The Secret of Life

by Paul McAuley

In 2026, as a strange, fungus-like organism containing alien DNA begins to grow in the Pacific Ocean, threatening Earth's entire food chain, Dr. Mariella Anders is recruited by NASA to join an expedition to the planet Mars to uncover the secret of the lifeform. 35,000 first printing.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

413 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2001

About the author

Since about 2000, book jackets have given his name as just Paul McAuley.

A biologist by training, UK science fiction author McAuley writes mostly hard science fiction, dealing with themes such as biotechnology, alternate history/alternate reality, and space travel.

McAuley has also used biotechnology and nanotechnology themes in near-future settings.

Since 2001, he has produced several SF-based techno-thrillers such as The Secret of Life, Whole Wide World, and White Devils.

Four Hundred Billion Stars, his first novel, won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1988. Fairyland won the 1996 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 1997 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best SF Novel.

Reviews

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: "A-". A stirring saga of science, Mars, and life, marred by a weak ending, but well-worth your attention.

Paul McAuley's usual topics and tropisms are well-employed in this biotech SF-thriller. In 2026 a Martian microbe, secretly brought back to Earth by a Chinese expedition, is accidentally released into the Pacific during an attempt to steal a sample by Cytex, a powerful but unscrupulous American biotech firm. The Mars-bug thrives, and grows into strange floating islands, which shed 'slicks' that kill terrestrial marine life. The descriptions of this strange alien invader are reminiscent of Ian McDonald's wonderful "Chaga," with a nod to H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. I'm not fully-qualified to judge McCauley's biologic premise (and MacGuffin), which it wouldn't be fair to reveal, but he's done his homework -- I'm weaseling here because of a research lapse I'll mention a bit later, but rest assured his premise is just fine for fiction.

The Americans send an expedition of their own to Mars, hoping to duplicate the Chinese discovery. The expedition scientists include Mariella Anders, our protagonist and a biological genius on the level of a Feynman or an Einstein. Like most geniuses, she is unconventional: Mariella's foibles include body- piercing, soft drugs, and rough sex. This last is used for blackmail by Penn Brown, an odious Cytex scientist also on the Mars expedition.

Mariella is a high point of the book, and McCauley's best character yet, I think. The descriptions of her scientific education and career are full of neat observations and insights -- McAuley is himself a former research scientist -- and her portrayal as a Feynman-level genius is wonderful. A gen-Z greenpunk biogenius -- all right!

The Martian scenes -- about half of the book -- are very fine, strongly reminiscent of Kim Stanley Robinson's RGB Mars trilogy: impeccable (I hope) research and extrapolation, poetic descriptions of alien landscapes, palpable excitement in exploring a new world -- and a sadly-realistic portrait of the techno-squalor around the Martian settlements, comparable to Swanwick's gritty (and great) "Griffins Egg".

When Mariella returns to Earth, on the run with stolen samplesof the 'Chi', the Martian superbug, the story becomes a more conventional -- and less interesting -- pursuit-thriller. I lost track of the cardboard villains and bit-players (I fell asleep), and I wasn't interested enough to go back and sort them out. The dramatic 'climax' is just silly -- Mariella the greenpunk genius as a charismatic crowd-pleaser at a big bioscience conference -- well, my dears, you've been warned, it ain't the high point of the book. McAuley makes a few other stumbles, notably in his Southern Arizona scenes, where he misplaces a mountain range by a hundred miles. And the authorities seem curiously unconcerned about the rapidly-multiplying Martian 'slicks', even as they're ruining fisheries and alarming voters.

The bottom line: The Secret of Life tackles big, meaty issues, it's well-written, and it's fun to read. Even though it's not completely successful, I'd say it's pretty much a must-read for hard-SF and McCauley fans.
[review written 2001, copyedited 2018]

[Debrac2014 · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is just not for me! Too much science that I don't understand.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently read The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun so I was prepared for McAuleys writing style. I'm glad I read those first, because his quirks of writing were less forgivable in this more familiar setting.
Storyline was fascinating and moved right along. EXCEPT when he decided to go overboard on descriptions and info-dumps. Now, you should know that these two things are WHY I read these kinds of books. The fact that I'm complaining about both of them should tell you something!
I'm sure there are geologists with a minor in genetic cellular science with NASA who would be the PERFECT reader for this book but me? Not so much.
The continuous detailed descriptions of the landscape and sky of Mars did a great disservice to the otherwise fascinating large segment of the book. And then he does the most maddening thing by casually mentioning something, some aspect that catches your attention and makes you hope for more but he never mentions it again or simply glosses over it.
Don't get me wrong: I liked this book and I'm willing to forgive a great deal. I intend on reading more of him but I am going to do it with a sigh and a girding of the mental loins.

