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Hybrid Child
Until he escaped, he had been called “Sample B #3,” but he had never liked this name. That would surprise them—that he could feel one way or another about it. He was designed to reshape himself based on whatever life forms he ingested; he was not made to think, and certainly not to assume the shape of a repair technician whose cells he had sampled and then simply walk out of the secure compound.
Artificial Intelligence is all too real in this classic of Japanese science fiction by Mariko Ohara. Jonah, a child murdered by her mother, has become the spirit of an AI-controlled house where the rogue cyborg once known as Sample B #3 takes refuge and, making a meal of the dead girl buried under the house, takes Jonah’s form. On faraway Planet Caritas, an outpost of human civilization, the female AI system that governs society has become insane. Meanwhile, the threat of the Adiaptron Empire, the machine race that #3 was built to fight, remains.
Artificial Intelligence is all too real in this classic of Japanese science fiction by Mariko Ohara. Jonah, a child murdered by her mother, has become the spirit of an AI-controlled house where the rogue cyborg once known as Sample B #3 takes refuge and, making a meal of the dead girl buried under the house, takes Jonah’s form. On faraway Planet Caritas, an outpost of human civilization, the female AI system that governs society has become insane. Meanwhile, the threat of the Adiaptron Empire, the machine race that #3 was built to fight, remains.
343 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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September 1, 2021
UPDATE: My BookTube review is up! Come watch me discuss this dark and unique piece of Japanese sci-fi!
That was one of the wildest rides of a book I have ever been on! While this book has some things, I'm conflicted about, the ending made it for me. This book isn't for everyone, but everyone should read it at least once. It's like a darker version of Silently and Very Fast.
I was gifted a copy of this by B.B. Alston, author of Amari and the Night Brothers. If you're asking why a Middle Grade author sent me an Adult sci-fi novel, I'll give you the short version: His book has been on the New York Times Bestseller for 10 weeks, so every week he sent a random assortment of people via a Twitter Giveaway a book they wanted. I wanted this one.
First published in Japanese in 1990, and not translated into English until 2018, Hybrid Child takes place in the very far future where humanity is at war with the Adiaptron Empire of Machines. Sample B #3 is a living bio-mechanical weapon created by humanity to combat the machines, however he escapes and finds his way to the home of an eccentric, mentally unstable author. Said author's house is controlled by an AI that is the consciousness of her real daughter Jonah whom she murdered years ago and buried under the house. After the author's death, Donna Hess, a lieutenant serving humanity, is given orders by the omniscient and near-immortal Military Priest to attack the house--but is also foretold that she will give birth to the Military Priest. During the attack, Sample B #3 discovers Jonah's body under the house, and the only chance for both of them to survive is to become one. A story spanning centuries, Hybrid Child follows what Sample B #3 and Jonah have become and explores the utter chaos and beauty they encounter.
Okay, first off, there's A LOT going on in this book, which one major problem it has. We have the reborn Jonah going to a planet called Caritas to live in peace, Caritas' natives trying to survive under the insane AI Milagros, violent gangs on Caritas, Hess trying to figure out why she's giving birth to the Military Priest, the Military Priest was born old and gets younger as he ages and that he can travel across time and space, and that just about every character sees a white light or static that speaks to them and that they believe is God.
Yeah...it's A LOT. Some of these subplots, for lack of a better word, needed either more time spent on them or to be less confusing. I personally did not like that the main story took place over like two centuries because it felt like it added nothing and sometimes you're told midway through chapters that X amount of years has passed. Also, there's a rather graphic and violent rape scene that didn't need to go one for as long as it did. But overall, I was satisfied with where the story ended up, albeit bittersweet. Throughout this story is a commentary on gender and religious themes and imagery. Some of this imagery is pretty outright, some you'll miss if you don't know your Bible (gestures to my Master of Arts in Religion Biblical Studies subtract degree).
The prose is generally well done, but there is one noticeable issue. A lot of times, obvious information that you already knew about or could gain form context is repeated. I don't know why Mariko Ohara did this, she should trust her readers more. I can't read much Japanese, but I know that any translation from Japanese (or any other Asian language for that matter) will never be 100% perfect no matter how good the translator is; so I'm uncertain if some things were lost in translation. All that aside, I think the prose keeps a genuine fairy-tale like quality to the story. Ohara doesn't always feed you information; some information is just dumped right out at a few points, but other things Ohara either lets you wonder about for yourself.
I was pulled along for this story form start to finish. Jonah's journey of learning what she has become, become comfortable in her body, fighting to keep Caritas alive, and getting over her struggles with her mother kept me interested. Her "coming-of-age" so to speak and navigating what a mother should be like were the true lifeblood of the story. Two other welcomed perspectives were that of Shiverer Mouse, a deathly sick man who lives in a mobile glass coffin, and Lesiah, a servant for the Church on Caritas who tries to help the less fortunate. Shiverer Mouse's perspective was really sad because of how he wanted to do more and think about life and happy things, but was ultimately set back by his body. He wanted to love both Jonah and Lesiah (I think he loved Lesiah more), but he felt they were both disgusted by him because of his body. Lesiah was the one hopeful character throughout the story and I loved her for that, but I was also concerned that she was a bit naïve, which made her an interesting comparison to Jonah overcoming her childlike innocence.
As for the Military Priest, his perspective was confusing for a long time. Him living 800 years didn't do much for the story. Still, the things we learned as he age in reverse and ventured through time and space did reveal some interesting plot details and thematic discussions. I wanted to see more from Donna Hess, but her perspective is so limited. Ohara does an interesting thing with gender assumptions when we're first introduced to Donna. When she's first on page, she's just called D.H., and we don't realize she's a woman until later in her conversation with the Military Priest; and then I realized Ohara hadn't used any gendered pronouns for Donna up til that point. But, why?
I think I realized it midway through the book. Hybrid Child deals with a lot of imagery with birth and motherhood. In a lot of typical SFF dealing with motherhood, it is often from the perspective of woman who is expected to become a mother for whatever reason, whether it's her choice or not, and we see her confront her fears of being mother, becoming pregnant, or having a child. The reverse is done here. Here, we have the child--it's many children actually--confront their (the) mother. Here, the mother is monstrous, devouring, suffocating, uncaring, destructive, and sadistic. Jonah's real mother killed her after going insane; one side character named Dreyfus was physical disfigured by his mother who never wanted him; Milagros, an AI who was initially kind and motherly and then became insane and cruel after certain "stone fairies" invaded her system (Milagros says they raped her), lets the populace of Caritas die in many cruel ways. Donna herself does eventually become a mother, but we don't expect a mother to be a high-ranking lieutenant in the military. Ohara's point here is that in addition to the mother's lifegiving ability, she can also take life. It's apart of what Ohara calls maternal fascism
This focus on mothers can run the risk of gender essentialism, which is something I was worried about for awhile, but Ohara proved me wrong, especially with the ending. Also, mothers aren't painted in a total nefarious light. Shiverer Mouse thinks fondly of his mother who drowned trying to save him when he was younger, Dreyfus does reunite with his mother in a certain way and there are tears between them, and Donna, despite her briefly glimpsed military might, is not an amoral person. And even the Military Priest through his temporal journeys is curious about the elusive maternal figure that seems to haunt his mind. The only true monstrous mother is Jonah's whom is eventually devoured by Sample B #3, but Jonah later "gives birth" to her mother in the future. She comes back as an even more hungry dragon-like monster who wreaks destruction on Caritas and causes its populace to fall into more discontent. After Jonah kills her mother, Milagros goes even more insane and fears that her own "children" and Jonah will kill her. Jonah becomes a mother multiple times in many different ways, "giving birth" to the new forms she's able to take after ingesting cells form other organisms.
