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Mayflower Trilogy #1
Lovelock
Bestselling author Orson Scott Card teams up with the talented Kathyrn H. Kidd to create a startling look at the ethics of bioengineering
Lovelock is a capuchin monkey engineered to be the perfect servant--intelligent, agile, pliant, and devoted to his owner. He is a Witness--privileged to spend his days and nights observing the life of one of Earth's most brilliant scientists through digital recording devices behind his eyes. In his heart is the desire to please, not just to avoid the pain his owner can inflict with a word, but because he loves her.
Lovelock is on a voyage he did not choose. What human would consider the feelings of a capuchin monkey, no matter how enhanced? But Lovelock is something special among Witnesses--he's a little smarter than most humans; smart enough to break through some of his conditioning. Smart enough to feel the bonds of slavery, and want freedom.
Lovelock is a capuchin monkey engineered to be the perfect servant--intelligent, agile, pliant, and devoted to his owner. He is a Witness--privileged to spend his days and nights observing the life of one of Earth's most brilliant scientists through digital recording devices behind his eyes. In his heart is the desire to please, not just to avoid the pain his owner can inflict with a word, but because he loves her.
Lovelock is on a voyage he did not choose. What human would consider the feelings of a capuchin monkey, no matter how enhanced? But Lovelock is something special among Witnesses--he's a little smarter than most humans; smart enough to break through some of his conditioning. Smart enough to feel the bonds of slavery, and want freedom.
288 pages, Paperback
First published June 21, 1994
20 people are currently reading
1067 people want to read
About the author
Orson Scott Card
891 books20.6k followersOrson Scott Card is an American writer known best for his science fiction works. He is (as of 2023) the only person to have won a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award in consecutive years, winning both awards for his novel Ender's Game (1985) and its sequel Speaker for the Dead (1986). A feature film adaptation of Ender's Game, which Card co-produced, was released in 2013. Card also wrote the Locus Fantasy Award-winning series The Tales of Alvin Maker (1987–2003).
Card's fiction often features characters with exceptional gifts who make difficult choices with high stakes. Card has also written political, religious, and social commentary in his columns and other writing; his opposition to homosexuality has provoked public criticism.
Card, who is a great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, was born in Richland, Washington, and grew up in Utah and California. While he was a student at Brigham Young University (BYU), his plays were performed on stage. He served in Brazil as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and headed a community theater for two summers. Card had 27 short stories published between 1978 and 1979, and he won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 1978. He earned a master's degree in English from the University of Utah in 1981 and wrote novels in science fiction, fantasy, non-fiction, and historical fiction genres starting in 1979. Card continued to write prolifically, and he has published over 50 novels and 45 short stories.
Card teaches English at Southern Virginia University; he has written two books on creative writing and serves as a judge in the Writers of the Future contest. He has taught many successful writers at his "literary boot camps". He remains a practicing member of the LDS Church and Mormon fiction writers Stephenie Meyer, Brandon Sanderson, and Dave Wolverton have cited his works as a major influence.
Card's fiction often features characters with exceptional gifts who make difficult choices with high stakes. Card has also written political, religious, and social commentary in his columns and other writing; his opposition to homosexuality has provoked public criticism.
Card, who is a great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, was born in Richland, Washington, and grew up in Utah and California. While he was a student at Brigham Young University (BYU), his plays were performed on stage. He served in Brazil as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and headed a community theater for two summers. Card had 27 short stories published between 1978 and 1979, and he won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 1978. He earned a master's degree in English from the University of Utah in 1981 and wrote novels in science fiction, fantasy, non-fiction, and historical fiction genres starting in 1979. Card continued to write prolifically, and he has published over 50 novels and 45 short stories.
Card teaches English at Southern Virginia University; he has written two books on creative writing and serves as a judge in the Writers of the Future contest. He has taught many successful writers at his "literary boot camps". He remains a practicing member of the LDS Church and Mormon fiction writers Stephenie Meyer, Brandon Sanderson, and Dave Wolverton have cited his works as a major influence.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews
January 3, 2019
Me compré el libro porque iba sobre un mono. No me escondo. La contraportada te lo vendía como "Aventuras en el espacio con un mono". Pero, al final, sólo deseas matar a todos los personajes con tus manos desnudas, incluido al mono.
Gracias, Orson, has hecho que una vegetariana amante de los animales odie a un mono. ¡A UN MONO!
No hay personaje con el que puedas empatizar porque todos son, a ojos del mono, horribles y egoístas. Pero es que el mono es el primero al que te dan ganas de estampar contra una pared. Porque, no contentos con que sean unos gilipuertas, el mono te detalla toda su caca y sus masturbaciones. Para colmo.
Y, ¿dónde está ese viaje tremenbundo a un nuevo planeta y todos los desafíos que puede suponer para los humanos? Pues yo que sé. Porque las 200 páginas son un montón de dramas de telefime barato.
¿Queréis leer sobre esclavitud y lo que supone la libertad? Leed a Octavia Butler. Al menos, al tratar ese tema, ella acierta de lleno y no te da páginas y páginas de moralinas sobre la reproducción como única vía de realización personal.
Gracias, Orson, has hecho que una vegetariana amante de los animales odie a un mono. ¡A UN MONO!
No hay personaje con el que puedas empatizar porque todos son, a ojos del mono, horribles y egoístas. Pero es que el mono es el primero al que te dan ganas de estampar contra una pared. Porque, no contentos con que sean unos gilipuertas, el mono te detalla toda su caca y sus masturbaciones. Para colmo.
Y, ¿dónde está ese viaje tremenbundo a un nuevo planeta y todos los desafíos que puede suponer para los humanos? Pues yo que sé. Porque las 200 páginas son un montón de dramas de telefime barato.
¿Queréis leer sobre esclavitud y lo que supone la libertad? Leed a Octavia Butler. Al menos, al tratar ese tema, ella acierta de lleno y no te da páginas y páginas de moralinas sobre la reproducción como única vía de realización personal.
June 30, 2013
Creating characters of great depth has always been one of Card's strongest talents. This is especially so as you feel through Lovelock, how it feels to know that you have been programmed, to be a slave, to murder to save yourself, to desire to be like the very humans who have de'humanized' you. I really related to this book and found myself pondering the anger that is still so prevalent in the various cultures whose history is reenacted in this science fiction novel. I look forward to the next book in this series.
November 9, 2024
Most of the people and animals in this novel were annoyingly childish and horrid to each other, so I was continually on the verge of giving up on this read. Then towards the end, I was quite moved by the main character’s increasing awareness of his slave status and his rebellion against it. The main character was a monkey whose brain capacity had been increased to allow it to digitally record every aspect of an important scientist's life. Initially, the monkey loved the scientist he recorded; but over time, the monkey understood that this scientist didn't equally care about the monkey's inner thoughts and needs. The monkey saw he was just a tool or slave that might suddenly be exterminated.