[Chad M · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first thought when I picked this book up over 14 years ago (yep, I have had it that long) was that it was a self help book with an odd cover (my copy has an orange mountain scene on a black background which is supposed to be Mars). I would have passed it up all together had it not been for the blurbs on the back side from sci-fi greats Stephen Baxter and Greg Bear. After reading the cover flap I realized it was indeed sci-fi and it seemed rather interesting, so I took it home…where it sat on my bookshelf for 14 years. I never read it and in fact the only time I touched it was to box it up when moving or to move it over to make room for new books.

I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was the cover and the title together; they just didn’t mesh well in my mind I suppose. On more than a dozen occasions when packing it up or moving it over I would look at it and wonder why the hell I had it. I would reread the dust jacket flap and think ‘Ok, that sounds interesting. I’ll read it…one day.’ And then put back on the shelf or in the moving box.

Well ‘one day’ has finally come (and gone)….and the verdict is: it was interesting and a good read. Not the best read out there, but good. I gave it 3 stars but I would have like to have given it 3-1/2 stars. Although good, I did have some issues, 3 in fact, that prevented from being a great read worthy of 4 or 5 stars.

The novel is a cross somewhere between Arthur C. Clarke and a Michael Crichton novel. It’s got all the right elements to be amazing and to some it will be, but for me it fell a little short. Here were my dislikes:

My first dislike was the way the prose was written in a present tense style (she says, he feels the air, etc). I never really noticed that the 3rd person is generally written in past tense (he said, she did). You wouldn’t think it would make that much of a difference but for some reason it just didn’t work for me in this story.

The second thing that drove me a little crazy was the over descriptiveness. Holy chalupa batman, this is a work of science fiction not a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez! I’m all for setting a scene and being clear on what’s happening but at some point you need to let the reader engage their own imagination to fill in the blanks. Less is more.

And that’s just on the scenery. Clearly the author is a biologist or is very interested in biology and a quick read of his bio proves I’m correct. His deep explanations of biological mechanisms and reactions are insightful and helpful but again less is more. Several times I thought I might be reading a text book.

Finally my last complaint was the lack of a payoff. A lot happens in this book, I mean a lot. Or at least a lot of traveling, a lot of characters that keep it interesting, and a lot of tension building up. By the time I got to the end I was expecting something…more. I can’t put my finger on it but the end was ok but it just seemed to lack something satisfying.

Overall it was a great read and worth it and very thought provoking. I just happened to start reading this book and half way through NASA announces the discovery of water on Mars. So that made it even more interesting.

I’m going to put it back on the shelf and maybe in another 14 years I will give it another read. Perhaps a much older, and hopefully wiser, me will find it more satisfying.

[Roswitha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t think I needed to read anymore sci fi novels about Mars after Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars and Andy Weir’s The Martian, but somehow, I ended up reading this one, where much – but not all – of the action takes place on the Red Planet. All the Mars books I’ve read are smart, though Robinson overdoes it on the geography, and Paul McAuley shows him why. There’s no need! We get it! McAuley’s plot drives a lot harder without all the endless discussions of land and rock and soil formations. There are plenty of formations here! But the main concern is a lifeform, really sort of a bacteria or maybe an extremophile that the Chinese found on Mars and lied about finding because they wanted to be the only ones to exploit it. This is, of course, the true nature of the “life on Mars” humankind has been hoping for since we figured out there was a Mars. The Chinese lose control of it while competing with an evil American corporation called Cytex, and this collection of spores or RNA string or whatever the hell it is gets tossed into the ocean where it proceeds to replicate like crazy and kill everything!

