The Downloaded. A review.

All story is rooted conflict. By that measure, there is more story per page in Robert J. Sawyer’s The Downloaded than just about anything else I’ve read. At first, the novel presents a clever fictionalization of science – a mechanism for preserving a whole person, mind and body. The solution is separation, with, of course, the promise of recombination. You can probably see, in that sentence, the tendrils of conflict already sprouting from the tap root of the book. Sawyer follows more shoots that I would have thought possible, and the result is incessantly thought-provoking, sometimes moving, and often super fun. More fun than a book with this much conflict should allow.

Sawyer brings several sciences together to create an entirely plausible future. Quantum physics, astrophysics, computer architecture, biology – the usual. The real gift of the book, however, is slow titration of soft sciences into the hard: sociology, phycology, political science (the one that pulls so far from the others we put ‘science’ in the name as a kind of dog chain.) This will not surprise long-time Sawyer fans. What might is the literary composition all this chemistry concocts. The Downloaded covers so much ground it grows into something full and rich. Sawyer attempts to show so many of the directions the main story’s roots can take that he succeeds in creating a very real world.

As an off-shoot, he also creates a hybrid rose of a novel. Fragrant, pretty, and robust. All the various literary conflicts are here: Person vs. others, person vs. environment, person vs. self. My students would be so happy if I assigned this book, because it would take the place of three. And they would enjoy the read, which in the end, is what we really want from whatever novel we pick from the big garden of books.

The Divine Donald Trump

Trump has led me to doubt monotheism. Hopping over every obstacle like a blondish Mario, Donald Trump missed Viet Nam, legal prosecution, death by COVID-19 and a bullet. He reminds me  of Odysseus or Perseus. Pawns in the disagreements of the gods. It is easier to believe in a spat between deities than the reality I have watched. It starts with his name. Trump. Same root as trumpet, as in heralding, celebrating, and the sound that raises above all else. That’s why they used trumpets in battle and why the trump card comes to defeat all other cards in your game. The brash name – which the family took on once they landed in the brashy brash America – tells us this is all mythic.

A new myth. The kind in which we’ve been so lacking that the gods need to poke us again. Perhaps Hera decided Trump took his gifts for granted and had to be punished. Zeus thinks Trump is doing a fine job of carrying on Zeus-like traditions. He waves his hand to counter each of Hera’s wars, laws, viruses, and projectiles. They will continue their spat until, per the legends, there is a moral for us. No idea what that could possibly look like.

The only thing I know for certainly is that the gods always win. 

I'm already starting to miss my old God, inscrutability and all.

More than 30 years in the making

The Tongue Trade is out. 

As one might imagine, I'm quite proud of the novel. It's science fiction, but not the ray gun and robot type. This book speculates a world in which language adds thickness to the walls of our personal silos. Individual preferences have become entrenching tools. So much so that one needs an interpreter to talk to someone outside of their profession. In the space between those walls lies plenty of room for mischief and murder. 

I got the idea in the last century, while helping to write a manual - making engineers understandable - and now, finally, it's a book.

And it's only a buck. That's less than you should tip your ice cream server but for more than 30 years of work. The best deal of your life.