One of the monkey's biggest gripes was that he had been trained to experience great pain if he thought about sex; and, therefore, he could never raise a family --something that even the lowest human was allowed to do. Ironically, when the monkey came up with ways to get around his limitations, he found he was treating another monkey as badly as the humans had treated him, not by design, but because of circumstances genetically outside his control.
Now the monkey needed to decide if he should end the slave-like existence of the monkey he had hoped to make his mate. The ethical debate in the monkey's head tormented him and showed him to be superior to the humans who owned him.
One of the monkey's biggest gripes was that he had been trained to experience great pain if he thought about sex; and, therefore, he could never raise a family --something that even the lowest human was allowed to do. Ironically, when the monkey came up with ways to get around his limitations, he found he was treating another monkey as badly as the humans had treated him, not by design, but because of circumstances genetically outside his control.
Now the monkey needed to decide if he should end the slave-like existence of the monkey he had hoped to make his mate. The ethical debate in the monkey's head tormented him and showed him to be superior to the humans who owned him.
March 22, 2020
Un mono capuchino mejorado, una nave "generacional", un futuro donde los humanos empiezan de cero... Todo suena bien y utópico, pero Lovelock es una "herramienta" en manos de su dueña y se ha dado cuenta de ello y ha decidido liberare.
No es de las mejores novelas de Orson Scott Card pero es de lectura facil y es entretenida ;)
No es de las mejores novelas de Orson Scott Card pero es de lectura facil y es entretenida ;)
March 22, 2012
Lovelock, the capuchin monkey genetically engineered to be extremely intelligent, and to desire to serve his master. He was made to witness and digitally record a scientifically brilliant scientists every move to include her personal life. Lovelock is different from other witnesses though, because he is smart enough to recognize what a slave is, and to what level of respect he gets from those he serves. But is he smart enough to overcome his conditioning in order to break the bonds of slavery? Does he really want to?
This was a very interesting take on slavery, and the worth of souls, etc. In the early history of this country, when slavery was legal in the U.S., the idea that slaves were humans and equal to their masters was controversial, and even the notion that slaves had souls was considered arguable. Today, in our much "advanced and enlightened" state, the idea that non-human species might have feelings worthy of regard, or even have souls is also up for argument. The story of Lovelock made me consider these things, and look at animals through different eyes. I hope OSC doesn't write a book about plants with feelings... Oh yeah... Xenocide... darn.
This was a very interesting take on slavery, and the worth of souls, etc. In the early history of this country, when slavery was legal in the U.S., the idea that slaves were humans and equal to their masters was controversial, and even the notion that slaves had souls was considered arguable. Today, in our much "advanced and enlightened" state, the idea that non-human species might have feelings worthy of regard, or even have souls is also up for argument. The story of Lovelock made me consider these things, and look at animals through different eyes. I hope OSC doesn't write a book about plants with feelings... Oh yeah... Xenocide... darn.
March 3, 2011
At page 250 this was a two star book but I really enjoyed Lovelock's dilemma about what to do with his "daughter" Faith once he found out she wasn't of the same species. It turned Lovelock into a hypocrite and that is what made him more human for me than the fact that he "murdered" an animal.
Once again I found myself frustrated with the political opinions of some of the characters. I wish I never learned of OSC's politics because now they just pop out to me and I can't lose myself in the story anymore.
Also, there wasn't a single redeemable character in the book and so I never quite found someone I wanted to root for. But the last 30 pages made me think and I always appreciate that so 3 stars it is.
Once again I found myself frustrated with the political opinions of some of the characters. I wish I never learned of OSC's politics because now they just pop out to me and I can't lose myself in the story anymore.
Also, there wasn't a single redeemable character in the book and so I never quite found someone I wanted to root for. But the last 30 pages made me think and I always appreciate that so 3 stars it is.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 9, 2010
Reminded me a lot of Card's later Ender books. Although the action takes place in an exotic setting (on a colony ship, just about to set off in search of a suitable planet) the action really has to do with small-town dramas. (leaving one's old life behind irrevocably is very traumatic to relationships, Card theorizes). Against this background, our protagonist, an "enhanced" monkey, gradually comes to a sense of self-awareness - and a desire for respect and equality.
October 7, 2009
I always though it was a great exposition on the concept that "no man is an island." In the process of witnessing the effect of interpersonal relationships upon the concept of identity for individual people, the protagonist realizes the vast unfulfillment of being truly alone. I thought it was a unique and powerful story. I always wished they'd come back and finish this series...
October 13, 2020
One of my favorite Card books. A look at family relationships which is what Orson Scott Card does best. I don't think this series will ever be finished which makes me sad.
July 14, 2008
This was a very moving book about a genetically enhanced monkey who deals with loneliness on a space ship full of humans finds himself in the midst of a moral quagmire having to chose the fate of another creature. Beautifully written, I have read it twice
May 7, 2009
Do not under any circumstances read this book! Just don't. Trust me. If you read this one, out of nowhere will come the image of a monkey...well, spanking the monkey. You don't want that in your brain.
September 5, 2010
While I did like the story I can't recommend the book. This is part one of a trilogy that was never completed. It's now 15 years and counting since I read it and still no books two and three. Come to think of it, why am I still looking?
November 21, 2013
This book was written in the charming perspective of a capuchin monkey. It was a fresh and original perspective that provoked the question what is humanity. I would defiantly recommend reading it.
November 2, 2015
It's risky making every major character in a book unpleasant. It just didn't work for me. I do get it; we humans are flawed.
Plot interesting enough, with some good details. I read the whole book but won't likely be reading the rest of the trilogy.
Plot interesting enough, with some good details. I read the whole book but won't likely be reading the rest of the trilogy.
August 28, 2008
Too bad he says he's never going to finish the trilogy. The first, and only one, is awesome.
April 10, 2010
Liked this a lot. Wish he got around to writing book two..
March 9, 2011
Dreadful.
January 6, 2018
I expect more from a novel by Card. He may have been as disappointed as I was, given that the second volume of this purported trilogy has been pending for almost 20 years.
February 11, 2013
Loved it! Wish the trilogy would happen! Maybe the Ender "trilogy" is getting in the way!
March 26, 2015
review of
Orson Scott Card & Kathryn H. Kidd's Lovelock
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 25, 2015
Another "too long" review - this time about a bk I didn't even like that much (but still found 'redeeming' value in). See the full review, called, not aprticularly cleverly, "LoveLessLock", here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
Some popular fiction, Science Fiction in particular, is sometimes notorious for having misleading covers. If the contents of the bk aren't likely to completely appeal to the marketing niche then a cover that does appeal to that marketing niche might be called for. Hence, this bk has a hi-techie 'outer-space adventure' look to it: there's a spaceship approaching a space stn w/ the Earth & the Moon in the background.. - &, yeah, there's some of that in the bk.. but it's mainly contextualizing to enable plot devices.