Enter a sexy, horse-riding cowgirl of a world-famous biologist (I know: it’s kind of an oxymoron; we’re living in anti-scientific times), who gets herself uploaded onto a Mars voyage because she knows in her heart that she’s the only gal who can fix this thing. There’s plenty of adventure here mixed with mind-bogglingly realistic detail which will make you never want to go on a space voyage or land on another planet, ever. The book was published in the early 2000s, and McAuley seems to have a chip on his shoulder where environmental extremists are concerned. He calls them “greens” and is as contemptuous of their anti-scientific fanaticism as he is of the corporate kind. The book is set in the mid-2020s, and from his perspective in time, McAuley is prescient about some forms of technology and wishful about others – we’ve got to get those flying cars sooner or later, right? Here, only the rich have them, which is probably about right. McAuley has the class warfare down and has a lot of people living in green communities and some folks using genetic technology to partly turn themselves into animals. A lot of fauna has been destroyed, but McAuley’s not nearly as freaked out about climate change as we’re all going to be in another six years. But all the science detail makes you feel quite smart reading this. I don’t know why I enjoyed this book as much as I did. But somehow, it was just cool, about good people fighting the good fight, even if they didn’t all agree, and some bad guys end up getting what they deserve, which is quite often a bullet. My sense of McAuley’s point is that what the world needs now is a little more scientific method and a little less zombie certainty.

[Xarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the near-future, this novel brings a lot of interesting and thought-provoking ideas to the storyline. The "good" and "bad" of science, the idea of people desiring a different way of life on their own terms, the slow destruction of Earth and the science to fix it (improperly), and the greed and short sightedness of corporations.

The science in this is really fascinating. The idea of an organism from Mars causing crazy problems on Earth and the rush to find a solution. The adventure from Earth to Mars and back was also fun. Epic as well.

One part that really got to me was the greed and unwillingness of companies to come together, work together, to solve the problem of the "slick." That was aggravating in the sense it showed that these companies cared for no one but their bottom dollar. But it was not at all surprising since it happens now. I see it in my profession as an archaeologist, especially in contract archaeology. Us versus them with, sometimes, little regard for the archaeology itself. As with this book, it shouldn't be about the money so much as about the science and knowledge for everyone.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is now the fourth McAuley novel I've read, and it's the fourth which I felt had an interesting idea but then I didn't enjoy reading the story itself. And it's the last time I will try one of his books.

[Tom Pintong · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you haven't taken a graduate level genetics course, microbiology, or something of the like, you'll be hard-pressed to understand half the stuff that goes on. That being said, even though I have done the former, and taught the latter, it was still kinda heavy reading for 3 in the morning. But I did understand everything, and it actually taught or refreshed a few things in my head. It's a scary look and what might happen in the near future with gene therapy and modification, as well as geopolitical drama and environmental disaster. Interesting story, though the pacing of the story left something to be desired. While the tale may have been as technically accurate as possible, and the machines and techniques of the future explained in great detail, I felt it really bogged down the book at times, and wished the editor had had a heavier hand in cutting out some off the ornamentation of the book. It definitely won't appeal to the general population, at any rate. I found the characters hard to empathize with for a while, and never felt any strong attachments to any, even at the end. But the story in itself is interesting and makes you think about how life really may have originated on this Earth.

[Katie O. · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much science & engineering! Space, bio, social, medical, genetic, physics, and more. Stellar job by McAuley to infuse so much complicated detail into plot-advancing scenes and character-specific beliefs/motivations. Yes, at times the availability of complex and varied resources (esp. on Mars or in remote locales in US and Mexico) seemed unexpectedly robust. Yes, the wide ranging skillsets of individuals seemed to sometimes surpass what even the brightest of minds can do, especially under time and other extreme pressures. With more swagger than many might expect from a lot of STEM nerds. But it never jumps the shark. And the very human themes of caring for each other, managing greed vs. focused progress, and especially, determining how to make truly ethical decisions amid the chaotic process of even well-conducted science make this far-reaching, twisting tale hang together and very engaging to read.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very frustrating book. The 1/4 of the book that takes place on Mars is very good, but the first half and the last quarter of the book ramble, and are filled with dull descriptions, especially of characters we never meet again, or are of little substance. The ending is flat and dull.

