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Elysium Cycle #4
Brain Plague
An intelligent microbe race that can live symbiotically in other intelligent beings is colonizing the human race throughout the civilized universe. And each colony of microbes has its own personality, good or bad. In some people the microbes are brain enhancers, but in others they cause a fatal brain plague, a living addiction. Becoming a human carrier, then, is a threatening, potentially deadly fate.
This is the story of Chrysoberyl: one woman’s psychological and moral struggle to adjust to having an ambitious colony of microbes living permanently in her own head. Furthermore, the colonists can talk to her and she to them, producing a kind of internal drama that counterpoints the external action.
This is the story of Chrysoberyl: one woman’s psychological and moral struggle to adjust to having an ambitious colony of microbes living permanently in her own head. Furthermore, the colonists can talk to her and she to them, producing a kind of internal drama that counterpoints the external action.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
13 people are currently reading
656 people want to read
About the author
Joan Slonczewski
35 books197 followersJoan Lyn Slonczewski is an American microbiologist at Kenyon College and a science fiction writer who explores biology and space travel. Her books have twice earned the John W. Campbell award for best science fiction novel: The Highest Frontier (2012) and A Door into Ocean (1987). With John W. Foster she coauthors the textbook, Microbiology: An Evolving Science (W. W. Norton).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
July 15, 2017
Pros: brilliant world-building, fascinating characters, thought-provoking
Cons:
Chrysoberyl of Dolomoth is a pyroscape artist with the Seven Stars. In order to improve her financial and artistic positions she agrees to become a carrier. Carriers play host to sentient microbial symbionts, visible to the host via their optic neuroports. Chrys’ ‘people’, the Eleutherians, call her the God of Mercy, but they don’t always act in her best interests. And there are other strains of micros going around, ones that take over their hosts, turning them into vampires and drug addicts. These hosts eventually travel to the Slave World, a place no one ever returns from.
You’re dropped into this complex world with no explanation, so it takes a few chapters to become familiar with all the terms, characters, and ideas. You do learn about the micros and how being a carrier works along with Chrys, but there’s a lot outside of that to take in: Chrys’ art, elves, sentients, simians, the Underworld, vampires, anti-simian groups, etc. The world is multi-layered and realistically complex.
The characters, both humanoid and micro, are quite fascinating. Chris must learn how to deal with the little people in her head and their demands on her time (for themselves and for the larger micro community as a whole) while also continuing with her own life (her art, lost friends, religious family, learning how to handle money, personal relationships).
The book does… meander a bit. While there are several linear plot threads, there are also a fair number of asides into complementary issues. The author examines different problems associated with being a host, and how different hosts treat their people. It also goes into how the hosts treat each other - both in the carrier community and outside of it. Then there’s the inter-racial problems: simians and physician sentients face discrimination, elves believe their society is perfect and so ignore the real threat one of their members poses everyone, should micros have the same rights as carriers, etc.
I really enjoyed the book. It’s fascinating seeing the different groups interact, and the micros are so much fun.
Cons:
Chrysoberyl of Dolomoth is a pyroscape artist with the Seven Stars. In order to improve her financial and artistic positions she agrees to become a carrier. Carriers play host to sentient microbial symbionts, visible to the host via their optic neuroports. Chrys’ ‘people’, the Eleutherians, call her the God of Mercy, but they don’t always act in her best interests. And there are other strains of micros going around, ones that take over their hosts, turning them into vampires and drug addicts. These hosts eventually travel to the Slave World, a place no one ever returns from.
You’re dropped into this complex world with no explanation, so it takes a few chapters to become familiar with all the terms, characters, and ideas. You do learn about the micros and how being a carrier works along with Chrys, but there’s a lot outside of that to take in: Chrys’ art, elves, sentients, simians, the Underworld, vampires, anti-simian groups, etc. The world is multi-layered and realistically complex.
The characters, both humanoid and micro, are quite fascinating. Chris must learn how to deal with the little people in her head and their demands on her time (for themselves and for the larger micro community as a whole) while also continuing with her own life (her art, lost friends, religious family, learning how to handle money, personal relationships).
