The Eyes of Heisenberg

I enjoyed this book, though I wish more had been given for the history of this world. It seems entirely plausible that this is a future planet in Frank Herbert's Dune, one of the societies founded in the Scattering. The ideas presented in this book are engaging if sketchy. Overall 4.5/5 stars.

This book, as others here have said, is not on the same scale and not the same quality that Herbert's Dune books are. It is a very interesting book, though, that deals with several themes that Herbert would later revisit. The strongest point in the book is the characterization. It is very complex for most of the characters, especially, to me, the Optimen, the governing immortal races in the novel. There is a mix of playfulness and disinterestedness about them that is unusual, especially when they gradually and then suddenly shift late in the novel. I will not disagree that the ending is rushed and there is almost too much technical talk in the book, but to me it kind of represents the aspect of being shown this world and revelling in it, for only a short amount of time and then being whisked away again. You can see in the references to the past in the novel that there was quite a lot of backstory that we will never know and that kind of makes it more interesting and distant. But it is enough to take the themes and questions in the novel about genetic manipulation and immortality and apply them to ourselves in our own age with history and backstory each alike.

Yes, the great author behind the Dune series also wrote other books. In The Eyes of Heisenberg, he investigates a world made up of normal humans and eternal beings.This was an earlier work, so you can see a number of themes that Dune explored so well in their infancy here. Normal humans are being genetically manipulated by scientists to help keep society running smoothly. Occasionally a 'super human' is created who can live forever. It is these "optimen" who really control society.Everybody thinks the optimen are naturally intelligent and wise - but they are actually no smarter or dumber than normal humans. They simply have thousands and thousands of years with which to refine their points of view and educate themselves as they wish. Of course normal humans begin to rebel against the restrictions in their life and by the end of the story, a male and female want to have a baby the "old fashioned way".I found a number of flaws with the story, and the ending was rather abrupt and made you feel like it was rushed. The beauty of the story is with the character development and the interactions. Having worked for a biotech, the techno-babble about the DNA was interesting, but it unnecessarily confused things for most readers, and the intriguing events brough up are never resolved. It's as if Herbert originally intended to make a hard core story, but then wandered off into a personality drama and at the end wasn't sure what to do so sort of tied everything up randomly.If you're wondering what Heisenberg had to do with all of this, he's the Quantum Mechanics physicist who came up with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - "The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa." In essence, when you try to focus too closely on one thing, you aren't able to focus on other things. You can only give a probability of WHERE something is if you're focussing on HOW FAST it is going. Another way of looking at this is that by focussing on something, you are altering it. So while you then may figure out what it is you are examining, you have changed other aspects of it. If you bounce a light beam off of something to see how far away it is, you might actually move it or alter its course with that bounce.In any case, a good story to see more of Herbert's work, but not a classic like Dune.

What with the stem cell-cloning debate raging Herbert?s (1965) EYES OF HEISENBERG might find some new readers. Interesting that it took but 40 years for the author?s old material to hit our front pages. Now that genetics is catching up with Frank?s tale we should give him credit for what he got right. Exogenesis (growing embryos in a vat) could be right around the corner. Certainly there is much talk of modifying the morula (those first dozen or so germinated cells) while it still lies fertilized and growing in the petri dish. Herbert lists a dozen enzymes used by his genetic engineers to cut the DNA-RNA in a proper fashion. This is all standard practice today. The long living masters, the Optimen, in this tale, set millenniums in the future, have conditioned their genetic engineers to kill any embryo who may be immune to death. This is to maintain absolute control over their subjects, the Folk. Two of their subjects, the Durants, are a couple who are given the precious right to reproduce (to allow their sperm and egg to unite in a vat). But when their geneticist, Potter, sees a new mutation in his microscope, one that would produce immunity to death, he refuses to follow the Optimen rule. He says, ?I cannot kill it. It is too beautiful.? What Potter sees in the Durant embryo is one who could father a new race of long livers outside the Optimen?s control--the perfect baby. The origin of the flash of mutating energy is left to the reader?s imagination. Where Herbert must get the real credit is for reinforcing the role evolution has played in the development of mankind. Unlike today?s neurophysiologists and geneticists who see the brain as a bag of neurons and the genome as a twisted loop of genes, Herbert presented the Durant morula, as floating in the quantum sea of energy. It must be from the quantum jitters that all change in the species arises. The Optimen sought to eradicate Heisenberg?s uncertainty and evolution from the species. This tale tells us that attempts to fool mother nature?s plan for mutation & evolution are, indeed, foolhardy.

A book about immortality , made possible by genetic engineering.Herbert has a few interesting points to say on the matter of what would immortality do to a man.not a masterpiece , but still worth a read.