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CLEWISTON TEST
She was consumed by two passions - her husband and her medical research. Or was it first her work and then her husband? At twenty-eight Anne had made a scientific breakthrough that would be a financial miracle for her employers. But was it safe yet to use the serum on humans? Anne found the answer - after her perfect marriage and her courage had been tested by inward conflict and the politics of power
223 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
1 person is currently reading
133 people want to read
About the author
Kate Wilhelm
275 books444 followersKate Wilhelm’s first short story, “The Pint-Sized Genie” was published in Fantastic Stories in 1956. Her first novel, MORE BITTER THAN DEATH, a mystery, was published in 1963. Over the span of her career, her writing has crossed over the genres of science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy and magical realism, psychological suspense, mimetic, comic, and family sagas, a multimedia stage production, and radio plays. She returned to writing mysteries in 1990 with the acclaimed Charlie Meiklejohn and Constance Leidl Mysteries and the Barbara Holloway series of legal thrillers.
Wilhelm’s works have been adapted for television and movies in numerous countries; her novels and stories have been translated to more than a dozen languages. She has contributed to Quark, Orbit, Magazine of Fantasy and ScienceFiction, Locus, Amazing Stories, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Fantastic, Omni, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Redbook, and Cosmopolitan.
Kate Wilhelm is the widow of acclaimed science fiction author and editor, Damon Knight (1922-2002), with whom she founded the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and the Milford Writers’ Conference, described in her 2005 non-fiction work, STORYTELLER. They lectured together at universities across three continents; Kate has continued to offer interviews, talks, and monthly workshops.
Kate Wilhelm has received two Hugo awards, three Nebulas, as well as Jupiter, Locus, Spotted Owl, Prix Apollo, Kristen Lohman awards, among others. She was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2009, Kate was the recipient of one of the first Solstice Awards presented by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) in recognition of her contributions to the field of science fiction.
Kate’s highly popular Barbara Holloway mysteries, set in Eugene, Oregon, opened with Death Qualified in 1990. Mirror, Mirror, released in 2017, is the series’ 14th novel.
Wilhelm’s works have been adapted for television and movies in numerous countries; her novels and stories have been translated to more than a dozen languages. She has contributed to Quark, Orbit, Magazine of Fantasy and ScienceFiction, Locus, Amazing Stories, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Fantastic, Omni, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Redbook, and Cosmopolitan.
Kate Wilhelm is the widow of acclaimed science fiction author and editor, Damon Knight (1922-2002), with whom she founded the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and the Milford Writers’ Conference, described in her 2005 non-fiction work, STORYTELLER. They lectured together at universities across three continents; Kate has continued to offer interviews, talks, and monthly workshops.
Kate Wilhelm has received two Hugo awards, three Nebulas, as well as Jupiter, Locus, Spotted Owl, Prix Apollo, Kristen Lohman awards, among others. She was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2009, Kate was the recipient of one of the first Solstice Awards presented by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) in recognition of her contributions to the field of science fiction.
Kate’s highly popular Barbara Holloway mysteries, set in Eugene, Oregon, opened with Death Qualified in 1990. Mirror, Mirror, released in 2017, is the series’ 14th novel.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 18, 2015
This may be the most anti climatic book I've ever read. I've read a lot. The amount of weird rapey, yes rapey scenes in this book is appalling and frankly oddly written. Also the homophobic comments make me wonder if the author had repressed sexual desires towards the same sex. I read dime store type novels as a pallet cleanser between non fiction books, now I feel I need a shower and a pallet cleanser from this drivel. On to something better.
September 26, 2024
Ay, caramba! This book was a roller-coaster for me. I was thinking, okay here’s a Kate Wilhelm book that I don’t think is brilliant, but then the last 40 pages which I read tonight…
This is Kate’s 8th novel and the 8th book of hers I’ve read (6 novels and 2 collections). She is an author that if a see a book with her name on it which I don’t have, I will buy it.
So what is this book about? In a nutshell, a pharmaceutical company develops a new pain relief drug. But the book is so much more. I feel it is in part a satire on the pharmaceutical industry. But equally it’s an indictment of the mental health industry, and it’s abuse by people and of people. It also touches on animal rights, possibly unwittingly given when it was written. But it’s primarily a human story of relationships and women’s rights/independence.