The book does… meander a bit. While there are several linear plot threads, there are also a fair number of asides into complementary issues. The author examines different problems associated with being a host, and how different hosts treat their people. It also goes into how the hosts treat each other - both in the carrier community and outside of it. Then there’s the inter-racial problems: simians and physician sentients face discrimination, elves believe their society is perfect and so ignore the real threat one of their members poses everyone, should micros have the same rights as carriers, etc.
I really enjoyed the book. It’s fascinating seeing the different groups interact, and the micros are so much fun.
November 25, 2016
This is a sequel to The Children Star, and another example of "hard SF" focusing on biology rather than physics. It is part of Slonczewski's "Elysium cycle," of which I have only read these two books.
In The Children Star, we discovered the world of Prokaryon, which is inhabited by a race of sentient microscopic organisms. These organisms can inhabit ("infect") larger life forms - including humans. So the first book was about the discovery of the micros and how to deal with them.
The Brain Plague takes place some years later. "Micros" from Prokaryon have spread to other worlds in the Fold, and are now cultivated by select hosts who live in a symbiotic relationship with their micros. People with micros benefit by having an entire intelligent civilization living in their bloodstream. Since micros live much faster than humans, generations live and die in the span of a year. The protagonist of The Brain Plague is a starving artist named Chrysoberl who has come from a poor world to the "big city" of one of Elysium's cosmopolitan worlds. Chrysoberl is selected for an experimental medical treatment, which turns out to be a batch of micros, who transform her art and make her an important artist and architect who is suddenly launched into the Fold's high society.
The most interesting part of The Brain Plague is the relationship between human hosts and their micros, who worship their hosts as gods. Except for the ones who go rogue and instead take over their host bodies. These become known as "vampires," and as the title of the book suggests, there is a lot of intrigue surrounding who's been infected by vampire micros. The class and cultural divisions of the Fold are as interesting as most space operas. There aren't really any aliens (aside from the micros), but this is a far future, post-human world, so besides baseline humans, there are Sentients (AIs with artificial bodies), Sims (evolved ape-like sentients), and Elysians, also known as "Elfs" - evolved, nearly immortal post-humans.
The economic and cultural intrigue provided an interesting plot, and the biochem SF was the main attraction of this book, but I found it considerably less engaging than its predecessor. There was not much mystery about the aliens, as this was not a first contact story, and the latter half of the book became rather mushy with Chrysoberyl's romance with a hunky authority figure who of course gets infected with vampire micros.
A decent SF romp with creative ideas outside the typical space opera.
In The Children Star, we discovered the world of Prokaryon, which is inhabited by a race of sentient microscopic organisms. These organisms can inhabit ("infect") larger life forms - including humans. So the first book was about the discovery of the micros and how to deal with them.
The Brain Plague takes place some years later. "Micros" from Prokaryon have spread to other worlds in the Fold, and are now cultivated by select hosts who live in a symbiotic relationship with their micros. People with micros benefit by having an entire intelligent civilization living in their bloodstream. Since micros live much faster than humans, generations live and die in the span of a year. The protagonist of The Brain Plague is a starving artist named Chrysoberl who has come from a poor world to the "big city" of one of Elysium's cosmopolitan worlds. Chrysoberl is selected for an experimental medical treatment, which turns out to be a batch of micros, who transform her art and make her an important artist and architect who is suddenly launched into the Fold's high society.
The most interesting part of The Brain Plague is the relationship between human hosts and their micros, who worship their hosts as gods. Except for the ones who go rogue and instead take over their host bodies. These become known as "vampires," and as the title of the book suggests, there is a lot of intrigue surrounding who's been infected by vampire micros. The class and cultural divisions of the Fold are as interesting as most space operas. There aren't really any aliens (aside from the micros), but this is a far future, post-human world, so besides baseline humans, there are Sentients (AIs with artificial bodies), Sims (evolved ape-like sentients), and Elysians, also known as "Elfs" - evolved, nearly immortal post-humans.