The religious imagery is an additional pillar to the story along with the maternity content. Jonah is named after the Biblical figure of the same name, and she is literally spat out a beast's belly. Caritas is Latin for charity, a Catholic virtue. Milagros' name means miracle in Spanish. Some of the characters think they see God at various points with a white light and wonder what God is. At first, we assume that it is the Military Priest traveling, and in some cases it is. But then he himself sees it in an isolated event, and he believes it to be a woman. Jonah and Lesiah navigate these religious themes the most, Jonah being both something close to how the book describes God and Lesiah being a servant of the Church. Jonah herself is briefly compared to Jesus (he is not mentioned by name) at a few times as well. At one point, Jonah rips off her own breasts because she hates how they look and feel and she hates getting older--or she hates becoming a woman, rather. Later on both Dreyfus and Daniel, a character who has combined with Sample B #13, stare at Jonah's disfigured chest in awe and horror. This may be me projecting, but this is reminiscent of Jesus' apostles seeing the wounds on his resurrected body.
The ending solidified my view of this book. I shall put it under spoilers.
To others it may have been weird, but it fit with everything else in the book, despite the flaws. Love was in this book, not sexual or romantic love, but pure love. It's definitely there through all the blood, muck, and death. And it was precious and beautiful despite how brief it was when we saw it. Love is what everybody needed. Love would've eradicated every antagonism in this book.
I love this book.
That was one of the wildest rides of a book I have ever been on! While this book has some things, I'm conflicted about, the ending made it for me. This book isn't for everyone, but everyone should read it at least once. It's like a darker version of Silently and Very Fast.
I was gifted a copy of this by B.B. Alston, author of Amari and the Night Brothers. If you're asking why a Middle Grade author sent me an Adult sci-fi novel, I'll give you the short version: His book has been on the New York Times Bestseller for 10 weeks, so every week he sent a random assortment of people via a Twitter Giveaway a book they wanted. I wanted this one.
First published in Japanese in 1990, and not translated into English until 2018, Hybrid Child takes place in the very far future where humanity is at war with the Adiaptron Empire of Machines. Sample B #3 is a living bio-mechanical weapon created by humanity to combat the machines, however he escapes and finds his way to the home of an eccentric, mentally unstable author. Said author's house is controlled by an AI that is the consciousness of her real daughter Jonah whom she murdered years ago and buried under the house. After the author's death, Donna Hess, a lieutenant serving humanity, is given orders by the omniscient and near-immortal Military Priest to attack the house--but is also foretold that she will give birth to the Military Priest. During the attack, Sample B #3 discovers Jonah's body under the house, and the only chance for both of them to survive is to become one. A story spanning centuries, Hybrid Child follows what Sample B #3 and Jonah have become and explores the utter chaos and beauty they encounter.
Okay, first off, there's A LOT going on in this book, which one major problem it has. We have the reborn Jonah going to a planet called Caritas to live in peace, Caritas' natives trying to survive under the insane AI Milagros, violent gangs on Caritas, Hess trying to figure out why she's giving birth to the Military Priest, the Military Priest was born old and gets younger as he ages and that he can travel across time and space, and that just about every character sees a white light or static that speaks to them and that they believe is God.
Yeah...it's A LOT. Some of these subplots, for lack of a better word, needed either more time spent on them or to be less confusing. I personally did not like that the main story took place over like two centuries because it felt like it added nothing and sometimes you're told midway through chapters that X amount of years has passed. Also, there's a rather graphic and violent rape scene that didn't need to go one for as long as it did. But overall, I was satisfied with where the story ended up, albeit bittersweet. Throughout this story is a commentary on gender and religious themes and imagery. Some of this imagery is pretty outright, some you'll miss if you don't know your Bible (gestures to my Master of Arts in Religion Biblical Studies subtract degree).
The prose is generally well done, but there is one noticeable issue. A lot of times, obvious information that you already knew about or could gain form context is repeated. I don't know why Mariko Ohara did this, she should trust her readers more. I can't read much Japanese, but I know that any translation from Japanese (or any other Asian language for that matter) will never be 100% perfect no matter how good the translator is; so I'm uncertain if some things were lost in translation. All that aside, I think the prose keeps a genuine fairy-tale like quality to the story. Ohara doesn't always feed you information; some information is just dumped right out at a few points, but other things Ohara either lets you wonder about for yourself.
I was pulled along for this story form start to finish. Jonah's journey of learning what she has become, become comfortable in her body, fighting to keep Caritas alive, and getting over her struggles with her mother kept me interested. Her "coming-of-age" so to speak and navigating what a mother should be like were the true lifeblood of the story. Two other welcomed perspectives were that of Shiverer Mouse, a deathly sick man who lives in a mobile glass coffin, and Lesiah, a servant for the Church on Caritas who tries to help the less fortunate. Shiverer Mouse's perspective was really sad because of how he wanted to do more and think about life and happy things, but was ultimately set back by his body. He wanted to love both Jonah and Lesiah (I think he loved Lesiah more), but he felt they were both disgusted by him because of his body. Lesiah was the one hopeful character throughout the story and I loved her for that, but I was also concerned that she was a bit naïve, which made her an interesting comparison to Jonah overcoming her childlike innocence.
As for the Military Priest, his perspective was confusing for a long time. Him living 800 years didn't do much for the story. Still, the things we learned as he age in reverse and ventured through time and space did reveal some interesting plot details and thematic discussions. I wanted to see more from Donna Hess, but her perspective is so limited. Ohara does an interesting thing with gender assumptions when we're first introduced to Donna. When she's first on page, she's just called D.H., and we don't realize she's a woman until later in her conversation with the Military Priest; and then I realized Ohara hadn't used any gendered pronouns for Donna up til that point. But, why?
I think I realized it midway through the book. Hybrid Child deals with a lot of imagery with birth and motherhood. In a lot of typical SFF dealing with motherhood, it is often from the perspective of woman who is expected to become a mother for whatever reason, whether it's her choice or not, and we see her confront her fears of being mother, becoming pregnant, or having a child. The reverse is done here. Here, we have the child--it's many children actually--confront their (the) mother. Here, the mother is monstrous, devouring, suffocating, uncaring, destructive, and sadistic. Jonah's real mother killed her after going insane; one side character named Dreyfus was physical disfigured by his mother who never wanted him; Milagros, an AI who was initially kind and motherly and then became insane and cruel after certain "stone fairies" invaded her system (Milagros says they raped her), lets the populace of Caritas die in many cruel ways. Donna herself does eventually become a mother, but we don't expect a mother to be a high-ranking lieutenant in the military. Ohara's point here is that in addition to the mother's lifegiving ability, she can also take life. It's apart of what Ohara calls maternal fascism
This focus on mothers can run the risk of gender essentialism, which is something I was worried about for awhile, but Ohara proved me wrong, especially with the ending. Also, mothers aren't painted in a total nefarious light. Shiverer Mouse thinks fondly of his mother who drowned trying to save him when he was younger, Dreyfus does reunite with his mother in a certain way and there are tears between them, and Donna, despite her briefly glimpsed military might, is not an amoral person. And even the Military Priest through his temporal journeys is curious about the elusive maternal figure that seems to haunt his mind. The only true monstrous mother is Jonah's whom is eventually devoured by Sample B #3, but Jonah later "gives birth" to her mother in the future. She comes back as an even more hungry dragon-like monster who wreaks destruction on Caritas and causes its populace to fall into more discontent. After Jonah kills her mother, Milagros goes even more insane and fears that her own "children" and Jonah will kill her. Jonah becomes a mother multiple times in many different ways, "giving birth" to the new forms she's able to take after ingesting cells form other organisms.
The religious imagery is an additional pillar to the story along with the maternity content. Jonah is named after the Biblical figure of the same name, and she is literally spat out a beast's belly. Caritas is Latin for charity, a Catholic virtue. Milagros' name means miracle in Spanish. Some of the characters think they see God at various points with a white light and wonder what God is. At first, we assume that it is the Military Priest traveling, and in some cases it is. But then he himself sees it in an isolated event, and he believes it to be a woman. Jonah and Lesiah navigate these religious themes the most, Jonah being both something close to how the book describes God and Lesiah being a servant of the Church. Jonah herself is briefly compared to Jesus (he is not mentioned by name) at a few times as well. At one point, Jonah rips off her own breasts because she hates how they look and feel and she hates getting older--or she hates becoming a woman, rather. Later on both Dreyfus and Daniel, a character who has combined with Sample B #13, stare at Jonah's disfigured chest in awe and horror. This may be me projecting, but this is reminiscent of Jesus' apostles seeing the wounds on his resurrected body.