The protagonist is Anne Clewiston of the title. She’s a brilliant scientist and the lead researcher in the development of the new drug. The book opens with her recovering from a significant car accident which hospitalised her for weeks. While she’s out of the picture the drug trials on animals are proceeding in the company under various team members and from management pressure to keep moving forward. As Anne recovers sufficiently to restart work, all-be-it from her bed, she has an insight into some additional tests that should be run on the drug, The Clewiston Test. This sets of a whole chain of events that is the book and I’m not going to talk about.
Satire of the pharmaceutical industry – I’m sure you can imagine the sort of business shenaningans that go on. Work faster, back-room meetings, sweep adverse reactions under the carpet, we’ll fix it before it gets to market, etc. All your worst fears about how the industry operates feature here. Is it satire or truism?
Mental health industry – committing people to institutions to keep them quiet. Discrediting people to hide negative opinions. It’s happened in the past and I’m sure it’s happening now. Manipulating and controlling people through attacks on their mental state. An aspect of life covered in this book.
Animal’s rights – the book is cantered around trials on animals from mice and dogs to chimpanzees. And the chimps get names, before being killed and having their brains dissected. Yet Anne won’t keep a cat locked indoors, it’s an animal that needs and deserves its freedom. It’s a dichotomy. I doubt any of the experiments being done in this book would get past an ethics board now-a-days, but back when this book was written this type of experimentation was common. It’s quite disturbing to read in this respect.
Anne is married. Her husband is her research partner and assistant. She is the smarter of pair and it’s commented that he is riding her coat-tails. And yet he is perceived as the driving force behind the drugs development. He will get the accolades and promotions. This is the aspect highlighting women’s plight in society at the time. Their struggle for recognition and independence rather than the subservient chattle of their husbands. The car accident serves as a motivation for Anne to re-evaluate her life, her relationship with her husband, and the expectations of society.
The themes of this book are magnificent and brilliantly intermeshed; however, the minutiae are overdone. One of the strengths of Kate’s writing is her ability to create real and believable charaters through attention to small details. But in this book, I found she carried to detail too far into trivialities that didn’t add to the characterisation and bogged down the story. I was skimming some chunks of scene setting and character backstory. Where a paragraph covered more than half a page, I could skim to get the essence rather than read every word. This was a little disappointing as I’ve previously loved her character vignettes, but here they feel padded.
It's also debatable whether this is SF or a psychological thriller. There is definitely a lot of scien in hera about the drug being developed, but it’s also not that relevant to the story. The story is about people’s reactions and interactions under the stress of developing a new drug. But the side effects of the new drug also mirror what is happening with the people, even though they aren’t using the drug themselves. The boundary between the experiment and the experimenters begins to blur. So it’s not really SF, but also unequivocally SF.
I’ve rabbited on for far longer than I intended, but this book has layers of complexity that I still haven’t even touched on. It’s a book that needs to be read to fully appreciate it.
This is Kate’s 8th novel and the 8th book of hers I’ve read (6 novels and 2 collections). She is an author that if a see a book with her name on it which I don’t have, I will buy it.
So what is this book about? In a nutshell, a pharmaceutical company develops a new pain relief drug. But the book is so much more. I feel it is in part a satire on the pharmaceutical industry. But equally it’s an indictment of the mental health industry, and it’s abuse by people and of people. It also touches on animal rights, possibly unwittingly given when it was written. But it’s primarily a human story of relationships and women’s rights/independence.
The protagonist is Anne Clewiston of the title. She’s a brilliant scientist and the lead researcher in the development of the new drug. The book opens with her recovering from a significant car accident which hospitalised her for weeks. While she’s out of the picture the drug trials on animals are proceeding in the company under various team members and from management pressure to keep moving forward. As Anne recovers sufficiently to restart work, all-be-it from her bed, she has an insight into some additional tests that should be run on the drug, The Clewiston Test. This sets of a whole chain of events that is the book and I’m not going to talk about.
Satire of the pharmaceutical industry – I’m sure you can imagine the sort of business shenaningans that go on. Work faster, back-room meetings, sweep adverse reactions under the carpet, we’ll fix it before it gets to market, etc. All your worst fears about how the industry operates feature here. Is it satire or truism?
Mental health industry – committing people to institutions to keep them quiet. Discrediting people to hide negative opinions. It’s happened in the past and I’m sure it’s happening now. Manipulating and controlling people through attacks on their mental state. An aspect of life covered in this book.
Animal’s rights – the book is cantered around trials on animals from mice and dogs to chimpanzees. And the chimps get names, before being killed and having their brains dissected. Yet Anne won’t keep a cat locked indoors, it’s an animal that needs and deserves its freedom. It’s a dichotomy. I doubt any of the experiments being done in this book would get past an ethics board now-a-days, but back when this book was written this type of experimentation was common. It’s quite disturbing to read in this respect.