There is a huge amount of deep biotech information and specualtion, which I was mostly able to understand, but it doesn’t really advance the plot much.

This would have made a good short story, or even a novella.

I suspect paid-by-the-page publisher interference here.

That said, do read the Mars bit, and some of the following expositions do give a deep insight into the political and social beliefs of the author, many years ago (written in 2000-2001)

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

McAuley is no doubt a gifted author when it comes to writing about science: his physics, chemistry, and biology-oriented passages are lucid and brilliant. But his writing suffers as a whole because of his tendency to delve too deeply into those passages, sometimes to the point of sacrificing valuable pages that should have been spent forwarding the plot. In this particular book I felt he spent far too much time trying to prove the brilliance of his main character (the entire first third of the book), and far too little time talking about what should have been a fascinating sequence: the trip to Mars.

[Chet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author covers a lot of ground in his books and succeeds with it in this book, which explores the possibility of DNA on Mars and the separate efforts of China and a corporation to grab power and money over the discovery of this DNA while an honest scientist (the heroine) and a punk-hippie-like organization in apparent cahoots with Mexico try to free the DNA code for public access. This adventure takes the reader from Earth to Mars and back in a series of exciting escapades.

[Koji Mukai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brilliant in places, tedious in others --- I thought this was a good novel with a flawed ending.

[melancholinary · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's very unfortunate that the amazing science and the spirit of open-source science in this book are overpowered by a very flat storyline. The story is hardly interesting to follow for me - but again the science and concept behind the Chi (which obviously refers to Taoism) is fascinating.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

An action packed sci-fi thriller that is glued together with robust and enthralling scientific concepts. It begins to fall apart a bit at the end though and the ending isn’t as satisfying as it could have been.

[Ben Jefferies · Rating 2 out of 5]

About 150 pages in I couldn’t take any more. The flights of fancy and crazy world-building of other Paul McAulay books I’ve read were completely missing here and the intermittent science info-dumps turned me right off…

[David Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantabulous!!

[Dan Harding · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding.

[Noémie J. Crowley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well.
That was so fucking underwhelming.
The idea ? Pure genius. Panspermia is one of my favourite idea ever and I do not see it used enough in books, it's both so cool and disturbing, I was expecting A LOT from this. Well, mistake numer one, do not expect shit from anyone - I know I shouldn't have.
I get it, McAuley is a biologist and likes his trade - good for him, but this is a work of fiction - would it kill him to give me some plots and characters that are not total jackasses or caricatures ? I would also point out the heavu use of "greens" (derogatory) to refer to eco-activists (who are like SUPER TAME too), and the absolute lack of payoff to all of this. What was the point of this book really ? Don't get it, don't care at this point. Great idea, poor execution, next.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fairly dense read, but I don't mind density when it is about science. This story is about genetic modification and a bacteria genome discovered on Mars. There's some political intrigue as well as some ideology about how scientific research should be conducted. I enjoyed the main character and the author's view of what the future might look like. It was written in the early 2000's and takes place about 2028, so not too far distant from now.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul McAuley mines the life of Richard Feynman thoroughly* for this story of a biologist, Mariella Anders, who is faced by a challenge in biological science that may destroy the Earth, but who also is faced by the difficulties involving the conflicts between science, commerce and politics - for even in the face of a spreading biological invasion devastating the oceans of the Earth, various nations, multinational corporations, and other interest groups are more interested in using the situation to advance their own goals than in fixing the problem. I liked very much the fact that Mariella's devotion to the ethics of science provide her with a guiding light in addressing these issues; though I would have enjoyed it if the book had provided an epilogue showing the new world that Mariella had helped create (the book ends with the world addressing the problem in a better way, but without showing the problem being completely addressed).