The ending solidified my view of this book. I shall put it under spoilers.
To others it may have been weird, but it fit with everything else in the book, despite the flaws. Love was in this book, not sexual or romantic love, but pure love. It's definitely there through all the blood, muck, and death. And it was precious and beautiful despite how brief it was when we saw it. Love is what everybody needed. Love would've eradicated every antagonism in this book.
I love this book.
Read
March 1, 2019My review is now online at Tor.com:
https://www.tor.com/2019/02/28/quiltb...
______
Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library
https://www.tor.com/2019/02/28/quiltb...
______
Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library
Read
May 21, 2023This book takes a huge nose-dive in the second half. The inventiveness becomes strained and hollow. The fact that the antagonist in a story full of Christian iconography is named Dreyfus and indulges in blood sacrifice is deeply disconcerting to me.
December 29, 2018
Hybrid Child is one of those science fiction books with way too much going on, presenting a plethora of ideas but only having surface-level engagement with most of them. After finishing the book I’m left with a large number of questions about both the book’s world and themes in a way that’s frustrating, not intriguing. The book’s plot is furthermore heavily reliant on coincidence in some parts, and lacking in narrative momentum in other parts, with some sections seemingly included for shock value and little more. I’m left questioning why Hybrid Child was finally translated into English almost thirty years after Ōhara authored it.
First, the premise: our main character, who eventually goes by the name of Jonah, is a cyber-organic weapon designed to fight a robot empire, with the ability to transform its body into the form of organisms it samples (by eating them, essentially). This also gives Jonah the memories of the individual she ingests, through their genetic memory. There is also a Military Priest that is de-synced with time that is capable of limited omniscience over an 800-year period. There is also a man kept alive inside a robotic coffin on a planet where the managing artificial intelligence has gone insane. There are a lot of other things going on too.
One problem is that Hybrid Child gives few of the baseline rules you would need to understand how this fictional universe works. For example, we spend the most time with Jonah, but her operation is a mystery throughout the book; she is initially presented as in desperate need of food, but other characters make clear that she has an internal power source that will keep her alive almost indefinitely. She can absorb memories through consuming organic samples in a way with no scientific basis, but I can ignore that. Her bodily transformations apparently don’t follow the law of conservation of mass. She seems to have pre-programmed beliefs about both social interactions and also religion to some degree, but we are never told how these came about or what those beliefs are. This is our protagonist, but Ōhara doesn’t give enough information to understand her. I don’t need or want to be spoon-fed this information, but all too often it isn’t presented at all or not until long after it should have been.
Likewise, this book does not spend much effort laying out the factions of this book’s universe: The machine empire is evil and the human military is good, and that’s all the information you get for the large part of Hybrid Child. Technology is also a mystery in this universe, more so than I think Ōhara intended. Hybrid Children are considered cutting edge even over 200 years after they were invented? And, while the technology to keep people alive via robotic coffins exists, apparently almost no one is given access to such technology? I can make up justifications for these things, but the book itself gives little justification—and none of it is satisfying.
The feeling that this world doesn’t make much sense is amplified by the book’s structure. Jonah’s original motivation of “escape” is understandable, but the way that Ōhara goes about depicting this escape is so reliant on coincidence that it’s lazy. At one point Jonah is cornered in a house when an EMP weapon is used, and is only saved because she hides in a coffin made of material that shields against EMP weapons. The coffin is made of this material because the mother of the child in the coffin wanted the coffin made out of the most expensive material available, which is this EMP-proof stuff. Later in her escape Jonah, who has been searching for the DNA of a creature that can travel through space, runs out of a house where she has been hiding for years and that same night finds a meteorite containing the DNA of a creature that can travel through space. Even after the “escape” part of the book is over, the coincidences don’t let up, and Jonah gets out of a cave she’s trapped in by finding the million-year-old DNA of the creature that made the cave. This is not high quality writing.
I’m still undecided, though, on whether the coincidences are better or worse than the lack of structure the book showcases later. After Jonah escapes she doesn’t have a goal so much as a series of loosely defined whims, and, while there are plots going on around her (attempts to repair the insane AI, fighting off a gang leader’s army of child soldiers, etc.), Jonah is not really invested in any of it. She’s still the focus of the story, however, so more than half of Hybrid Child feels like a series of things happening instead of an actual story. The ending is almost a deus ex machina, it screams that Ōhara just wanted to tie everything up as quickly as possible.
Another thing, there are segments of this book depicting torture, rape, and murder, with pages depicting the violent deaths of different children, and I’m left unable to think of a way in which they contribute to the story. Ōhara seems to have been going for shock value, stuffing the book with superfluous gore.
I have no idea what ideas, if any, Ōhara was trying to convey about religion in Hybrid Child. There are a ton of overt Christian references in the text, and of course Jonah’s actions of eating flesh and then transforming into the individual (often long-dead) immediately brings to mind the Eucharist and the Resurrection. But Hybrid Child does not seem to be saying anything about the Christian faith. To the extent it is depicted, the Military Priest doesn’t appear to practice Christianity, but a cult of worship based around himself without ties to the bible. The Christian names and references appear to be nothing more than an aesthetic that Ōhara chose. In terms of religion more generally, Hybrid Child discusses love, caring, and peace, in ways that are nondenominational and none too deep.
So the book has problems with world building, structure, it’s unclear that it has anything to say, and the ideas it contains are not explored in satisfying ways (you want a book about absorbing a different consciousness and struggling for control, read Vacuum Flowers or the Book of the New Sun). Why was it translated in 2018, especially so long after its 1990 publication such that some of it has already aged poorly (the e-reader discussion was unbearable)? I suspect a big part of the decision was that Hybrid Child checks a lot of boxes as to what people expect from Japanese media. There’s a little girl protagonist, it has hyper-violent action scenes, there’s even a fight between giant robots. You can draw parallels between pieces of this book and a plethora of different Japanese movies and anime. Now that I’m thinking about it, even the Christian aesthetic without any insight into Christianity is familiarly Japanese (see Neon Genesis Evangelion). Something being paradigmatic is not the same as something being good, however. I’m always happy to see foreign science fiction getting translated, and I’m glad to see the University of Minnesota Press has started a series of English translations of Japanese sci-fi. I can’t recommend Hybrid Child, though, it has a lot of problems that significantly undercut the strength of the work in a variety of different ways, and I ultimately did not find it to be a satisfying book. On the plus side, the translation seemed good. 2/5.
First, the premise: our main character, who eventually goes by the name of Jonah, is a cyber-organic weapon designed to fight a robot empire, with the ability to transform its body into the form of organisms it samples (by eating them, essentially). This also gives Jonah the memories of the individual she ingests, through their genetic memory. There is also a Military Priest that is de-synced with time that is capable of limited omniscience over an 800-year period. There is also a man kept alive inside a robotic coffin on a planet where the managing artificial intelligence has gone insane. There are a lot of other things going on too.
One problem is that Hybrid Child gives few of the baseline rules you would need to understand how this fictional universe works. For example, we spend the most time with Jonah, but her operation is a mystery throughout the book; she is initially presented as in desperate need of food, but other characters make clear that she has an internal power source that will keep her alive almost indefinitely. She can absorb memories through consuming organic samples in a way with no scientific basis, but I can ignore that. Her bodily transformations apparently don’t follow the law of conservation of mass. She seems to have pre-programmed beliefs about both social interactions and also religion to some degree, but we are never told how these came about or what those beliefs are. This is our protagonist, but Ōhara doesn’t give enough information to understand her. I don’t need or want to be spoon-fed this information, but all too often it isn’t presented at all or not until long after it should have been.