The economic and cultural intrigue provided an interesting plot, and the biochem SF was the main attraction of this book, but I found it considerably less engaging than its predecessor. There was not much mystery about the aliens, as this was not a first contact story, and the latter half of the book became rather mushy with Chrysoberyl's romance with a hunky authority figure who of course gets infected with vampire micros.
A decent SF romp with creative ideas outside the typical space opera.
March 15, 2011
Brain Plague by Joan Slonczewski is the forth book in the Elysium Cycle Series (the other three are A Door Into Ocean, Daughter of Elysium, and The Children Star) but it is also a stand-alone science fiction novel. In many ways Brain Plague encompasses a treatise on symbiotic relationships between individuals and societies, nanotechnology (with the microbes), artistic creativity, free will and personal responsibility, and what it means to be a god.
On the planet Valedon a struggling artist, Chrysoberyl (Chrys), agrees to be colonized by Eleutherian Micros, an race of intelligent, sentient microbes. The Micros live just beneath the skull, in the arachnoid, a web of tissue between the outer linings of the brain. They communicate with her neurally and live an accelerated life -something like an hour for us is a year to them.
Chrys accepts the Eleutherians Micros originally for better health care and a healthy bank account, as well as protection against the other, plague carrying Micros but soon they are helping her with her art, and serving as collaborators all while living a very accelerated life. Chrys' Micros can be helpful, annoying and rebellious.
While parts of the novel are very intriguing it does become bogged down as Chrys deals with her own rebellious Micros and the ever present and repeated threat of Plague-carrying slaves. Even though I liked the concept of worlds within worlds and enjoyed Brain Plague in many ways, I'm not sure it was entirely successful for me.
The biggest problem I had was the flaw I perceived in communication between humans and their Micros. Chrys and her Micros talked in real time to each other and other carriers but the Micros are supposed to be living a very accelerated life which, logically, makes that communication impossible to accept. Additionally, she would also threaten them with an eclipse (shutting her eyes for a short period of time) but that darkness would already be happening when she slept. I also became very tired of the word "plast." If I were giving numbers, this is a 3.5 -
Highly recommended - as long as you overlook the inconsistencies involving the accelerated time for the Micros. http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/
On the planet Valedon a struggling artist, Chrysoberyl (Chrys), agrees to be colonized by Eleutherian Micros, an race of intelligent, sentient microbes. The Micros live just beneath the skull, in the arachnoid, a web of tissue between the outer linings of the brain. They communicate with her neurally and live an accelerated life -something like an hour for us is a year to them.
Chrys accepts the Eleutherians Micros originally for better health care and a healthy bank account, as well as protection against the other, plague carrying Micros but soon they are helping her with her art, and serving as collaborators all while living a very accelerated life. Chrys' Micros can be helpful, annoying and rebellious.
While parts of the novel are very intriguing it does become bogged down as Chrys deals with her own rebellious Micros and the ever present and repeated threat of Plague-carrying slaves. Even though I liked the concept of worlds within worlds and enjoyed Brain Plague in many ways, I'm not sure it was entirely successful for me.
The biggest problem I had was the flaw I perceived in communication between humans and their Micros. Chrys and her Micros talked in real time to each other and other carriers but the Micros are supposed to be living a very accelerated life which, logically, makes that communication impossible to accept. Additionally, she would also threaten them with an eclipse (shutting her eyes for a short period of time) but that darkness would already be happening when she slept. I also became very tired of the word "plast." If I were giving numbers, this is a 3.5 -
Highly recommended - as long as you overlook the inconsistencies involving the accelerated time for the Micros. http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/
September 19, 2013
Chrysoberl is an artist just barely making her rent when she receives word: the medical experiment she volunteered for is ready for her. To her surprise, instead of a new drug she gets an entire race of microbial people who live inside her brain, patrol her body for ill-health, and worship her as a god. She and the microbial people enter into a tentative detente--she will feed them arsenic and give them light, and they won't turn her into a slave using their ability to manipulate her sensations of pain and pleasure.
