and unique character, but he undergoes little or no real change. When readers first met Koscuisko, he was a talented but dissolute young man who grew in courage, maturity and compassion even as his darkest self emerged. In Prisoner, he endures in a precarious equilibrium--the honorable, kind Koscuisko somehow coexisting with Koscuisko the insatiable sadist.
He feels bad when his enjoyment of suffering manifests itself off the job. He knows the regime he works for is oppressive and unjust, but he has yet to rebel in spirit or deed from his brutal occupation. And so readers have a hero who, when all is said and done, is scarcely less evil than his enemies. Despite the novel's title, Koscuisko's conscience is awesomely pliable and forgiving, hammering him with guilt when he mistreats his servants but silent about what goes on in his private theater of pain.
His old rival from torture school, Mergau Noycannir, makes a couple of token appearances, as if to remind readers that she's still around to make troubles for Koscuisko. But will Koscuisko ever truly become the prisoner of his conscience and at last do the right thing? Hopefully so, for how long can readers abide the spectacle of a hero who deserves to die?