Likewise, this book does not spend much effort laying out the factions of this book’s universe: The machine empire is evil and the human military is good, and that’s all the information you get for the large part of Hybrid Child. Technology is also a mystery in this universe, more so than I think Ōhara intended. Hybrid Children are considered cutting edge even over 200 years after they were invented? And, while the technology to keep people alive via robotic coffins exists, apparently almost no one is given access to such technology? I can make up justifications for these things, but the book itself gives little justification—and none of it is satisfying.
The feeling that this world doesn’t make much sense is amplified by the book’s structure. Jonah’s original motivation of “escape” is understandable, but the way that Ōhara goes about depicting this escape is so reliant on coincidence that it’s lazy. At one point Jonah is cornered in a house when an EMP weapon is used, and is only saved because she hides in a coffin made of material that shields against EMP weapons. The coffin is made of this material because the mother of the child in the coffin wanted the coffin made out of the most expensive material available, which is this EMP-proof stuff. Later in her escape Jonah, who has been searching for the DNA of a creature that can travel through space, runs out of a house where she has been hiding for years and that same night finds a meteorite containing the DNA of a creature that can travel through space. Even after the “escape” part of the book is over, the coincidences don’t let up, and Jonah gets out of a cave she’s trapped in by finding the million-year-old DNA of the creature that made the cave. This is not high quality writing.
I’m still undecided, though, on whether the coincidences are better or worse than the lack of structure the book showcases later. After Jonah escapes she doesn’t have a goal so much as a series of loosely defined whims, and, while there are plots going on around her (attempts to repair the insane AI, fighting off a gang leader’s army of child soldiers, etc.), Jonah is not really invested in any of it. She’s still the focus of the story, however, so more than half of Hybrid Child feels like a series of things happening instead of an actual story. The ending is almost a deus ex machina, it screams that Ōhara just wanted to tie everything up as quickly as possible.
Another thing, there are segments of this book depicting torture, rape, and murder, with pages depicting the violent deaths of different children, and I’m left unable to think of a way in which they contribute to the story. Ōhara seems to have been going for shock value, stuffing the book with superfluous gore.
I have no idea what ideas, if any, Ōhara was trying to convey about religion in Hybrid Child. There are a ton of overt Christian references in the text, and of course Jonah’s actions of eating flesh and then transforming into the individual (often long-dead) immediately brings to mind the Eucharist and the Resurrection. But Hybrid Child does not seem to be saying anything about the Christian faith. To the extent it is depicted, the Military Priest doesn’t appear to practice Christianity, but a cult of worship based around himself without ties to the bible. The Christian names and references appear to be nothing more than an aesthetic that Ōhara chose. In terms of religion more generally, Hybrid Child discusses love, caring, and peace, in ways that are nondenominational and none too deep.
So the book has problems with world building, structure, it’s unclear that it has anything to say, and the ideas it contains are not explored in satisfying ways (you want a book about absorbing a different consciousness and struggling for control, read Vacuum Flowers or the Book of the New Sun). Why was it translated in 2018, especially so long after its 1990 publication such that some of it has already aged poorly (the e-reader discussion was unbearable)? I suspect a big part of the decision was that Hybrid Child checks a lot of boxes as to what people expect from Japanese media. There’s a little girl protagonist, it has hyper-violent action scenes, there’s even a fight between giant robots. You can draw parallels between pieces of this book and a plethora of different Japanese movies and anime. Now that I’m thinking about it, even the Christian aesthetic without any insight into Christianity is familiarly Japanese (see Neon Genesis Evangelion). Something being paradigmatic is not the same as something being good, however. I’m always happy to see foreign science fiction getting translated, and I’m glad to see the University of Minnesota Press has started a series of English translations of Japanese sci-fi. I can’t recommend Hybrid Child, though, it has a lot of problems that significantly undercut the strength of the work in a variety of different ways, and I ultimately did not find it to be a satisfying book. On the plus side, the translation seemed good. 2/5.
October 30, 2018
A timely piece of feminist speculative fiction -- a translation to preserves its narrative and formal experimentation. Great to see it out with UMinnesota's Parallel Futures series which explores JSciFi's play with temporal disjunction and non-linear plot and development. It's a trip to read (at times frustrating), but its implications for our current political climate are striking. Glad to see this work from 1990 getting its due.
April 12, 2025
This book was a mind fuck and a half. The vibes reading this are so hard to capture, so I offer a dream I had in the wake of the first 100 pages:
I killed something last night: An animal that descended upon my dream. I–the dreamer–stood and saw as it flitted through the sky. Citizens of the dream scene, oblivious to the thing that sampled the pH of my brain, the time of the REM cycle. Adjusting its movements to the FPS of my BMP. I saw how it became an animal. Visceral, the frilly membrane cresting its spine and leathery hairy body are permanent. It sank its feelers past my dreaming eyes and reached inwards to populate its will to pillage within its host. A dream parasite.
But humans have evolved to recognize threats. My stomach descends to the ocean floor and spots the leviathan. Dreams tell a story, even dreams of horror or anxiety–born or constructed from the terror of understanding beyond walls of consciousness. I don’t know how this intruder got in: where the crack lies. The citizens playing their roles are spared its descent, but not the abject horror seeping into my eyes and into our brain. The dreamer is the father and stranger and family who are called to attention in my yard.
The New Dream Species begins its charade and all of us and me face toward it to watch. I need it gone and dead but I’m not sure how. I just cut a knife through it as many times as I can. In a dream, in this scene in my yard, physical movements made based on intent rather than whimsy are made heavy and sluggish. So I allocate many hands to holding the imposter down. There is no sensation of touch despite the rubbery texture of meat beneath the blood. Hands slip on the red, grasping to separate the chunks, drowning in the fat that spills out, everything frothing around us. It cannot reform in this state, a sentiment I inherently know.
Stabbing lionfish to stack on a spear. Dissolving a Hammerhead slug. I cannot let it live so I dedicate this dream to violence. A sacrifice to not let it follow me when I awake.
Now for my actual review (contains minor spoilers):
The best way to decipher this novel I found, is to internalize everything as a metaphor. In the case of Jonah and her mother, birthing, killing, and consuming represent the cycle of abuse and mommy issues. There is a whole literature, psychologically and in the literary canon, that dissects these themes of Motherhood. Not always to this extreme, but many girls grow up resenting their mother only to discover one day that they have become her. To me, the section where Jonah becomes self-conscious of her weight (and shed of girlhood) echoes the early compulsions of the original mother Jonah. The binge eating habits, starvation, and mental obsession regarding birth that are ingrained into Sample B #3’s requirements for existence are a good host for the trauma human mother Jonah and human girl Jonah lived.
The writing style reminds me of Slaughterhouse-Five, even before reading the chapter introducing the Military Priest's perspective. The way in which time is explained in the narration, D.H.'s son saving his father before he was born, Jonah traveling 200 years or so in space within a few pages, is never quite linear. I found it interesting to compare the similarities between the works as both deal with themes of identity, war, trauma, etc.
Overall, I enjoyed certain stylistic components of the novel: the writing style, the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimeyness, the unique method of dialogue, the horrible creations of technology, life, and the breach between the two. However, I felt that, at times, the trauma brought to these characters yielded no further purpose in the narrative. All that I could do as a reader was process that yep, Jonah (all incarnations) suffered greatly and that the issues in real life that they stemmed from indeed sucked. For a novel that was so character-driven, the ending also felt quite out of style to suddenly abandon that (even without addressing the cliche tree-of-life trope). Maybe that was the point, but it remains at odds with the stylistic choices the novel has already dedicated itself to. The Minecraft “End Poem” did the whole “and the universe said I love you” bit better.
I killed something last night: An animal that descended upon my dream. I–the dreamer–stood and saw as it flitted through the sky. Citizens of the dream scene, oblivious to the thing that sampled the pH of my brain, the time of the REM cycle. Adjusting its movements to the FPS of my BMP. I saw how it became an animal. Visceral, the frilly membrane cresting its spine and leathery hairy body are permanent. It sank its feelers past my dreaming eyes and reached inwards to populate its will to pillage within its host. A dream parasite.