This is the fourth and possibly last book in Slonczewski's acclaimed Elysium cycle, a series that spans a number of worlds and hundreds of years, yet never lost its personal touch. Like all of the books, the main character has personal problems and concerns, yet is still involved in a much larger social change or revolution taking place. And like the others, this book features a unique mix of hard sf (Slonczewski is fantastic at using biochem to create realistic aliens and future tech without ever infodumping) with a thoughtful exploration of morality.
This is the fourth and possibly last book in Slonczewski's acclaimed Elysium cycle, a series that spans a number of worlds and hundreds of years, yet never lost its personal touch. Like all of the books, the main character has personal problems and concerns, yet is still involved in a much larger social change or revolution taking place. And like the others, this book features a unique mix of hard sf (Slonczewski is fantastic at using biochem to create realistic aliens and future tech without ever infodumping) with a thoughtful exploration of morality.
August 5, 2009
This is an entertaining read with plenty of interesting developments; however, after reading, teaching, and loving Slonczewski's A Door Into Ocean, which is a careful examination of nonviolence and gender, philosophically interesting as well as carried along by an interesting plot, Brain Plague falls short.
The central character, Chrysoberyl, is an artist who chooses to become a carrier of the "brain plague" (really not a disease but a colony of "micropeople" who live in the brain and communicate with the carrier) in order to help her art. This is a cool premise, one that seems to promise an exploration of what it means to be human, what counts as the self (and the self's creation) when the self is inhabited by other beings, especially if those beings are intelligent and communicative.
But this isn't really what we get in this book. Instead of an exploration of those issues/questions, or even a continuation of the question of the micropeople's intelligence, humanity, or individual rights, a question that was first raised in the previous book of this series (The Children Star), we get an adventure story about Chrys's attempts to survive the transition to being a carrier, her struggle to survive the prejudices of the rest of the world against carriers (seen as plague-ridden and dangerous), and the politics of power among carriers (who tests the others, who carries the dangerous microbes, who is trying to subvert the system, etc.). We also get a bit of romance toward the end, but this doesn't make up for the dearth of philosophical or political insight.
This is not at all a bad book, just, I suppose, not what I had expected. If you have not already read it, I highly recommend Joan Slonczewski's earlier novel set in this universe, A Door Into Ocean. I would also recommend Daughter of Elysium, her second book in this series. The latter two, however, The Children Star and Brain Plague, I could take or leave.
The central character, Chrysoberyl, is an artist who chooses to become a carrier of the "brain plague" (really not a disease but a colony of "micropeople" who live in the brain and communicate with the carrier) in order to help her art. This is a cool premise, one that seems to promise an exploration of what it means to be human, what counts as the self (and the self's creation) when the self is inhabited by other beings, especially if those beings are intelligent and communicative.
But this isn't really what we get in this book. Instead of an exploration of those issues/questions, or even a continuation of the question of the micropeople's intelligence, humanity, or individual rights, a question that was first raised in the previous book of this series (The Children Star), we get an adventure story about Chrys's attempts to survive the transition to being a carrier, her struggle to survive the prejudices of the rest of the world against carriers (seen as plague-ridden and dangerous), and the politics of power among carriers (who tests the others, who carries the dangerous microbes, who is trying to subvert the system, etc.). We also get a bit of romance toward the end, but this doesn't make up for the dearth of philosophical or political insight.
This is not at all a bad book, just, I suppose, not what I had expected. If you have not already read it, I highly recommend Joan Slonczewski's earlier novel set in this universe, A Door Into Ocean. I would also recommend Daughter of Elysium, her second book in this series. The latter two, however, The Children Star and Brain Plague, I could take or leave.