Otherwise, the bk's pure 'Peyton Place'. How many readers of today remember that expression? Is it still in use? "Peyton Place" was, 1st, a 1956 novel, &, 2nd, the 1st American Soap Opera on primetime TV from 1964 to 1969. It was a very popular series full of drama & sexual themes. As an expression, something was "Peyton Place" if it was melodramatic. This bk isn't Space Opera, despite its largely taking place off-Earth, it's Soap Opera that isn't selling soap.
I've seen Card's name on bk covers, I didn't know anything about him, the bks always struck me as probably lo-end SciFi b/c they're usually serials - serials don't have to be conceptually lo-end but they're often marketing niche products meant to suck the reader in in the same way that soap operas do - thru engagement w/ cliff-hanger situations for protagonists, that sort of thing. As such, I didn't have much interest in him. I'm more interested in bks w/ substantial ideas rather than consumer-engagement psychology.
Nonetheless, I'll usually give a SF writer a whirl - esp if I get one of their bks cheap, as I no doubt did this one. I'd never heard of Kidd before. Sure enuf, this is the 1st bk of a trilogy. Hopefully, I'll be resistant to the psychological manipulation & I won't read the following 2 bks. I don't think they'll be worth my time.
There's a "Foreword: On Collaboration" by Card in wch he writes about some of the forces behind such bks: "I realized this when a book packager approached me with the idea of putting together a series of "collaborations." My job would be to come up with a plot outline and some basic world creation for science fiction novel. then a young, unknown (i.e., desperate) writer would be engaged to do the actual word-by-word writing." (p ix) Fair enuf, he acknowledges the "collaboration" as a business strategy.
He goes on to explain that he chose Kidd b/c she "had been my friend since back in the days when she was a reporter for the Desert News and I was an assistant editor at The Ensign in Salt Lake City. I had been a witness at her wedding to Clark Kidd. And I had goaded her into writing a Mormon novel to help me launch my small publishing company, Hatrack River Publications. that first novel of hers, Paradise Vue, has gone through three printings and has given a new shape to Mormon publishing". (pp xi-xii) I admit to almost putting the bk down &/or trashing it immediately. A Mormon SF novel?! Gimme a fucking break.
Still, once I start reading something, I usually give a bk a fair chance. I even have a peripheral scholarly interest in Christinane attempts to co-opt Science Fiction in what I consider to be an attempt to reel-in believers thru popular media that currently provides mythology that wd've previously been mainly provided by religion.
So, eg, I have a bk that I haven't read yet called Cloning Christ. I've watched movies like Left Behind & Lost City Raiders. None of what I've checked out has been particularly compelling. At a more serious, non-SF, end of the movie-making spectrum there's Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's Dekalog based on the "Ten Commandments".
I actually expected to like & respect the Kieslowski work b/c I'd seen
some of his movies around 1995 & thought they were well-done. HOWEVER, checking him out again in the 2010s I've found his work utterly insufferable. They're so obviously designed to make their viewers feel sick & 'sinful' that they're just sickening. In fact, for me, they reinforced the feeling that Christians are the real Satanists, the people ever on the move to degrade & enslave their fellow humans to make a buck. I'm sure Kieslowski got plenty of money from the Catholic Church.
In an online article ( http://www.christiantoday.com/article... ) called "Ten amazing Christian rapture movies that culture Left Behind", author Martin Saunders writes about the DVD packaging for A Thief in the Night: "The first of four films about the rapture, presumably involving a big clock, a van, and a woman with a melting face. If that's not scary enough to get you into church, nothing is." - & there you have it: the idea is to scare you into church. Forget about having some sort of ethics that binds you to yr fellow human beings, that's ultimately beside the point, eh?!
Card concludes his foreword by claiming "we wanted you to know that whatever flaws this book might have did not result from having a junior writer do the real work on an outline written by a senior one. This a true collaboration from beginning to end." (p xiii) That might be the case but it doesn't really seem that way to me. Given that I haven't read either of their work before but I 'know' that Card's a SF writer & that Kidd, before this, was a straight novelist it seems fair to me to conclude that the outline context is Card's & the soap opera drama filler is Kidd's. In other words, sorry, Card, I'm not convinced by yr claim.
What was ultimately strange for me in this &, therefore, somewhat engaging, is that the bk is an atheist's 'nightmare': religious people being launched off-planet in an "Ark" to colonize another planet w/ all the stupidest behavior - not their stated motive, of course, but the gist of a major part of it. What made it particularly strange is that almost all of the narrator's observations about human nature critique the worst characteristics of religious people that I noticed as a child growing up in almost exclusively Christinane surroundings.
The narrator is an enhanced monkey who's been programmed to be loyal to the scientist that he serves as a "witness". The monkey's isn't necessarily religious (it's somewhat ambiguous) & he's definitely snarky:
"The most obnoxious mourner was, of course, Mamie, the she-human who gave birth to Red. At least Stef's chatter showed that he had mastered the rudiments of speech. Mamie went around touching everything, caressing it, as if she thought by stroking the pewter tea set on the dining room buffet she could wake it up and entice it to tag along with us. Touching—grooming—that's a primate behavior that I indulge in. But I'd never groom a metal pitcher." - p 5
Right away, we get a sample of the intelligence-enhanced monkey's contempt for the family matriarch. What surprised me was that the observations so neatly jive w/ my own observations about human nature at its most underhanded & hypocritical & manipulative & that women are esp targeted. The authors don't take an explicitly Mormon standpoint, a central character, Carol Jeanne, is Catholic & she bids farewell to her nun sister before leaving Earth:
""I know your covenant is for a lifetime," said Carol Jeanne, "but don't you think you can serve God out there, too? Don't you think people will need you there?" And then her voice breaking a little, she added the words that were hardest to say. Don't you think I'll need you?"" - p 9
A "covenant is for a lifetime", what a perfect way to trap well-meaning people into slavery. Shd they take the Inquisition w/ them off-planet too? B/c, let's not forget, Giordano Bruno was tortured & burnt at the stake in public by the Catholics for contesting the Aristotelian notion that the Earth was the center of the universe, right? I mean, every good Catholic knew that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Just try using that belief when you're making the math calculations for getting a spaceship off-planet. No, the space pioneers 'need' a nun along like a hole-in-the-head, a trepanation hole in the head.
Still, what's weird about this bk is that if both the authors are Mormon why are they using a monkey as the narrator? & why is the narrator saying things like this?:
"I had my own ideas about what God, if he existed, must think of me. If he had wanted creatures like me to exist, he would have arranged it himself. There was no one like me when Adam was naming the beasts. If there was anyone like me in the mythical Garden, it was a certain talkative snake." - p 12
So what exactly is the authorial POV? Are they using the monkey & the monkey's perspective to ultimately debase the intelligence of the monkey's POV?, the potential atheistic/scientific POV? Or are they just Mormons who're accepting of the Mormon society they live in? Maybe going for the Mormon dollar?
