Wetware

Craig Nova is a writer whose work deserves much greater recognition. Wetware is a novel that takes in the near future in a Blade Runner-esque landscape that is as much a meditation on aspiration and revenge as it is on genetic engineering. The narrative is fast paced yet detailed. The chapters on Kay playing piano are worth the price of the book alone. It does falls apart a bit at the end, but definitely one of his best.

Along with Richard Powers' novel Galataea 2.2, this is the best American literary exploration of the human implications of artificial intelligence. This is NOT a science fiction novel. It is a very good novel, with beautifully written passages, that uses emerging biotechnology capabilities to tell a more complex and subtle story than the Philip K. Dick novel on which Blade Runner was based.

What if we could create life to our own specifications? Or in other words, engineer ourselves to be perfect human beings? Good idea? Maybe not. Maybe we would still be searching and yearning--for what? For love? For transcendence? For whatever it is we find only in surrender and giving up control? Maybe the experiment would turn out to be a disaster. Craig Nova explores this (not entirely original) theme with grace and power in Wetware. It is not strictly science fiction although words like "source code" and "DNA" are used freely in the opening chapters. It is actually a philosophical fantasy. What makes this book wonderful is the sheer beauty of the writing, and his treatment of the characters--believable, troubled, yearning, tortured creatures. This book grabs hold of you and you cannot put it down.

I hesitated before picking Craig Nova's Wetware off the shelf, feeling a little guilty that I was once again indulging the recent reemergence of my early adolescent fascination with science fiction. You won't find reviews of science fiction novels in the pages of the New York Review of Books because science fiction is genre, and genre of the very lowest, basest, and most formulaic sort in the eyes of the literati. Science fiction is so low on the totem pole that it stands apart from the other genres in my local public library. They have quarantined it off in an untouchables section, where each book is marked on the spine with the international symbol of the nerd, a little red rocketship. OK, I made that up about the quarantine and the little red rocketship on the spine, and besides, there aren't any artsy literary chicks hanging around the Columbia County Public Library that I have to worry about impressing with my impeccable taste. So I snagged the book and looked it over without thinking too much about it.And was surprised. Turns out Craig Nova might have very well made it into the New York Review. After all he is a Guggenheim Fellowship winner. I'm not sure exactly what that is but I've heard of it before - you don't forget a name like Guggenheim. The protagonist, Briggs, is a genetic engineer in 2027 working in the maturing industry of genetic engineering. Briggs has done a lot of simple stuff with animals, and been involved in bringing to market the first, well the first subhumans, though they're not called that.They've been psychologically engineered to function like uncomplaining domestic animals, sweeping streets, cleaning, washing dishes, and the like. They're smart enough to do the work, but too dull to imagine or want anything more.The next step in the project is to create a creature slightly more advanced. One suitable for higher functions like police work and security, the perfect soldier, and Briggs is creating male and female prototypes.But Briggs gets carried away and starts going outside the specifications. He decides to endow both prototypes with much more than is called for in the specifications. He gives them the mental and physical attributes to perform the police functions called for, but also genetically codes in everything else that the perfect man, and even more the perfect woman, would have. A spurned woman's machinations complicate the plot, and lead to a denouement that explores the what we mean by love. Wetware is a well crafted and engaging read that asks some important questions about what it means to be human, questions that aren't too far away from appearing in the daily news. But it doesn't really venture out of the safe shadow of a naivety that seems hopeful at best.I dropped it off back at the library yesterday, and as I was walking back to the car I pondered the increasingly philosophical question: could it be that science fiction isn't just for nerds anymore?

Wetware is another gem in the Nova collection. I bought the book yesterday and haven't done anything but read it since. Nova combines the adventures of characters Jack and Kay with the more sinister implications of the human genome project in this compelling, suspenseful novel. Michael Dirda, reviewing Wetware in the Washington Post, said it best:"This is a haunting, heart-stoppingly exciting, brilliantly structured novel of suspense, ideas and subtle characterization."The only thing I add is this: a good read is hard find and Nova has once again delivered.