June 6, 2020
Brain Plague by Joan Slonczewski; is science from a psychological 12 step experience. It’s clever but not a easy read the science of the mind is explained for us but if your not a brain surgeon you can still enjoy it you have to accept and understand “The Fold” a collection of worlds that have a loose confederacy of governance for readers of Ms. Slonczewski this is familiar ground the water world of Shora, the Volcanic world of Valedon and others as well as the denizens which is even more complex with a wide pantheon of creatures and the underlining theme of How do we define “Human” rights. SO a very complex backstory that is explained more in detail in other books by this author. Daunting would be the reader who picks this story that marches off into it’s pages blind. For those brave readers they might be surprised in the end because while this doesn’t lack in multiple layers of complexity it’s also first rate science fiction with a core ideal that is mind-blowing. What if your mind contained multitudes? Literally a million individual minds in a co-dependent symboianic relationship to you personally? What if a plague was actually just colonies of micros trying to find a new world in which to survive and pass on it’s future generations? What if you could speak with these inner micros and they view you as a God? What if they learned how to control you by ways of changing your inner body chemistry especially your pleasure producing front cortex? What if the micros offer increase skills and capacities by a factor of a million allowing the host to create Art, concepts, designs, mathematics, and other skills far beyond what normally they were able to accomplish on their own. In other words if our life’s because a fun house of mirrors and we could change perspective could humanity be seen as a virus controlled and contained with a limit to the growth of it’s population it can create and do amazing things but if it seeks it’s own pleasure and starts too over populate it’s environment then take over and control it’s hosts, like how we are doing with our own planetary biosphere then the gods of Olympus are threatened could Adam and Eve and the apple be the basis of a science fiction book?
“Lord of Light”
“I see you, Green. Why have you come?”
“We pray you, give us our Promise World.”
“Every day you come to my eyes to demand a new world. Is it not enough that I saved you from death and sheltered you for seven generations?”
Green remembered that a generation of children grew old in a God’s day. Seven generations in exile; a mere seven days, for the Lord of Light. But in each generation, Green asked again. The Blind God promised us a New World. Let my people go.”
Darkness lengthened. Within the Lord of Light’s great eye waited Green, along with the second priest, Unseen.
“Very well. You shall have your wish. But beware-your New World will be more than you imagine. You are a dangerous people, Green and Unseen. You will reach too far, and your children will die.”
Wow, Religion, Science Fiction, addiction and a killer virus Dang this is a good pandemic read a little much and a whole lot of crazy shit but this is a gem of a science fiction book just a little much for some I recommend reading her other books first “A Door into Ocean” (great to start off with) before attempting this one but if your up for a challenge it’s just 300 pages not that long but thick with symbolism and complexity those who enter might come back different if you make it to the end.
“Lord of Light”
“I see you, Green. Why have you come?”
“We pray you, give us our Promise World.”
“Every day you come to my eyes to demand a new world. Is it not enough that I saved you from death and sheltered you for seven generations?”
Green remembered that a generation of children grew old in a God’s day. Seven generations in exile; a mere seven days, for the Lord of Light. But in each generation, Green asked again. The Blind God promised us a New World. Let my people go.”
Darkness lengthened. Within the Lord of Light’s great eye waited Green, along with the second priest, Unseen.
“Very well. You shall have your wish. But beware-your New World will be more than you imagine. You are a dangerous people, Green and Unseen. You will reach too far, and your children will die.”
Wow, Religion, Science Fiction, addiction and a killer virus Dang this is a good pandemic read a little much and a whole lot of crazy shit but this is a gem of a science fiction book just a little much for some I recommend reading her other books first “A Door into Ocean” (great to start off with) before attempting this one but if your up for a challenge it’s just 300 pages not that long but thick with symbolism and complexity those who enter might come back different if you make it to the end.
May 10, 2012
Oh, how I love Joan Slonczewski and the Door Into Ocean universe! So much so that I somehow got two copies of this from paperbackswap. Ooops. Once I got the second copy in the mail, it was clearly time to start reading one of them.
I believe this is the fourth book in the Elysium Cycle. It takes place soon after The Children Star. Like that book, this one continues to explore what it means to be sentient. Taking place back on Valedon, we follow an artist, Chrys, as Valans struggle to adapt to the influence of the micros from The Children Star. Some, elite members of society flourish with their "microbial enhancers," though they must be kept under close medical (and social) supervision. Ever the danger that they may fall prey to "the brain plague" -- "bad" micros who take over their hosts, keep them strung out, seeking arsenic, rewarded or punished by the neurochemicals the micros control -- ending up as shuffling "vampires" or hijacking ships to take to The Slave World -- the existence of which the Valan government (among others), is trying desperately to find.