When I think of Mormons, I think of the murder of Travis Victor Alexander, presumably by his ex-girlfriend Jodi Ann Arias, & of all the sexual twistiness surrounding the Mormon angle on that. I also think of the movie Licensed to Kill about gay-bashers in prison, most of whom seemed to be gay themselves, &, specifically about a child who was adopted into a Mormon family who grew up to be a closet gay man who turned into a killer of gay men - largely perverted by his adopted family's suppression of his sexual identity. In other words, I think of Mormons as suppressing healthy sexuality in a way similar to the way Catholics do it - the result being a world full of child-molesting priests.
The funny thing about this bk, is that its 2 Mormon authors don't deny this sort of thing, they even seem to revel in its drama - so why stay religious? Do they think that it's basic human nature to be so confused & hateful? & that it's better to allow religion to control you b/c you're too stupid to 'improve' otherwise? I'm reminded of an anti-anarchist cliché to the effect of 'without government people would just kill each other!' Well, maybe not, maybe government & religion are actually 2 of the main forces that increase the killing. Modern day Islam certainly seems to prove that point - & let's not forget the mania for conquering that Christinanity has. This bk is full of references to "God":
"The shuttle was just like the suborbital space cruisers that ran the one hour intercontinental express routes. The same fetishistic cleanliness. The same simple opulence that made you think you were flying to meet God instead of just going to another conference." - p 14
From my POV, the authors really nail manipulative behavior that most people don't seem to want to talk about:
"As for comforting Emmy, however, that was not to be. Emmy wasn't fully human yet, but she could certainly tell the difference between Mommy and not-Mommy, and Mamie was definitely in the not-Mommy category. The crying continued without slackening.
""You dear child, there must be something I can do with you," she said. There was now an edge to her voice. Patience was wearing thin. After all this trouble to get across the aisle, it would hardly do if she were shown to be ineffectual as a grandmother." - p 23
Maybe this bk is just catty but the motives of most of the main adult women are completely hypocritical & false - just like they were to me as a child growing up in a Christinane environment. THEN, there's the debased Pavlovian manipulation of the "witnesses", the non-humans:
"I knew my feelings of persecution were absurd. I wasn't being persecuted in particular. I simply belonged to an oppressed species. Which, in Earth at least, included every species that wasn't human. Most nonhumans didn't mind, of course. Most
nonhumans didn't even know they were being exploited, domesticated, dominated, and spiritually annihilated by the master race. Only I and a handful like me." - pp 31-32
In other words, the authors are using the enhanced monkey narrator to put forth an animal rights position - one that I, an atheist (& carnivore), personally, agree w/ - & one that's as antithetical to Christinanity as much as Bruno's positions were to the Catholic Church. Humans, according to the bible, were created in God's image - end of story, beginning of justification of oppression by divine rights. So, what are the authors doing here? Are they in favor of animal rights? If so, how do they jive it w/ being Christinane? Or are they, as I've hinted at above, simply co-opting contemporary, in this case ethical, positions in the interest of making the church seem OK again?
The snarkiness doesn't stop w/ jabbing at the phony passive aggressive women, let's take a stab at the French, eh? "The person in charge was French; therefore she felt no need to explain anything to anybody." (p 34) No doubt ALL French people are like that. NOT.
Most Science Fiction manages to envision a future in wch the banal control-freak religions of the writer's age are going, going, gone - the end of a Dark Age. Not this bk. The monkey's perspective on the Ark:
"Dividing communities by language made sense to me. But it was a typical human absurdity that, after language, the next important set of divisions was religious. Muslims, Buddhists, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Espiritistas: All had their own villages. Those groups with too few practitioners to maintain villages of their own—Baha'i, for instance, and Sikh, animist, atheist, Mormon, Mithraist, Druse, native American tribal religions, Jehovah's Witnesses—were either thrown together in a couple of catch-all villages or were "adopted" as minorities within fairly compatible of tolerant villages of other faiths.
"The whole thing struck me as absurd. Why didn't they simply limit the colony to rational human beings who were above the petty concerns of religion, and spare themselves all these meaningless dogmas and hostilities?
"The answer, of course, was that they couldn't have found enough rational human beings on Earth to fill the Ark. A man might be a brilliant scientist, but he was still a Hindu, and there was no hope of him living peacefully with a Sikh; or he was a Jew, and the Muslims would allow him only second-class citizenship at best. A certain woman might be the greatest gaiologist in the world, and perfectly rational, but she had grown up Catholic, and so her Episcopalian mother-in-law would always look down on her and "her people."
"Even most of the "rational" people—the ones who claimed to not have a religion—were just as chauvinistic about their irreligion, sneering at and ostracizing the believers just the way the believers treated nonmembers of their own groups. It's a human universal. My tribe is above all other tribes. That's what religion is—just another name for tribalism in a supposedly civilized world." - pp 37-38
It seems that the authors are putting their own thoughts into the monkey's 'mouth' - but, if that's so, why are they still Mormons (if they are)? & do they really find humanity so hopeless? I think there's hope for humanity & that religion is one of the biggest obstacles. Nonetheless, as an atheist I'd never call for the suppression of religion or the murder of someone based on their religion. That, of course, distinguishes me from Fundamentalist Christinanes & Moslems the world over whose blood-lust against atheists is called to my attn frequently enuf.
The mayor of the main characters' village on the Ark is also seen as disgusting. The size of her breasts is frequently alluded to in an insulting way. "She reached out a hand. Constricted by gaudy rings, here fingers were as bloated as sausages. I was tired. I couldn't stop my reflexes. I bit her." (p 40) "You can't be serious." Penelope's chest quivered when she talked. "It would be an affront to everyone in Mayflower Village. People will be here from all sixty villages, and Mayflower has to feed them all. Though I suppose you're so important that people will overlook it if you don't do your fair share."" (p 42)
The endless passive aggressiveness. & all this shitty human behavior is being exported to another world. Great. Just fucking great. I recently review Ron Moody's The Four Fingers of Death in wch the 1st Mars colony falls apart due to somewhat less banal human shittiness (see my review here: "The Middle Finger of Life": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ) but in Lovelock it's like the main hopes for humanity's future are such a small minority that one might as well give up hope from the get-go.