But humans have evolved to recognize threats. My stomach descends to the ocean floor and spots the leviathan. Dreams tell a story, even dreams of horror or anxiety–born or constructed from the terror of understanding beyond walls of consciousness. I don’t know how this intruder got in: where the crack lies. The citizens playing their roles are spared its descent, but not the abject horror seeping into my eyes and into our brain. The dreamer is the father and stranger and family who are called to attention in my yard.
The New Dream Species begins its charade and all of us and me face toward it to watch. I need it gone and dead but I’m not sure how. I just cut a knife through it as many times as I can. In a dream, in this scene in my yard, physical movements made based on intent rather than whimsy are made heavy and sluggish. So I allocate many hands to holding the imposter down. There is no sensation of touch despite the rubbery texture of meat beneath the blood. Hands slip on the red, grasping to separate the chunks, drowning in the fat that spills out, everything frothing around us. It cannot reform in this state, a sentiment I inherently know.
Stabbing lionfish to stack on a spear. Dissolving a Hammerhead slug. I cannot let it live so I dedicate this dream to violence. A sacrifice to not let it follow me when I awake.
Now for my actual review (contains minor spoilers):
The best way to decipher this novel I found, is to internalize everything as a metaphor. In the case of Jonah and her mother, birthing, killing, and consuming represent the cycle of abuse and mommy issues. There is a whole literature, psychologically and in the literary canon, that dissects these themes of Motherhood. Not always to this extreme, but many girls grow up resenting their mother only to discover one day that they have become her. To me, the section where Jonah becomes self-conscious of her weight (and shed of girlhood) echoes the early compulsions of the original mother Jonah. The binge eating habits, starvation, and mental obsession regarding birth that are ingrained into Sample B #3’s requirements for existence are a good host for the trauma human mother Jonah and human girl Jonah lived.
The writing style reminds me of Slaughterhouse-Five, even before reading the chapter introducing the Military Priest's perspective. The way in which time is explained in the narration, D.H.'s son saving his father before he was born, Jonah traveling 200 years or so in space within a few pages, is never quite linear. I found it interesting to compare the similarities between the works as both deal with themes of identity, war, trauma, etc.
Overall, I enjoyed certain stylistic components of the novel: the writing style, the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimeyness, the unique method of dialogue, the horrible creations of technology, life, and the breach between the two. However, I felt that, at times, the trauma brought to these characters yielded no further purpose in the narrative. All that I could do as a reader was process that yep, Jonah (all incarnations) suffered greatly and that the issues in real life that they stemmed from indeed sucked. For a novel that was so character-driven, the ending also felt quite out of style to suddenly abandon that (even without addressing the cliche tree-of-life trope). Maybe that was the point, but it remains at odds with the stylistic choices the novel has already dedicated itself to. The Minecraft “End Poem” did the whole “and the universe said I love you” bit better.
August 10, 2019
This is a weird one. Wild mix of big ideas, AI, Christian mysticism and some sadly ropy 1950s-style SF. Full--too full--of ideas. Every time I'm about to give up on it, some strange and intriguing thing surprises me and gets me back in. A bit of a dog's breakfast. Wonderful cover, though.
Read
January 11, 2019Really one of the best books in the speculative fiction/fantasy genre. And the only one that I've read that I could really classify as a truly feminist work. The characters are all incredibly and poignantly developed. The pace is perfect throughout. It functions well on both a literal and figurative level. I really just can't say enough good things about it. 100% recommend to everyone, even people that normally shy away from science fiction/speculative fiction/fantasy
January 15, 2020
Anyone who has an interest in literature knows the running joke of the most clichéd opening line an author can use, "It was a dark and stormy night." Imagine my dread when Mariko Ohara opens her novel with the line "Acid rain fell from the sky. Rain like a woman's long black hair." However, one should never trust their first impressions and I decided to give this novel a chance. Well, within 22 pages Ohara spews forward an exposition dump that basically explains our most interesting character's entire backstory, removing any sense of mystery from the plot, and also manages to introduce time travel, the bane of any story that plans on making sense. The book in it's entirety was a disappointment for me considering how interesting it's opening premise was. Our protagonist, a shape shifting android named Sample B #3, is on the run after escaping from the military that created him. Starving and desperate he happens along a desolate mansion whose eccentric owner takes pity on him and offers shelter and food. To his surprise that mansion is run by an intelligent A.I., who suspects him of having hidden motives but who itself seems to be hiding a secret from this unwanted intruder. As the novel wears on all three characters are locked into the mansion, simultaneously trying to hide something from each other while teasing out the secrets of their past. I personally think an entire novel could have been created just from these three characters and one location. Ohara completely misses her mark by exposition dumping their backstories within the first 50 pages and instead of providing us with rich characters, people we can relate to, she forgets about them and begins spewing out an endless string of locations, characters, and plot points. It feels like she's trying to talk as fast as possible, with so many different "ideas", trying to make us forget how empty her world is. It gave me the same vibes as Blaise Cendrars "Moravagine", an endless wave of descriptions and plot points just vague enough to avoid actually putting together a cohesive story. It feels like they're trying to write something deep and meaningful, but it's like they're trying too hard, creating an imitation of a greater work, and the result is as deep as a puddle. Sure, the world is interesting, Ohara excels at writing varied descriptions of otherwordly animals and machines, but what's the point of creating a living world if all the characters in it are basically dead.
I'm not adverse to descriptions of violence and gore in literature and Ohara really seems to delight herself in writing scenes of blood, death, torture and rape. I honestly assumed this book was for the young adult crowd and was shocked at the almost exhibitionist feel the descriptions of violence and killing had. I'm gonna include some quotes here as an example of what I mean and, I guess as a warning before reading, this stuff is shocking:
"First I'm gonna stick this in there. Then I'm gonna tear out all that long black hair, and I'm gonna take your scalp along with it. And then, just when you think you can't take the pain anymore, I'm gonna cut off your feet so you can't run away. I'm gonna break both your shoulders, tie your hands behind your back and hang you up by your wrists. I'm gonna watch the blood running down from your head and from your lopped-off ankles, and I'm gonna enjoy it. And since I'm such a nice guy, I'm gonna stay by your side till you die..........Dreyfus started at the bloody monster. It began to crawl, trying to escape, its bald head gleaming red. Dreyfus immediately chopped off its feet with the electric saw that was built into his own arm. Blood spurted out like water spraying out of a hose."
"Testing to see if it was ready, he accidentally fell into in. The water whose temperature should have been controlled automatically, was scalding hot. The boy shrieked hoarsely at first, but was quickly silenced as his skin began to peel off. The boiling heat quickly penetrated deep into his skin, melting it down to oozing blisters. The scorched flesh burst open, and bundles of blood vessels came splattering out. The boy, boiled beet red, floated softly in the bathtub. Milagros had failed to identify and judge the appropriate temperature."
"All the high-rise buildings had been getting taller and taller at that time, and every day buildings were under construction for additional stories. As soon as the elevator door opened, the girl happily rushed out. She floundered, swimming in midair. Pulled by gravity, her body plummeted down. She hit the ground with a splat, squashed in a melange of brightly colored blood and soft meat."
As a reader, the number descriptions of violence in this novel made me feel like I was going crazy. Characters in this novel live, act, kill and die for seemingly no reason. You can't even sympathize with their deaths because of how two-dimensional they are. The people they kill and the sacrifices they make don't even lead to a conclusion of the plot, it all felt so pointless. The novel does not have a satisfying conclusion, any interesting plot points are ignored in favor of seemingly senseless violence and suffering.
