book review: Syne Mitchell's The Changeling Plague

[mckitterick]

Book recommendation:

The Changeling Plague by Syne Mitchell

Either I'm behind on keeping track of the evolution of cyberpunk (weaselmom, your boy should be able to offer advice), or the theme here is a fresh and very cool one: Hackers get involved in genetic coding when a tailored plague threatens to wipe out humanity.

Hugely page-turning, insightful about gene- and DNA-therapy, great characters, and scary as hell.... I hate to admit it, but my biggest problem with the book was that the writer is one of those jerks who started publishing at, like, 12 years old (no offense, tmseay). Heh heh.

I'll be offering book rec's (and anti-rec's) over the next couple of months: Campbell Award reading time!

Chris

Comments

[stroppy-baggage.livejournal.com]

There was a genetic plague in a cyberpunk environ. It was called CyberGen, an RPG supplement for the Cyberpunk 2020 game. I'm not sure how closely these stories resemble each other tho' as I barely remember the details of CyberGen anymore.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, sorry if I wasn't clear: The cool, fresh thing was the hacker network hacking the genetic code (rather than computer code). It's an obvious direction for science fiction, to look to the future and in that future see not hardware (computers) but bioware (meat). And of course who would be best suited to really mess with our genetic code? Academics? I think not!

On the other hand, you can't always trust a hacker to be someone with his/her target's best interests in mind...

Chris

Re:

[jensixstones.livejournal.com]

Speaking of meat, have you seen this?

http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html

Since this has made the rounds for several years, I imagine you've seen it
-Jen.

Re: Meat

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, love it! In fact, I made up a song about it. Something to the effect of "all we are is meat..."

Chris