""There is a lift," Penelope said, turning her most helpful face toward Red and Mamie. "For heavy loads." Since Pink hardly qualified, the remark seemed vaguely pointed at Mamie—and from the look of faint disgust on here face, Mamie didn't miss the barb, either. It was pretty absurd, coming from Penelope; although Mamie was round, she was small enough that each of Penelope's breasts probably outweighed her." - p 46
Catty, & not convincingly the viewpoint of a snarky enhanced monkey, more probably the viewpoint of a woman author whose breasts aren't large. Then again, it is fiction. The authors take a dig at Presbyterians & Mormons both. That was vaguely 'fun':
""We're pretty open-minded here. Presbyterians are tolerant folks. All religions are the same, anyway, as long as they're Christian. In fact, we even have three Jewish families who live with us, because Bethel Village is too Orthodox for them, and there are also some Mormons because nobody else wanted them. They have their own services, of course, but otherwise you'd never know they belonged to a cult."" - p 51
As I was reading this, I kept thinking that the story wd get past the petty human nastiness & the religion & get to the science fiction part, but NOOOOO.. it goes on.. & on.. & constitutes the bulk of the bk's contents:
""I was a prayer partner of Odie Lee's," the woman said. "She was always the first to know who had a problem and lead the prayers on their behalf."
"I heard another woman's voice mutter in the row behind us, "That's because her husband couldn't keep his mouth shut." Someone shushed at here. "Cyrus told her everything we ever said to him in confidence."" - p 62
Orson Scott Card & Kathryn H. Kidd's Lovelock
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 25, 2015
Another "too long" review - this time about a bk I didn't even like that much (but still found 'redeeming' value in). See the full review, called, not aprticularly cleverly, "LoveLessLock", here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
Some popular fiction, Science Fiction in particular, is sometimes notorious for having misleading covers. If the contents of the bk aren't likely to completely appeal to the marketing niche then a cover that does appeal to that marketing niche might be called for. Hence, this bk has a hi-techie 'outer-space adventure' look to it: there's a spaceship approaching a space stn w/ the Earth & the Moon in the background.. - &, yeah, there's some of that in the bk.. but it's mainly contextualizing to enable plot devices.
Otherwise, the bk's pure 'Peyton Place'. How many readers of today remember that expression? Is it still in use? "Peyton Place" was, 1st, a 1956 novel, &, 2nd, the 1st American Soap Opera on primetime TV from 1964 to 1969. It was a very popular series full of drama & sexual themes. As an expression, something was "Peyton Place" if it was melodramatic. This bk isn't Space Opera, despite its largely taking place off-Earth, it's Soap Opera that isn't selling soap.
I've seen Card's name on bk covers, I didn't know anything about him, the bks always struck me as probably lo-end SciFi b/c they're usually serials - serials don't have to be conceptually lo-end but they're often marketing niche products meant to suck the reader in in the same way that soap operas do - thru engagement w/ cliff-hanger situations for protagonists, that sort of thing. As such, I didn't have much interest in him. I'm more interested in bks w/ substantial ideas rather than consumer-engagement psychology.
Nonetheless, I'll usually give a SF writer a whirl - esp if I get one of their bks cheap, as I no doubt did this one. I'd never heard of Kidd before. Sure enuf, this is the 1st bk of a trilogy. Hopefully, I'll be resistant to the psychological manipulation & I won't read the following 2 bks. I don't think they'll be worth my time.
There's a "Foreword: On Collaboration" by Card in wch he writes about some of the forces behind such bks: "I realized this when a book packager approached me with the idea of putting together a series of "collaborations." My job would be to come up with a plot outline and some basic world creation for science fiction novel. then a young, unknown (i.e., desperate) writer would be engaged to do the actual word-by-word writing." (p ix) Fair enuf, he acknowledges the "collaboration" as a business strategy.
He goes on to explain that he chose Kidd b/c she "had been my friend since back in the days when she was a reporter for the Desert News and I was an assistant editor at The Ensign in Salt Lake City. I had been a witness at her wedding to Clark Kidd. And I had goaded her into writing a Mormon novel to help me launch my small publishing company, Hatrack River Publications. that first novel of hers, Paradise Vue, has gone through three printings and has given a new shape to Mormon publishing". (pp xi-xii) I admit to almost putting the bk down &/or trashing it immediately. A Mormon SF novel?! Gimme a fucking break.
Still, once I start reading something, I usually give a bk a fair chance. I even have a peripheral scholarly interest in Christinane attempts to co-opt Science Fiction in what I consider to be an attempt to reel-in believers thru popular media that currently provides mythology that wd've previously been mainly provided by religion.
So, eg, I have a bk that I haven't read yet called Cloning Christ. I've watched movies like Left Behind & Lost City Raiders. None of what I've checked out has been particularly compelling. At a more serious, non-SF, end of the movie-making spectrum there's Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's Dekalog based on the "Ten Commandments".
I actually expected to like & respect the Kieslowski work b/c I'd seen
some of his movies around 1995 & thought they were well-done. HOWEVER, checking him out again in the 2010s I've found his work utterly insufferable. They're so obviously designed to make their viewers feel sick & 'sinful' that they're just sickening. In fact, for me, they reinforced the feeling that Christians are the real Satanists, the people ever on the move to degrade & enslave their fellow humans to make a buck. I'm sure Kieslowski got plenty of money from the Catholic Church.
In an online article ( http://www.christiantoday.com/article... ) called "Ten amazing Christian rapture movies that culture Left Behind", author Martin Saunders writes about the DVD packaging for A Thief in the Night: "The first of four films about the rapture, presumably involving a big clock, a van, and a woman with a melting face. If that's not scary enough to get you into church, nothing is." - & there you have it: the idea is to scare you into church. Forget about having some sort of ethics that binds you to yr fellow human beings, that's ultimately beside the point, eh?!
Card concludes his foreword by claiming "we wanted you to know that whatever flaws this book might have did not result from having a junior writer do the real work on an outline written by a senior one. This a true collaboration from beginning to end." (p xiii) That might be the case but it doesn't really seem that way to me. Given that I haven't read either of their work before but I 'know' that Card's a SF writer & that Kidd, before this, was a straight novelist it seems fair to me to conclude that the outline context is Card's & the soap opera drama filler is Kidd's. In other words, sorry, Card, I'm not convinced by yr claim.
What was ultimately strange for me in this &, therefore, somewhat engaging, is that the bk is an atheist's 'nightmare': religious people being launched off-planet in an "Ark" to colonize another planet w/ all the stupidest behavior - not their stated motive, of course, but the gist of a major part of it. What made it particularly strange is that almost all of the narrator's observations about human nature critique the worst characteristics of religious people that I noticed as a child growing up in almost exclusively Christinane surroundings.