*Feynman references
Mariella Anders was involved in a Manhattan Project-like endeavor early in her career, and was known for solving immediately problems that other scientists had been dealing with for weeks.
She was widowed during that project (and wept weeks later when she happened to see something that her late husband would have liked).
She gave a series of undergraduate lectures that became legendary and attracted advanced students and colleagues (even as the undergraduates were left somewhat behind) - and these lectures were collected into red-covered volumes
She played the drums
She frustrated colleagues who came to her with problems they were working on - because she had sometimes solved the problems years earlier and never bothered to publish the results.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Secret of Life is a fascinating adventure through an environmentally dystopian world, through the eyes of a deeply flawed genius. The storytelling is engaging, and most of the characters are ones about whom I wanted to know more rather than less. The basic story is the quest to understand how to deal with an invasive martian bacteria which threatens to choke out earthly life, and along the way we get to see the effects of radical climactic change, people who have altered themselves, and many other strange aberrations.

The book did have a couple of flaws: there were some times when the action felt plot-driven, rather than the plot arising naturally from the characters; additionally, the layout of the story is a puzzle, and I don't think that McAuley provides enough clues to the reader in advance to figure it out. However, these complaints are not huge - the story is still quite enjoyable and easy to read. Recommended.

[Drini Cami · Rating 1 out of 5]

This has to be one of the worst books that I've ever tried to read. I may not be in the place to judge since I couldn't finish it, but I don't believe that the book got much better. The hardest thing to comprehend was that this could have been a fantastic novel (when I read the jacket description, I really wanted to read it!), but "you can never judge a book by its cover." The writing was lazy, and I kept expecting the story to pick up, and then I stopped waiting. The characters were very bizarre, there were too many characters thrown at you, and then they quickly disappeared to be replaced by new ones! I tried to force myself to keep reading, but I just could not. Truly a waste of time. Even if the book gets interesting in the end, it's not worth the horrible beginning.

[Magdelanye · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting to read a book that holds dear many ideas that scare me, most especially genetic engineering. Surprisingly, I found the heroine of this tale entirely likeable, which gave me a grip on the rather convoluted action. The writing was brisk and the dialogue good, but the use of the present tense to delineate time frames was irritating. There was a lot of technical detail and much ethical speculation. The author does succeed, in my opinion, in bringing out several sides of the classic arguements about truth and obligation and the intrinsic worth of science.

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm usually a fan of hard sciecne fiction but The Secret of Life just never caught and sustained my interest. None of the characters really stand out and the complex science that serves as the bedrock of the story, while clearly well researched and within the "what if" traditions of hard science fiction was heavy going. My first go at a book my McAuley who I have good trhings about for years. The Secret of Life was good enough for me totry another of his books when they cross my pasth but not really good enough to heartily recommend.

[seb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me FOREVER to read, but I enjoyed it. It's a what-if about finding life on Mars, and the scientific and political fallout on a near-future Earth. It's obviously written by a scientist who has a lot of knowledge and feelings about academia, politics, genetic engineering, and biology. The science was very cool though very hard for me to understand, and there were huge long sections of basically road-trips through weird radical green colonies in the Western USA. It's clearly very well thought-out, though not very compellingly-written or plotted.

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genetics, space exploration, exobiology, politics... Here's a great book full of suspens and twists and turns bringing up, also, good questions regarding the practices of modern science. Indeed, at the time of genetic engineering and global capitalism, what about scientific discoveries? Whom do they belong to? Science, trade, finance and politics, 'The Secret of Life' has it all.

Some annoying dialogues but, all in all it's a great piece.

[Garyjn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good SciFi novel about an alien origin ocean slick threatening thew Earth's food chain, a mission to Mars to find an answer to said slick, and a noble scientist vs. greedy corporation struggle for control of the mission's findings. Good concepts, sometimes explained in a little too much detail for my non-science mind, causing me to sometimes drift off and have to do some re-reading. Fans of hard SciFi should find it interesting.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good read reminiscent of Carl Sagan's Contact but updated to talk about biology the way that the general focus of research has shifted from physics to biology. It also has great moments when examining academic culture. Lots of action interesting characters and a cool idea about the origin of life and the forces that shape it.

[astaliegurec · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.0 out of 5 stars
No plot, just philosophy
June 23, 2001

I got halfway through Paul J. McAuley's "The Secret of Life" before giving up on it. If you want to read different philosophies of scientific direction and human behavior, this is the book for you. If you want to actually read a story that might entertain, look elsewhere. I rate it at a Pretty Bad 2 stars out of 5.