Like all Slonczewski's work, this one explores fascinating ideas. The relationship between civilizations and their god, -- the need for genetic and cultural interchange between civilizations. The nature of addiction. Inequity in access to healthcare.
My only complaint of this book? The love scenes. Oh, my dear, sweet Lord, the love scenes. I still don't know what happened in the first of these -- but what I do know? It wasn't sexy. Even though it was a payoff to a relationship I had long been watching and hoping for. Thankfully, these instances are brief and confined to a short section of the novel.
I will continue to recommend Slonczewski's work far and wide. Though I will also continue recommending Door Into Ocean as the first work -- not only because it is the first book of the Elysium Cycle (as far as I know), but also remains, in my mind, the best.
I believe this is the fourth book in the Elysium Cycle. It takes place soon after The Children Star. Like that book, this one continues to explore what it means to be sentient. Taking place back on Valedon, we follow an artist, Chrys, as Valans struggle to adapt to the influence of the micros from The Children Star. Some, elite members of society flourish with their "microbial enhancers," though they must be kept under close medical (and social) supervision. Ever the danger that they may fall prey to "the brain plague" -- "bad" micros who take over their hosts, keep them strung out, seeking arsenic, rewarded or punished by the neurochemicals the micros control -- ending up as shuffling "vampires" or hijacking ships to take to The Slave World -- the existence of which the Valan government (among others), is trying desperately to find.
Like all Slonczewski's work, this one explores fascinating ideas. The relationship between civilizations and their god, -- the need for genetic and cultural interchange between civilizations. The nature of addiction. Inequity in access to healthcare.
My only complaint of this book? The love scenes. Oh, my dear, sweet Lord, the love scenes. I still don't know what happened in the first of these -- but what I do know? It wasn't sexy. Even though it was a payoff to a relationship I had long been watching and hoping for. Thankfully, these instances are brief and confined to a short section of the novel.
I will continue to recommend Slonczewski's work far and wide. Though I will also continue recommending Door Into Ocean as the first work -- not only because it is the first book of the Elysium Cycle (as far as I know), but also remains, in my mind, the best.
December 10, 2021
I got this book from the library and then realized there were three previous books. I decided to read it anyway, and am glad I did. It stands alone nicely, though the previous books would have given me background on the culture and different types of people in it (took me a while to distinguish the elves, simians, sapients, snake eggs, octopods, and who knows what else). But, besides the human protagonist, the main characters were the micros who she'd allowed to colonize her body, specifically the priest/elders who communicated with her. Because their lives go so much faster, they are a rotating cast over the months covered in the book. This is one of the books where the main characters, both human and micro, keep making decisions, and the reader is like, oh noooo, that's not a good thing to do. But that's what makes it a good story.
abandoned
December 18, 2017Letting go of this for now - may come back to it. It isn't grabbing me the way The Children Star did.
December 13, 2014
Right from the start I had problems with this book. It is one of a series of books set in the same universe, but this is the first one that I have read, so I did not understand a lot of the terminology, which the author never really explains, so I was soon puzzled by what was happening at the start. And throughout the book more things happen which are not clearly explained (sometimes referring to events much earlier in the book which we may have forgotten about). One example at p251 is where the main character tells a man to tell her the colour of her eyes, apparently to find out if he is being controlled by malicious microbes. How would this help? We know already that the microbes can understand colour, so I didn't get what this was about, and there is not a word of explanation. Also, the humans are able to communicate with the microbes which they host, and exchange them with other humans, but the methods are glossed-over. And why do the humans mostly have mineral names? Again, no explanation.
Another defect is that there is no real plot, with just a series of episodes which don't often have much to do with each other.
And apart from the main character they all seem to merge into one, and there are a lot of of them, which adds to the confusion. For these reasons there should be a dramatis personae and a glossary of terms.
So a lot of hard work to understand an author who lacks the writing skills to convey a story clearly, demanding a good memory for all the individual characters and the ability to make sense of the vague clues that are given about what is going on. Ultimately, not worth the bother.