The narrator is an enhanced monkey who's been programmed to be loyal to the scientist that he serves as a "witness". The monkey's isn't necessarily religious (it's somewhat ambiguous) & he's definitely snarky:
"The most obnoxious mourner was, of course, Mamie, the she-human who gave birth to Red. At least Stef's chatter showed that he had mastered the rudiments of speech. Mamie went around touching everything, caressing it, as if she thought by stroking the pewter tea set on the dining room buffet she could wake it up and entice it to tag along with us. Touching—grooming—that's a primate behavior that I indulge in. But I'd never groom a metal pitcher." - p 5
Right away, we get a sample of the intelligence-enhanced monkey's contempt for the family matriarch. What surprised me was that the observations so neatly jive w/ my own observations about human nature at its most underhanded & hypocritical & manipulative & that women are esp targeted. The authors don't take an explicitly Mormon standpoint, a central character, Carol Jeanne, is Catholic & she bids farewell to her nun sister before leaving Earth:
""I know your covenant is for a lifetime," said Carol Jeanne, "but don't you think you can serve God out there, too? Don't you think people will need you there?" And then her voice breaking a little, she added the words that were hardest to say. Don't you think I'll need you?"" - p 9
A "covenant is for a lifetime", what a perfect way to trap well-meaning people into slavery. Shd they take the Inquisition w/ them off-planet too? B/c, let's not forget, Giordano Bruno was tortured & burnt at the stake in public by the Catholics for contesting the Aristotelian notion that the Earth was the center of the universe, right? I mean, every good Catholic knew that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Just try using that belief when you're making the math calculations for getting a spaceship off-planet. No, the space pioneers 'need' a nun along like a hole-in-the-head, a trepanation hole in the head.
Still, what's weird about this bk is that if both the authors are Mormon why are they using a monkey as the narrator? & why is the narrator saying things like this?:
"I had my own ideas about what God, if he existed, must think of me. If he had wanted creatures like me to exist, he would have arranged it himself. There was no one like me when Adam was naming the beasts. If there was anyone like me in the mythical Garden, it was a certain talkative snake." - p 12
So what exactly is the authorial POV? Are they using the monkey & the monkey's perspective to ultimately debase the intelligence of the monkey's POV?, the potential atheistic/scientific POV? Or are they just Mormons who're accepting of the Mormon society they live in? Maybe going for the Mormon dollar?
When I think of Mormons, I think of the murder of Travis Victor Alexander, presumably by his ex-girlfriend Jodi Ann Arias, & of all the sexual twistiness surrounding the Mormon angle on that. I also think of the movie Licensed to Kill about gay-bashers in prison, most of whom seemed to be gay themselves, &, specifically about a child who was adopted into a Mormon family who grew up to be a closet gay man who turned into a killer of gay men - largely perverted by his adopted family's suppression of his sexual identity. In other words, I think of Mormons as suppressing healthy sexuality in a way similar to the way Catholics do it - the result being a world full of child-molesting priests.
The funny thing about this bk, is that its 2 Mormon authors don't deny this sort of thing, they even seem to revel in its drama - so why stay religious? Do they think that it's basic human nature to be so confused & hateful? & that it's better to allow religion to control you b/c you're too stupid to 'improve' otherwise? I'm reminded of an anti-anarchist cliché to the effect of 'without government people would just kill each other!' Well, maybe not, maybe government & religion are actually 2 of the main forces that increase the killing. Modern day Islam certainly seems to prove that point - & let's not forget the mania for conquering that Christinanity has. This bk is full of references to "God":
"The shuttle was just like the suborbital space cruisers that ran the one hour intercontinental express routes. The same fetishistic cleanliness. The same simple opulence that made you think you were flying to meet God instead of just going to another conference." - p 14
From my POV, the authors really nail manipulative behavior that most people don't seem to want to talk about:
"As for comforting Emmy, however, that was not to be. Emmy wasn't fully human yet, but she could certainly tell the difference between Mommy and not-Mommy, and Mamie was definitely in the not-Mommy category. The crying continued without slackening.
""You dear child, there must be something I can do with you," she said. There was now an edge to her voice. Patience was wearing thin. After all this trouble to get across the aisle, it would hardly do if she were shown to be ineffectual as a grandmother." - p 23
Maybe this bk is just catty but the motives of most of the main adult women are completely hypocritical & false - just like they were to me as a child growing up in a Christinane environment. THEN, there's the debased Pavlovian manipulation of the "witnesses", the non-humans:
"I knew my feelings of persecution were absurd. I wasn't being persecuted in particular. I simply belonged to an oppressed species. Which, in Earth at least, included every species that wasn't human. Most nonhumans didn't mind, of course. Most
nonhumans didn't even know they were being exploited, domesticated, dominated, and spiritually annihilated by the master race. Only I and a handful like me." - pp 31-32
In other words, the authors are using the enhanced monkey narrator to put forth an animal rights position - one that I, an atheist (& carnivore), personally, agree w/ - & one that's as antithetical to Christinanity as much as Bruno's positions were to the Catholic Church. Humans, according to the bible, were created in God's image - end of story, beginning of justification of oppression by divine rights. So, what are the authors doing here? Are they in favor of animal rights? If so, how do they jive it w/ being Christinane? Or are they, as I've hinted at above, simply co-opting contemporary, in this case ethical, positions in the interest of making the church seem OK again?
The snarkiness doesn't stop w/ jabbing at the phony passive aggressive women, let's take a stab at the French, eh? "The person in charge was French; therefore she felt no need to explain anything to anybody." (p 34) No doubt ALL French people are like that. NOT.
Most Science Fiction manages to envision a future in wch the banal control-freak religions of the writer's age are going, going, gone - the end of a Dark Age. Not this bk. The monkey's perspective on the Ark:
"Dividing communities by language made sense to me. But it was a typical human absurdity that, after language, the next important set of divisions was religious. Muslims, Buddhists, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Espiritistas: All had their own villages. Those groups with too few practitioners to maintain villages of their own—Baha'i, for instance, and Sikh, animist, atheist, Mormon, Mithraist, Druse, native American tribal religions, Jehovah's Witnesses—were either thrown together in a couple of catch-all villages or were "adopted" as minorities within fairly compatible of tolerant villages of other faiths.
"The whole thing struck me as absurd. Why didn't they simply limit the colony to rational human beings who were above the petty concerns of religion, and spare themselves all these meaningless dogmas and hostilities?
"The answer, of course, was that they couldn't have found enough rational human beings on Earth to fill the Ark. A man might be a brilliant scientist, but he was still a Hindu, and there was no hope of him living peacefully with a Sikh; or he was a Jew, and the Muslims would allow him only second-class citizenship at best. A certain woman might be the greatest gaiologist in the world, and perfectly rational, but she had grown up Catholic, and so her Episcopalian mother-in-law would always look down on her and "her people."