Anne is married. Her husband is her research partner and assistant. She is the smarter of pair and it’s commented that he is riding her coat-tails. And yet he is perceived as the driving force behind the drugs development. He will get the accolades and promotions. This is the aspect highlighting women’s plight in society at the time. Their struggle for recognition and independence rather than the subservient chattle of their husbands. The car accident serves as a motivation for Anne to re-evaluate her life, her relationship with her husband, and the expectations of society.
The themes of this book are magnificent and brilliantly intermeshed; however, the minutiae are overdone. One of the strengths of Kate’s writing is her ability to create real and believable charaters through attention to small details. But in this book, I found she carried to detail too far into trivialities that didn’t add to the characterisation and bogged down the story. I was skimming some chunks of scene setting and character backstory. Where a paragraph covered more than half a page, I could skim to get the essence rather than read every word. This was a little disappointing as I’ve previously loved her character vignettes, but here they feel padded.
It's also debatable whether this is SF or a psychological thriller. There is definitely a lot of scien in hera about the drug being developed, but it’s also not that relevant to the story. The story is about people’s reactions and interactions under the stress of developing a new drug. But the side effects of the new drug also mirror what is happening with the people, even though they aren’t using the drug themselves. The boundary between the experiment and the experimenters begins to blur. So it’s not really SF, but also unequivocally SF.
I’ve rabbited on for far longer than I intended, but this book has layers of complexity that I still haven’t even touched on. It’s a book that needs to be read to fully appreciate it.
May 6, 2020
I can't say I liked this book, but it was gripping. It is quite dated with 1970s homophobia and sexism everywhere that make it difficult to read now. The science of the pa factor, which eliminates pain, is interesting as is the pharmaceutical company setting. Anne's agonies are bizarre and confusing. The ending was unsatisfying. She's 28 years old, and supposedly a genius, so she'll recover. I felt terrible for Clark, the husband, who never knew what was going on with her and got dumped.
December 15, 2024
A difficult but powerful and important read. Still, sadly, relevant today. Maybe even more so with the rise in misogyny and machismo.
November 3, 2013
Anne is a young, brilliant scientist working for a farmaceutical company. She has found a revolutionary new drug that has not yet been tested on humans, but after a car accident, she is forced to spend her days in a wheelchair at home. She is frustrated and impatient, but trusts her friends and colleagues to keep her updated until she is able to return to work. Her husband Clark is part of her team, adores Anne and is seemingly content to stay in her shadow. Their marriage seems solid, and there's a lot of talk of their adventurous sex life.
Things take a nasty turn when the chimps in the test group become murderous, and simultaneously the drug is approved for testing on humans. Money and politics make the higher-ups push forward despite the homicidal apes in the lab, and Clark chooses not to mention the problem to his wife.
This could have been a thriller about evil drug companies and crazy scientists, but instead it turns into a chilling account of a marriage gone wrong.
Not what I expected at all. A little dated (published in 1976) and not very subtle, but an interesting read.
Things take a nasty turn when the chimps in the test group become murderous, and simultaneously the drug is approved for testing on humans. Money and politics make the higher-ups push forward despite the homicidal apes in the lab, and Clark chooses not to mention the problem to his wife.
This could have been a thriller about evil drug companies and crazy scientists, but instead it turns into a chilling account of a marriage gone wrong.
Not what I expected at all. A little dated (published in 1976) and not very subtle, but an interesting read.
January 3, 2016
This book only doesn't get a five--because really the writing deserves it--because it isn't the kind of book I will be able to stand to read again and five is the number I save for "all time favorites". It is so well done that the chlostrophbia of it can be almost too much to take. I read it with a stomach ache, and that is a compliment. All hail Kate Wilhelm.
Read
November 26, 2008I just couldn't get into this at the time I started it.
June 19, 2011
I kept waiting for some amazing climax to happen, and it just never did. The story just dragged on and on. Also, the 70's homophobia and sexism-trying-to-play-itself-off-as-feminism got to me.
Want to read
November 13, 2011Stephen King recommended book in Chapter 2 of Berkley's 1983 paperback edition of Danse Macabre.
September 6, 2015
So dated and women's-libby as to be almost unreadable. It's hard to believe that anyone responded to this kind of awkward plotting even back in the day. And basically had no ending.
July 23, 2020
Tiptree shortlist retrospective.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews