Blood Music (utgåvan 1986)

Had read some of his work that he had written in Asimov's Foundation series, enjoyed that so picked this up and really enjoyed this too. Good plot ( )

Had read some of his work that he had written in Asimov's Foundation series, enjoyed that so picked this up and really enjoyed this too. Good plot ( )

"Blood Music" was a great sci-fi novel. I'd seen it around for years, but never gotten to picking it up and reading it.

It begins with a genetic research scientist, Vergil Ulam, and his personal research done at the lab where he works. He's brilliant, but not entirely ethical, although he doesn't see it that way, he feels he's entitled to what he does, for instance, he sees no problem hacking into a university's computer to fake his academic record, because he knows he's capable of the job he's doing, the managers just need a "sound and light show" to go with it.

Any coincidence that Vergil's last name is Ulam, the same as the "father" of the hydrogen bomb?

Ulam's personal research is into converting individual cells into computers, with memory and processing power. His earlier work, E. Coli cells is successful, but each individual cell has only the brain power of a mouse. Later he uses some of his own white blood cells, and they each end up with the brain power of a monkey.

But when his boss finds out about it, and doesn't want anything to become public for fear of hurting the company's IPO, he orders Vergil to destroy his work. Vergil starts to, but then feels like they're his children and instead of destroying all, injects some (a few million cells) back into his body, intending to extract them again once he finds a job in another lab.

And that's how his intelligent research gets out of the lab and changes the world...

Overall I enjoyed it till the changes towards the end that left me sort of confused. ( )

genetic science creates intelligent cells which run amok

I think I like the concept of this book more than the execution. It's not badly written and the "normal" parts aren't too difficult to read. Bear is also pretty creative with a couple of different narrative styles throughout the book which I enjoyed.

But the fake science parts were a slog and pretty boring. And sadly there is a lot of fake science bits to get through.

The characters aren't particularly well developed, and one set is swapped out for another halfway through the novel anyway, but it's actually the parts relating to the characters that I enjoyed reading the most. Which probably doesn't say anything good about the rest of the book.

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