"Even most of the "rational" people—the ones who claimed to not have a religion—were just as chauvinistic about their irreligion, sneering at and ostracizing the believers just the way the believers treated nonmembers of their own groups. It's a human universal. My tribe is above all other tribes. That's what religion is—just another name for tribalism in a supposedly civilized world." - pp 37-38
It seems that the authors are putting their own thoughts into the monkey's 'mouth' - but, if that's so, why are they still Mormons (if they are)? & do they really find humanity so hopeless? I think there's hope for humanity & that religion is one of the biggest obstacles. Nonetheless, as an atheist I'd never call for the suppression of religion or the murder of someone based on their religion. That, of course, distinguishes me from Fundamentalist Christinanes & Moslems the world over whose blood-lust against atheists is called to my attn frequently enuf.
The mayor of the main characters' village on the Ark is also seen as disgusting. The size of her breasts is frequently alluded to in an insulting way. "She reached out a hand. Constricted by gaudy rings, here fingers were as bloated as sausages. I was tired. I couldn't stop my reflexes. I bit her." (p 40) "You can't be serious." Penelope's chest quivered when she talked. "It would be an affront to everyone in Mayflower Village. People will be here from all sixty villages, and Mayflower has to feed them all. Though I suppose you're so important that people will overlook it if you don't do your fair share."" (p 42)
The endless passive aggressiveness. & all this shitty human behavior is being exported to another world. Great. Just fucking great. I recently review Ron Moody's The Four Fingers of Death in wch the 1st Mars colony falls apart due to somewhat less banal human shittiness (see my review here: "The Middle Finger of Life": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ) but in Lovelock it's like the main hopes for humanity's future are such a small minority that one might as well give up hope from the get-go.
""There is a lift," Penelope said, turning her most helpful face toward Red and Mamie. "For heavy loads." Since Pink hardly qualified, the remark seemed vaguely pointed at Mamie—and from the look of faint disgust on here face, Mamie didn't miss the barb, either. It was pretty absurd, coming from Penelope; although Mamie was round, she was small enough that each of Penelope's breasts probably outweighed her." - p 46
Catty, & not convincingly the viewpoint of a snarky enhanced monkey, more probably the viewpoint of a woman author whose breasts aren't large. Then again, it is fiction. The authors take a dig at Presbyterians & Mormons both. That was vaguely 'fun':
""We're pretty open-minded here. Presbyterians are tolerant folks. All religions are the same, anyway, as long as they're Christian. In fact, we even have three Jewish families who live with us, because Bethel Village is too Orthodox for them, and there are also some Mormons because nobody else wanted them. They have their own services, of course, but otherwise you'd never know they belonged to a cult."" - p 51
As I was reading this, I kept thinking that the story wd get past the petty human nastiness & the religion & get to the science fiction part, but NOOOOO.. it goes on.. & on.. & constitutes the bulk of the bk's contents:
""I was a prayer partner of Odie Lee's," the woman said. "She was always the first to know who had a problem and lead the prayers on their behalf."
"I heard another woman's voice mutter in the row behind us, "That's because her husband couldn't keep his mouth shut." Someone shushed at here. "Cyrus told her everything we ever said to him in confidence."" - p 62
October 9, 2019
Do you ever finish a book and ask yourself, “What did I just read?” This book is seen through the eyes of a genetically engineered monkey who’s job is to witness the life of an important scientist. Together they are traveling through space to start a new human colony on some far away planet.
So far, so good.
Except instead of witnessing many interesting sci-fi and adventurous things, the monkey mostly just witnessed a bunch of terrible, broken human relationships as spouses use each other, cheat on each other, and generally just hate each other.
Maybe there is an interesting side plot for the monkey which adds interest?
Nope. The monkey is distracted by the fact it would really like to mate, but has genetically been engineered to only experience agonizing pain if it even thinks about sex. The monkey finds it can overcome this engineering by - oh goodness, fantasizing about hazing sex with its human master?!
You think it couldn’t get much worse. It does.
The monkey then decides to raise up a regular monkey from the embryo bank to breed with, so he steals one and starts to let it grow. Which if you realize this monkey is given a very human personality is so terribly disturbing! Here is a sentient monkey deciding it can take a non-intelligent child and raise it to the point of being able to be used for his sexual desires. Just, no. Oh hell no. This is horrific sexual abuse stuff that would make a horror story in any other telling.
Thankfully it doesn’t actually come to that, because - oh gosh this is bad too. He learns he can’t mate with a non-enhanced monkey and this baby is now a dangerous liability with no benefits. So to save his own skin he straight up murders the thing.
And it’s a series! What other distributing events might take place in the future books? I have no intention of reading them to find out. It sounds like he’ll raise a company of enhanced monkeys, one of which he will no doubt breed with. Who knew that monkey grooming had such a terrible double meaning?
So far, so good.
Except instead of witnessing many interesting sci-fi and adventurous things, the monkey mostly just witnessed a bunch of terrible, broken human relationships as spouses use each other, cheat on each other, and generally just hate each other.
Maybe there is an interesting side plot for the monkey which adds interest?
Nope. The monkey is distracted by the fact it would really like to mate, but has genetically been engineered to only experience agonizing pain if it even thinks about sex. The monkey finds it can overcome this engineering by - oh goodness, fantasizing about hazing sex with its human master?!
You think it couldn’t get much worse. It does.
The monkey then decides to raise up a regular monkey from the embryo bank to breed with, so he steals one and starts to let it grow. Which if you realize this monkey is given a very human personality is so terribly disturbing! Here is a sentient monkey deciding it can take a non-intelligent child and raise it to the point of being able to be used for his sexual desires. Just, no. Oh hell no. This is horrific sexual abuse stuff that would make a horror story in any other telling.
Thankfully it doesn’t actually come to that, because - oh gosh this is bad too. He learns he can’t mate with a non-enhanced monkey and this baby is now a dangerous liability with no benefits. So to save his own skin he straight up murders the thing.
And it’s a series! What other distributing events might take place in the future books? I have no intention of reading them to find out. It sounds like he’ll raise a company of enhanced monkeys, one of which he will no doubt breed with. Who knew that monkey grooming had such a terrible double meaning?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 1, 2025
Actual rating 4.75.
I really enjoyed this book. The only reason this isn't a true 5-start review for me is that there was one scene in the book that was so disturbing for me, that I had to put the book down for a few days and decide if I wanted to keep reading. I wanted to see how the story evolved and concluded, but I didn't want to read any more scenes like that one. Fortunately, I did go back and discovered there were no more scenes like that. If I continue the series, I'll do so knowing I might encounter another scene like that. But just because I found that one scene disturbing, doesn't mean other readers will.
The themes of servitude and slavery caught me off guard in a good way. The addition of the concept of "what makes a person?" kept me returning to the story. I'm used to seeing that idea in A.I.-related stories but this was something different. It reminded me of Planet of the Apes but in a very different way.
The space travel and religious elements clash perfectly. And while I recognize this book is probably catering to an agnostic or atheist audience, I wasn't bothered by it. It made sense for the story being told; plus, it's a good reflection of how most people view religion as an institution instead of a system of faith.