On a technical level, I found a lot of lines in this work to be cringe, I'll highlight an example at the end of this paragraph. In Ohara's defense this may just be the result of translation and things not carrying over in english. The plot doubles back on itself, because of the time travel, and makes the narrative needlessly complicated and just makes the journey to the disappointing conclusion longer. Characters also have a habit of repeating themselves, or having flashbacks, which is pointless in a story that's little more than 300 pages. Ohara should have had faith that readers could remember what was going on in her story, or maybe she was just reminding herself that these people were supposed to have backstories and character arcs. It definitely scores points for creativity and concept design but overall, I don't think I'd recommend Hybrid Child to anyone.
"Mama never dared to strop me naked. She knew that the sheen of my flawless skin would overwhelm the whole space. I was beautiful. I looked like a pearl, bathed in dazzling light. From the moment I was born, I exuded a radiant aura. I was also sensitive to beauty. I possessed a wild, primitive sense of discernment when it came to distinguishing between was beautiful and what was not."
Is this supposed to be Ohara's self insert? lol
I'm not adverse to descriptions of violence and gore in literature and Ohara really seems to delight herself in writing scenes of blood, death, torture and rape. I honestly assumed this book was for the young adult crowd and was shocked at the almost exhibitionist feel the descriptions of violence and killing had. I'm gonna include some quotes here as an example of what I mean and, I guess as a warning before reading, this stuff is shocking:
"First I'm gonna stick this in there. Then I'm gonna tear out all that long black hair, and I'm gonna take your scalp along with it. And then, just when you think you can't take the pain anymore, I'm gonna cut off your feet so you can't run away. I'm gonna break both your shoulders, tie your hands behind your back and hang you up by your wrists. I'm gonna watch the blood running down from your head and from your lopped-off ankles, and I'm gonna enjoy it. And since I'm such a nice guy, I'm gonna stay by your side till you die..........Dreyfus started at the bloody monster. It began to crawl, trying to escape, its bald head gleaming red. Dreyfus immediately chopped off its feet with the electric saw that was built into his own arm. Blood spurted out like water spraying out of a hose."
"Testing to see if it was ready, he accidentally fell into in. The water whose temperature should have been controlled automatically, was scalding hot. The boy shrieked hoarsely at first, but was quickly silenced as his skin began to peel off. The boiling heat quickly penetrated deep into his skin, melting it down to oozing blisters. The scorched flesh burst open, and bundles of blood vessels came splattering out. The boy, boiled beet red, floated softly in the bathtub. Milagros had failed to identify and judge the appropriate temperature."
"All the high-rise buildings had been getting taller and taller at that time, and every day buildings were under construction for additional stories. As soon as the elevator door opened, the girl happily rushed out. She floundered, swimming in midair. Pulled by gravity, her body plummeted down. She hit the ground with a splat, squashed in a melange of brightly colored blood and soft meat."
As a reader, the number descriptions of violence in this novel made me feel like I was going crazy. Characters in this novel live, act, kill and die for seemingly no reason. You can't even sympathize with their deaths because of how two-dimensional they are. The people they kill and the sacrifices they make don't even lead to a conclusion of the plot, it all felt so pointless. The novel does not have a satisfying conclusion, any interesting plot points are ignored in favor of seemingly senseless violence and suffering.
On a technical level, I found a lot of lines in this work to be cringe, I'll highlight an example at the end of this paragraph. In Ohara's defense this may just be the result of translation and things not carrying over in english. The plot doubles back on itself, because of the time travel, and makes the narrative needlessly complicated and just makes the journey to the disappointing conclusion longer. Characters also have a habit of repeating themselves, or having flashbacks, which is pointless in a story that's little more than 300 pages. Ohara should have had faith that readers could remember what was going on in her story, or maybe she was just reminding herself that these people were supposed to have backstories and character arcs. It definitely scores points for creativity and concept design but overall, I don't think I'd recommend Hybrid Child to anyone.
"Mama never dared to strop me naked. She knew that the sheen of my flawless skin would overwhelm the whole space. I was beautiful. I looked like a pearl, bathed in dazzling light. From the moment I was born, I exuded a radiant aura. I was also sensitive to beauty. I possessed a wild, primitive sense of discernment when it came to distinguishing between was beautiful and what was not."
Is this supposed to be Ohara's self insert? lol
December 22, 2019
This was a dense and intense read but honestly what else could you expect from a Seiun Award novel? I suspect that the difficulty comes not from the translation; this is just a harder book to grasp and takes a lot of focus.
”You’re not ordinary, are you?” said Shiver.
“Look who’s talking,” answered the girl.
I really enjoyed the concepts this novel displays and develops, with such great themes on motherhood, religion, and empathy. It’s also incredibly feminist (which is cool for something originally published in 1990). The surreal world that Ōhara exposes through the book is one I find myself wanting to know even more about and I think this would be interesting to reread later in life.
Jonah/#3 as a character kept me entranced by the story and following her hundreds-of-years journey. Her unabashed interest in everything around her and the intense desire to understand was relatable and mirrored a lot of my own feelings about the world around me. By the end of it all I felt the same protective feelings like I didn’t want to let her go, similar to her own Mama.
It was cool, and weird, and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. I’m so glad it was translated, as otherwise I’d have never gotten an opportunity to experience this wild ride of a book!
”You’re not ordinary, are you?” said Shiver.
“Look who’s talking,” answered the girl.
I really enjoyed the concepts this novel displays and develops, with such great themes on motherhood, religion, and empathy. It’s also incredibly feminist (which is cool for something originally published in 1990). The surreal world that Ōhara exposes through the book is one I find myself wanting to know even more about and I think this would be interesting to reread later in life.
Jonah/#3 as a character kept me entranced by the story and following her hundreds-of-years journey. Her unabashed interest in everything around her and the intense desire to understand was relatable and mirrored a lot of my own feelings about the world around me. By the end of it all I felt the same protective feelings like I didn’t want to let her go, similar to her own Mama.
It was cool, and weird, and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. I’m so glad it was translated, as otherwise I’d have never gotten an opportunity to experience this wild ride of a book!
February 17, 2019
Es difícil encontrar ciencia ficción sober inteligencia artificial que sea complements novedosa, pero detrás de los clichés (y siendo justos, el libro se mantiene relevante a pesar de tantos años) aquí se encuentra una historia emotiva que explora ideas más allá de las que suelen asociarse al tema. Además de tratar sobre la relación de los humanos con las máquinas, de lo que significa estar vivo, del razonamiento y la inteligencia, toca temas como nuestra relación con la muerte, la soledad, la identidad, la naturaleza y las estructuras sociales.
Es un libro un tanto caótico, que demanda atención y paga con una prosa interesante y decisiones atrevidas. Quizá más explícito de lo que me habría gustado, es unaperspectiva interesante del tema.
Es un libro un tanto caótico, que demanda atención y paga con una prosa interesante y decisiones atrevidas. Quizá más explícito de lo que me habría gustado, es unaperspectiva interesante del tema.
Read
February 10, 2024Este libro fue todo un viaje, tanto en el sentido literal como en el figurativo.
Se nos presenta al protagonista que es un híbrido entre un ser orgánico y robótico, que al comer a otros seres adquiere su forma y recuerdos, él fue creado junto con otras 13 unidades para apoyar a los humanos en su guerra contra una raza alienígena (o algo así). Este híbrido, conocido como B#3 escapa del ejército y se transforma en una mascota exótica que más adelante es encontrado por una extraña escritora, que en el pasado mató a su hija, Jonah. El espíritu de la niña poseyó la casa donde la señora vive actualmente, pero la escritora cree que la casa es controlada por un IA integrada con la personalidad de Jonah.
En algún momento, B#3 se come a Jonah y adquiere su forma, desde ese momento comienza su nueva vida como un nuevo ser conservando el nombre de Jonah, aunque por el miedo de ser atrapada por el ejército, vaga por 200 años en el espacio hasta ser encontrada por un chico que la lleva a un planeta gobernado por una Inteligencia Artificial llamada Milagros.
------------------------------🔸
También hay otros personajes como:
-La comandante DH (Donna Hess), quien se encarga de la misión de atrapar a B#3.