Another defect is that there is no real plot, with just a series of episodes which don't often have much to do with each other.
And apart from the main character they all seem to merge into one, and there are a lot of of them, which adds to the confusion. For these reasons there should be a dramatis personae and a glossary of terms.
So a lot of hard work to understand an author who lacks the writing skills to convey a story clearly, demanding a good memory for all the individual characters and the ability to make sense of the vague clues that are given about what is going on. Ultimately, not worth the bother.
April 17, 2013
The Elysium Cycle series is one of the best I've ever read. I mourned the loss of the worlds and societies Slonczewski created when I finished Brain Plague. Start with Door Into Ocean, then Daughters of Elysium, The Children Star, and finally Brain Plague. I can't recommend this series enough!
I put it on the level of Asimov's Foundation series and the Pournelle-Niven Motie Series.
I put it on the level of Asimov's Foundation series and the Pournelle-Niven Motie Series.
July 5, 2016
I read this book last month and I already want to read it again. It is exciting, thought-provoking and like nothing else I have read. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in science fiction or bioethics.
July 21, 2013
Couldn't put it down. Couldn't understand a lot of the science, but loved the fundamental philosophical and ethical questions it raised. And the characters were interesting, and the plot was compelling...really a very fine example of why I love speculative fiction.
June 10, 2015
review of
Joan Slonczewski's Brain Plague
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 9, 2015
I've only read one previous bk by Slonczewski, A Door into Ocean (1986) ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... ). Much to my surprise, I haven't reviewed it - wch means that I read it no later than the middle of 2007: 8 yrs ago! I liked it but I haven't managed to read a single other thing by her in what seems like a rather long ensuing period.
A Door into Ocean was remarkable for its thorough depiction of passive & successful resistance to aggressive imperialism - set in a Science Fiction context. I was impressed by what seemed like the authenticity of the author's engagement w/ such a political position.
Brain Plague (2000) is different. There's a fairly deep non-oversimplifying socio-political sensitivity to it but it's not as much the central content as it is woven into the overall plot fabric. The bk's dedicated "For Elizabeth Anne Hull and Frederik Pohl" Hull is described on Frederik Pohl's "The Way the Future Blogs" as:
"Blond and brainy, Elizabeth Anne Hull (known as Betty to most of her friends and called Betty Anne by her husband, Frederik Pohl), is Professor Emerita of William Rainey Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, where she taught English and science fiction for over 30 years, earning the school’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 1997. The Alumni Association of Northwestern University honored Betty’s contributions to her profession with its Award of Merit in 1995.
Betty has authored essays and short stories, lectured on sf around the world, and led many writing workshops. She edited the anthologies Gateways: Original New Stories Inspired by Frederik Pohl and, with Fred, Tales from the Planet Earth." - http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/e...
Pohl himself, is one of my favorite SF writers & one that I've found to be consistently politically sensitive. Slonczewsk is a biology prof. Brain Plague is about the potentials of microbe communities interfacing w/ human hosts for their mutual benefit or detriment. The hosts become 'Gods' for the microbes insofar as they become the microbe's world upon wch they're dependent. Unintentionally, I followed this novel w/ an intelligent-bacterial-community-vis-à-vis-human-hosts one called Vitals (2002) by Greg Bear so I'm somewhat inundated w/ informed biological prediction at the moment.
Not surprisingly (given conventional novelistic development), the reader is slowly introduced to the "brain plague" & its implications, starting off in a Draconian way:
"The brain-plagued hijackers shipped their captives to the hidden Slave World, where they were building an armed fortress for their mysterious Enlightened Leader," - p 14
Eventually the Slave World is depicted like an opium den: "Within the room full of cots, the air was fetid, and flies settled everywhere. The slaves barely treated their wastes, either, she guessed. The humans, all thin and pale, seemd mostly asleep, although some sat up in chairs, their eyes glazed, rocking. One was being spoon-fed by a slave. "Rose? Is this what you call Endless Light?" (p 285)
In between, we learn that:
""Micros are intelligent," he said.
""Well, sure." Intellient buildings, intelligent medical machines—everything was "intelligent" these days.