With that said, I do think I'll continue the series. I'm invested in these characters now. Most of them or horrible but they still represent lives- and aren't lives important?
Oh, and there's a genius monkey, so what's not to like?
Highly recommended to science fiction and space travel fans, those who enjoy social politics and the struggle for human rights, and complex futuristic stories that reflect the struggles of modern life.
I really enjoyed this book. The only reason this isn't a true 5-start review for me is that there was one scene in the book that was so disturbing for me, that I had to put the book down for a few days and decide if I wanted to keep reading. I wanted to see how the story evolved and concluded, but I didn't want to read any more scenes like that one. Fortunately, I did go back and discovered there were no more scenes like that. If I continue the series, I'll do so knowing I might encounter another scene like that. But just because I found that one scene disturbing, doesn't mean other readers will.
The themes of servitude and slavery caught me off guard in a good way. The addition of the concept of "what makes a person?" kept me returning to the story. I'm used to seeing that idea in A.I.-related stories but this was something different. It reminded me of Planet of the Apes but in a very different way.
The space travel and religious elements clash perfectly. And while I recognize this book is probably catering to an agnostic or atheist audience, I wasn't bothered by it. It made sense for the story being told; plus, it's a good reflection of how most people view religion as an institution instead of a system of faith.
With that said, I do think I'll continue the series. I'm invested in these characters now. Most of them or horrible but they still represent lives- and aren't lives important?
Oh, and there's a genius monkey, so what's not to like?
Highly recommended to science fiction and space travel fans, those who enjoy social politics and the struggle for human rights, and complex futuristic stories that reflect the struggles of modern life.
December 27, 2022
This is a gripping science fiction thriller told from the point of view of a cognitively enhanced capuchin monkey, genetically modified to be a "witness" to a famous scientist, helping her with research and just in general documenting the community's behavior. He is a computer whiz. His essential existential struggle concerns his sexuality and ability to reproduce. The people who have modified and conditioned him have cruelly targeted his sexuality. The "pain" word which his "owner" can (very seldom, in this case) punish him with attacks his testicles. In addition to this he is conditioned by the same pain not to touch his penis, purely because it would irritate humans to watch him masturbate, which apparently capuchins in the wild do a lot. Not a sufficient reason.
Lovelock presents his account as a diary, preserved in sleeper sequences in the ship's computer system, to be triggered when he is dead, or, perhaps...to be told as a story when he has lead the various enhanced embryos onboard ship to the promised land.
The book is interesting because it is a collaboration between Kidd, a writer of mainstream fiction, and Card, a well-known writer of science fiction. Card says in the introduction that collaborations between science fiction writers rarely amount to much, even where one is not a ghost writer.
Lovelock presents his account as a diary, preserved in sleeper sequences in the ship's computer system, to be triggered when he is dead, or, perhaps...to be told as a story when he has lead the various enhanced embryos onboard ship to the promised land.
The book is interesting because it is a collaboration between Kidd, a writer of mainstream fiction, and Card, a well-known writer of science fiction. Card says in the introduction that collaborations between science fiction writers rarely amount to much, even where one is not a ghost writer.
March 31, 2024
This was surprisingly good! I was a bit worried reading the first book in a trilogy that won’t be finished, but this was a satisfying read and even though I’d love more…I’m also content. I love Orson’s work SO much and Kathryn wrote really well with him. This is such a great sci-fi novel.
I've been seeing a lot of reviews bashing the decisions of the main character, so I just want to remind people that this is about a monkey. Yes, he's modified. Yes, he's smart. But he's still a monkey. His actions can't be balanced against human morals because he is an animal. He shows several times that even though the humans trust him and made him intelligent, his desires and actions are very monkey-based. This is why he throws his poop at people who annoy him haha.
So...the reviews that say 'I gave this one star because the character did this disgusting thing and I can't believe the author thought that was okay'...ee ee oo oo *monkey noises*
I've been seeing a lot of reviews bashing the decisions of the main character, so I just want to remind people that this is about a monkey. Yes, he's modified. Yes, he's smart. But he's still a monkey. His actions can't be balanced against human morals because he is an animal. He shows several times that even though the humans trust him and made him intelligent, his desires and actions are very monkey-based. This is why he throws his poop at people who annoy him haha.
So...the reviews that say 'I gave this one star because the character did this disgusting thing and I can't believe the author thought that was okay'...ee ee oo oo *monkey noises*
January 9, 2021
It took awhile to get into this one but it did turn into a page-turner. I enjoyed the philosophical treatment of human v. animal hubris, questions of personhood and how easy it is to fall down the slippery slope of deciding what is best for others.
The dialogue was better than a lot of other OSC books so the collaboration was successful. Having a female narrator was a bit weird at first because main 1st person POV is male, but she did a great job.
The dialogue was better than a lot of other OSC books so the collaboration was successful. Having a female narrator was a bit weird at first because main 1st person POV is male, but she did a great job.
February 28, 2021
This book is so underrated. I really really really wish they finished writing the trilogy. I love how funny this book is, but also how it talks about real philosophical issues and it is the best book I have read in terms of how it analyses and presents the way humans engage with other species, so fun and smart to read this book from the Chimp's perspective. This book has so much to say about human nature and it was fun and easy to read.
June 10, 2024
This is a pretty interesting read about a genetically modified monkey made to be a helper for a future scientist, along with some of the implications of this, as told from the monkey’s point of view. I enjoyed some of the questions that it raised in my mind as I read the narrative, and felt this novel was quite a good work by Card and Kidd. There’s a good amount of social dynamics between the characters, and it’s a touch light on the sci-fi stuff, but I felt that it is a great read nonetheless.
September 25, 2024
I'm not sure if fantasy just isn't my genre or if this book was truly this unreadable. I got to page 34, and the 30-page description of monkey poop and vomit was just too much. Very odd pacing and attention to detail in all the wrong places (we are never even told Lovelock is a monkey; he just magically gets a tail). Probably the last science-ficton book I'll attempt for a while.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 31, 2025
La humanidad descrita desde el punto de vista de un animal cuya inteligencia ha sido aumentada para servir a los humanos. Esclavitud? Por supuesto.
Un heterogéneo grupo se embarca en una nave espacial para ir a otro planeta y fundar una colonia, pero los humanos son humanos por muy sofisticada que sea su tecnología.
Im
Un heterogéneo grupo se embarca en una nave espacial para ir a otro planeta y fundar una colonia, pero los humanos son humanos por muy sofisticada que sea su tecnología.
Im
November 17, 2020
What makes me the saddest about this is this came out in 1994 and I know for a fact it won't have the book to or book three that were planned for the trilogy but probably one of the best sci-fi books I've read in a long time would even have to put it as a little bit better than ender's game
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