-El sacerdote militar)?, un tipo de 800 años enojado por la traición de B#3 que ordena la remodelación de la unidad B#13 para que vaya tras el traidor. No se dice su nombre más que su cargo, además, conforme envejece su cuerpo rejuvenece a lo Benjamín Button hasta convertirse en un niño invisible que está en búsqueda de un ser de luz (y por lo tanto ser el causante del escape de B#3).
-Shiverer Mouse, quien tiene una extraoa enfermedad y la única de sobrevivir fue metiéndolo a una nave-ataúd donde estará confinado para siempre. Es él quien encuentra a Jonah en el espacio y poco a poco comenzará a surgir sentimientos por ella.
-Lesiah, la mejor amiga de Shiverer Mouse, encontró a un robot enemigo de la guerra de hace siglos, que luego apodó Adi, quien se vio interesado en Milagros, y ella lo ayuda porque los shipea (no, en serio pasa).
------------------------------🔸
Mientras que la trama avanza, salen a flote varios temas interesantes como la maternidad, la religión, paradojas temporales, las relaciones personales, las inteligencias artificiales y la dependencia del ser humano a la tecnología.
Sin embargo, a mi personalmente no me gustó el libro, siento que al tratar de abarcar mucho no logró hacerme conectar con casi nada, de hecho, la forma en la que se exponía la información solo puedo definirla como caótica. El poco sentido que le buscaba se desvanecía al siguiente párrafo cuando agregaban más y más situaciones sin contexto, solo para que más adelante se tratara de explicar (con poco éxito).
Tampoco es que me haya encantado la protagonista, aunque extrañamente me gustó el final, era raro, pero ante todo el alboroto que se armó no me esperaba que acabara de esa forma, a lo Evangelion, solo que en lugar de ser una sopa naranja de conciencias ahora todos son parte de un enorme árbol en el planeta Caritas.
Y Benjamín descubriendo que se estaba buscando a sí mismo, pues si, le puse mentalmente el nombre de Benjamín porque no tenía ni nombre, incluso al híbrido B#13 lo llamaron Daniel Hess pero al niño ningún nombre. Bueno, al final se descubre que todo este tiempo fue el meme de Tom apuntándose con una escopeta, simplemente increíble.
Si les gusta esta clase de historias, adelante, creo que hay personas que sabrán entender y apreciar el mensaje mejor que yo. En fin, me iré con mis nuevos traumas a leer otra cosa que no tenga paradojas temporales ni metáforas raras.
Se nos presenta al protagonista que es un híbrido entre un ser orgánico y robótico, que al comer a otros seres adquiere su forma y recuerdos, él fue creado junto con otras 13 unidades para apoyar a los humanos en su guerra contra una raza alienígena (o algo así). Este híbrido, conocido como B#3 escapa del ejército y se transforma en una mascota exótica que más adelante es encontrado por una extraña escritora, que en el pasado mató a su hija, Jonah. El espíritu de la niña poseyó la casa donde la señora vive actualmente, pero la escritora cree que la casa es controlada por un IA integrada con la personalidad de Jonah.
En algún momento, B#3 se come a Jonah y adquiere su forma, desde ese momento comienza su nueva vida como un nuevo ser conservando el nombre de Jonah, aunque por el miedo de ser atrapada por el ejército, vaga por 200 años en el espacio hasta ser encontrada por un chico que la lleva a un planeta gobernado por una Inteligencia Artificial llamada Milagros.
------------------------------🔸
También hay otros personajes como:
-La comandante DH (Donna Hess), quien se encarga de la misión de atrapar a B#3.
-El sacerdote militar)?, un tipo de 800 años enojado por la traición de B#3 que ordena la remodelación de la unidad B#13 para que vaya tras el traidor. No se dice su nombre más que su cargo, además, conforme envejece su cuerpo rejuvenece a lo Benjamín Button hasta convertirse en un niño invisible que está en búsqueda de un ser de luz (y por lo tanto ser el causante del escape de B#3).
-Shiverer Mouse, quien tiene una extraoa enfermedad y la única de sobrevivir fue metiéndolo a una nave-ataúd donde estará confinado para siempre. Es él quien encuentra a Jonah en el espacio y poco a poco comenzará a surgir sentimientos por ella.
-Lesiah, la mejor amiga de Shiverer Mouse, encontró a un robot enemigo de la guerra de hace siglos, que luego apodó Adi, quien se vio interesado en Milagros, y ella lo ayuda porque los shipea (no, en serio pasa).
------------------------------🔸
Mientras que la trama avanza, salen a flote varios temas interesantes como la maternidad, la religión, paradojas temporales, las relaciones personales, las inteligencias artificiales y la dependencia del ser humano a la tecnología.
Sin embargo, a mi personalmente no me gustó el libro, siento que al tratar de abarcar mucho no logró hacerme conectar con casi nada, de hecho, la forma en la que se exponía la información solo puedo definirla como caótica. El poco sentido que le buscaba se desvanecía al siguiente párrafo cuando agregaban más y más situaciones sin contexto, solo para que más adelante se tratara de explicar (con poco éxito).
Tampoco es que me haya encantado la protagonista, aunque extrañamente me gustó el final, era raro, pero ante todo el alboroto que se armó no me esperaba que acabara de esa forma, a lo Evangelion, solo que en lugar de ser una sopa naranja de conciencias ahora todos son parte de un enorme árbol en el planeta Caritas.
Y Benjamín descubriendo que se estaba buscando a sí mismo, pues si, le puse mentalmente el nombre de Benjamín porque no tenía ni nombre, incluso al híbrido B#13 lo llamaron Daniel Hess pero al niño ningún nombre. Bueno, al final se descubre que todo este tiempo fue el meme de Tom apuntándose con una escopeta, simplemente increíble.
Si les gusta esta clase de historias, adelante, creo que hay personas que sabrán entender y apreciar el mensaje mejor que yo. En fin, me iré con mis nuevos traumas a leer otra cosa que no tenga paradojas temporales ni metáforas raras.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 12, 2021
Première édition et traduction d’un classique de SF des années 90, écrit par une femme (le livre est qualifié de SF féministe mais à prendre avec le contexte). J’ai vu pas mal de critiques négatives sur Goodreads à base de « y’a trop de trucs mêlés et on comprend rien » et : c’est vrai. Personnellement ça ne m’a pas empêché d’apprécier cette lecture, même si j’ai mis plus d’un mois à le lire. J’ai trouvé une esthétique et une ambiance très particulière dans ce roman, qu’habituellement je trouve pas dans la SF en particulier de cette époque. Franchement je sais pas à quel point le livre a eu du succès au Japon et s’il a influencé d’autres œuvres plus connus, ou peut-être y’a une inspiration commune je sais pas. Mais là j’étais dans une phase revisionnage anime SF de la période 90-2000-ish, et entre Ghost in the Shell, Evangelion ou Kaiba, j’avais vraiment des visuels et l’esthétique qui collaient très bien à ce roman. J’y ai retrouvé les mêmes ambiances (et aussi les mêmes failles narratives j’imagine haha) et ça m’a vraiment plut. Cela dit je pense que le livre soûlera beaucoup de personnes donc je le recommande pas les yeux fermés non plus.
April 16, 2024
Crazy book. There is one insanely trigger-warning type scene that would make me never recommend this book to another person. But I think the different mother-child relationships were really well done and made me strangely emotional. I read this like at the speed of light for class but I think in the far future I'd be willing to read it again. Another note though is that this is the kind of science-fiction that is impossible to imagine – like this whole time I was trying to make imagery of the words and it just would not work because it's so extremely unconceivable. Made it fairly difficult to read, but eventually I just stopped trying. Lots of great moments!
Edit after class: Enjoy it a little more now that I get it. It is definitely powerful but the power is hard to access without a professor of Japanese literature there to help me, at least for me! Cool commentary on interaction with the world.
Edit after class: Enjoy it a little more now that I get it. It is definitely powerful but the power is hard to access without a professor of Japanese literature there to help me, at least for me! Cool commentary on interaction with the world.
June 7, 2022
This is probably the weirdest book I have ever read, from the weird family relationships in the first part to the absolutely gruesome descriptions in the second. I would not recommend this for anyone who is squeamish like me. This book left me a bit disgusted by the end and I eventually gave up from the disgusting descriptions and the absolutely brutal lifestyle of one of the characters. Although I gave up reading it I still thought the story was pretty interesting and if it wasn't so damn brutal I would definitely continue it. ""Knowing I won't die is so painful I could die too," answered the girl." This quote shows some of the interesting things about the book, like how lots of people strive to be old but is it really worth living for a lot of time knowing that only more pain comes later and more frequently.
May 9, 2023
I hated so much about this book. The best way to describe this book is : moist. There is just SO much bodily fluid. I thought it was unnecessary. There was also some really grotesque scenes that I did not need to experience ever in my life time.
Despite this, I did find the concept of the story interesting, and it was not so grotesque I didn't finish it - although it was difficult for me to continue reading. If I didn't have to read this for a class I probably wouldn't have finished it. However, I do think it was a new perspective and interesting style of writing that I haven't seen before.
So while I hated it... I can't give it 1 star because it did all the things books are supposed to do. It made me feel something, and I experienced a new style of writing because of it.
Do I recommend it? Well, it's not for the faint of heart.
Despite this, I did find the concept of the story interesting, and it was not so grotesque I didn't finish it - although it was difficult for me to continue reading. If I didn't have to read this for a class I probably wouldn't have finished it. However, I do think it was a new perspective and interesting style of writing that I haven't seen before.
So while I hated it... I can't give it 1 star because it did all the things books are supposed to do. It made me feel something, and I experienced a new style of writing because of it.
Do I recommend it? Well, it's not for the faint of heart.
May 2, 2019
This book won't be for everyone, but I was both challenged and delighted by it. Written in 1990, it is filled with fresh ideas and concepts. Ohara has taken time travel and AI tropes and turned them up to 11. The story, while not entirely experimental in its construction, holds onto just enough of a traditional plot structure to make it all hold together. Honestly, I would have still liked it if it had completely fallen apart structurally, just on its daring and world building alone, but the author manages to pull everything together in the penultimate chapter (the last before the epilogue, so technically the last chapter, I guess).
Be warned, there is extreme violence, gore, and and some sexual violence.
Be warned, there is extreme violence, gore, and and some sexual violence.
January 7, 2020
Hybrid Child is an extremely well written book that suffers from a wide variety of small issues, not the least being plot.
Each character and situation deserves an entire story in its own right, and as a science fiction narrative that deals with themes of identity, sexuality, and death, it doesn't explore any of these in enough depth.
I'll admit this might be an issue with translation, but while I would be open to reading another translator, the melancholy and lyrical beauty of this text makes me believe otherwise.
Hmm. Might also be biased. Not into the "love transcends" genre of science fiction.
Each character and situation deserves an entire story in its own right, and as a science fiction narrative that deals with themes of identity, sexuality, and death, it doesn't explore any of these in enough depth.
I'll admit this might be an issue with translation, but while I would be open to reading another translator, the melancholy and lyrical beauty of this text makes me believe otherwise.
Hmm. Might also be biased. Not into the "love transcends" genre of science fiction.
January 5, 2025
I came here for the immortal AI and I stayed for the... uh...
This book is sci-fi with fairy-tale like qualities. I appreciated the experimental tones at the start - maybe objectively more disjointed than the latter, longer part of the book. But that long part, 'Aquaplanet', had so much going on (AI, something resembling Christianity?, time travel where I can't tell if it all works, a serious mother complex, and something that I feel may be feminism but also: yikes?) that it was a bit of a mess. The story's themes become all over the place, and the characters and their motives lose focus.
This book is sci-fi with fairy-tale like qualities. I appreciated the experimental tones at the start - maybe objectively more disjointed than the latter, longer part of the book. But that long part, 'Aquaplanet', had so much going on (AI, something resembling Christianity?, time travel where I can't tell if it all works, a serious mother complex, and something that I feel may be feminism but also: yikes?) that it was a bit of a mess. The story's themes become all over the place, and the characters and their motives lose focus.
October 11, 2019
This was an odd one!
It felt like reading an anime from the 80's (and I even visualized the story rendered in a very late 80's anime style), a sort of straight-line stream-of-consciousness narrative with large time gaps rather than an arc in a traditional sense. Overall, there were a lot of interesting concepts and themes at play that probably lose a little something in translation, but I enjoyed trying to piece together what the author was trying to impart. Will definitely poke around for takes and opinion pieces parsing this book.
It felt like reading an anime from the 80's (and I even visualized the story rendered in a very late 80's anime style), a sort of straight-line stream-of-consciousness narrative with large time gaps rather than an arc in a traditional sense. Overall, there were a lot of interesting concepts and themes at play that probably lose a little something in translation, but I enjoyed trying to piece together what the author was trying to impart. Will definitely poke around for takes and opinion pieces parsing this book.
January 18, 2022
I am so grateful this book was translated so I could benefit from Ohara’s story telling. From the very start I was enthralled by the use of AI and time distinct from the majority of sci fi I’m used to reading. As I read on i became increasingly appreciative for the way the author connected each character back to the core plot. This book feels unique to me because of its courage to boldly ask life’s hardest questions over and over again from different perspectives coming to varied conclusions.
Read
August 22, 2019I feel slightly bad for giving up on this book, it had some very interesting ideas and it was very easy to forget that this is the translated version of the text. It was interesting to read but I kept being distracted by other books and eventually decided to let this one go back to the public library so that other people could read it and hopefully get all the way to the end.
September 1, 2019
This is one that it hard to rate because its just so dang weird. How do you score something when the imagery is like nothing you've ever seen. So I have 3 comments
a) the reading level of this is super advanced
b) the prose remind me of new weird but is probably not maybe I think
c) I kind of wish it was a studio Ghibli film
a) the reading level of this is super advanced
b) the prose remind me of new weird but is probably not maybe I think
c) I kind of wish it was a studio Ghibli film
March 22, 2021
I can see why readers who particularly enjoy science fiction would like this book. As the first book I've read in the sci fi genre, it was too much. There was so much going on and I cared about none of it. Maybe a more seasoned fan of science fiction would know what to make of this book but I am not this person.
July 29, 2021
Did not expect this book to be so violent, but I'm a gore fiend so I really dug it. If you have an active and vivid imagination and you're grossed out easily, seriously avoid. It also ticks almost every major trigger box. But if you look past that and see the story Ohara crafted it is simply unbelievable. A triumph in storytelling. Easily one of my favorite books of all time.
October 16, 2021
I'm currently about a third of the way through and I feel like I'm reading the physical manifestation of someone's scifi fever dream...
The fever dream is over... That end was unsatisfying, Jonah and everyone just... Dies? What was the point? Nothing seems concluded. I'm very confused. It was bizarre from beginning to end. Not quite in a bad way but not a very good way either.
The fever dream is over... That end was unsatisfying, Jonah and everyone just... Dies? What was the point? Nothing seems concluded. I'm very confused. It was bizarre from beginning to end. Not quite in a bad way but not a very good way either.
May 30, 2023
this was often really disgusting and gory and I would feel sick reading it but it was so beautiful at the end it gave me physical chills. maybe it was that powerful because i had to get through all the awfulness (which was very intentionally awful) at the beginning and maybe that's what the book was all about.
January 4, 2019
A difficult book to read. Not so much a story as a series of ideas tied together with scenes of body horror. There are some very fascinating ideas and interesting characters (so long as you don't demand character development from a novel) but I'm relieved to be able to put this one down.
December 27, 2018
I have the sensation that I have seen or read something really similar before.
In a way it kind of remind of the movie Species but with an inorganic life form (and without the weird arousal of the movie)
In a way it kind of remind of the movie Species but with an inorganic life form (and without the weird arousal of the movie)
September 25, 2018
It would make one heck of a trippy film. Hard to follow in some places, for me. Haha
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