""Intelligent people."" - p 30
Yes, but are they DIGITAL?! & do they listen to IDM?!
The artist protagonist becomes known to the micros that she hosts as the "God of Mercy" b/c she doesn't usually take advantage of her ability to kill rebellious micros:
"Chrys started to reply but thought better of it. She spread her hands. "If you kill the minion, that's the way to make the whole population read her stuff. Believe me."
""Your population," Selenite corrected. "Mine know better. Very well, you may keep her—but if she ever returns to my arachnoid, she's dead."" - p 140
I'm always interested in the way neologisms work their way into common usage in SF & elsewhere: Heinlein's "waldos" being one example. I don't know who coined "nanoplast" (nanotechnology + plastic) but I did find multiple industry references for such a product online. Here's an example:
"Nano-Plast coating is a natural, invisible and ultra thin, “breathing” and environmentally friendly coating optimally developed for the plastics industries, for polymer, synthetic surfaces, characterized by various plastic compositions and shades.
"The material excels in massive chemical durability to abrasion, with phenomenal lifespan extending properties for repelling water (hydrophobic) oil (oleophobic)." - http://www.nanoztec.com/Nano-Plast-NP...
Slonczewski refers to it: "A breeze from the sea swept her face as it keened across the towers of plast—nanoplast, the intelligent material that grew vast sentient buildings, as easily as it grew the nanotex bodysuits the artists wore. Plast formed the bubble cars that glided over the intelligent pavement". Clearly Slonczewski sees this as a 'material of the (near) future' &, yes, there's a Nanotex company already!: http://www.nano-tex.com/ . Does Slonczewski take money from them to promote their products?
I'm also interested in SF writers cross-referencing each other in other ways: ""Moraeg and Carnelian left for Solaris right after the show, as usual." Solaris, the number one leisure world" (p 141) Solaris, the name of a Stanislav Lem novel & 2 movies based on it: 1 by Tarkovsky, 1 by Soderbergh. Solaris is a thinking ocean planet that finds things in human observer minds that it then somehow materializes for them. It's hard to imagine that Slonczewski isn't making a bit of an inter-textual joke here.
Then there's "wetware". Who originated the term? I don't know. I 1st ran across it in (a) novel(s) by Rudy Rucker.
"Though its exact definition has shifted over time, the term Wetware and its fundamental reference to "the physical mind" has been around from the mid-1950s. Mostly used in relatively obscure articles and papers, it was not until the heyday of cyberpunk, however, that the term found broad adoption. Among these first uses of the term in popular culture were the 1987 novel "Vacuum Flowers" by Michael Swanwick as well as several books from the hand of Rudy Rucker, one of which he titled "Wetware"." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetware_...
"The chair of the board was the giant black sea urchin, reputedly a top market investor like Garnet. Its twenty-odd limbs stood out straight from its body, each ending in a different mechanism for grasping, screwing, or drawing. The sea urchin methodically reviewed the city's needs: so much residential volume, of a dozen categories, from snake-egg to transit system; so many power connections, service conduits, and seage lines; and something called "wetware."" - Brain Plague, p 276
Health insurance is even more of a hot button topic than it was in 2000 when this was copyrighted:
""What a nuisance," agreed Topaz. "Back to the clinic and wait two hours." Topaz and Pearl had Comprehensive Health Care Plan Three. They could afford Plan Three, thanks to the sale of Topaz's portraits. Lady Moraeg, on Plan Ten, looked twenty years for her two hundred. Chrys got by on Plan One, which provided neuroports but did not service them." - p 16
Ah, yes, health insurance in the US - even under the NOT-Affordable Health Care Act it ultimately boils down s/he-who-has-the-money-gets-the-care - wch means the biggest crooks get to live longest. Crime does pay after all, esp if you're connected to Haliburton or some other warlord manifestation masquerading as peace-keeping & reconstruction. Being on Plan Ten enables one to choose their age: "The plan rep molded to the holostage. "Now, according to our records," she observed, "you have yet to choose your age and appearance."" (p 59)
Slonczewski's main character is an artist. "She blinked to close her window for the night, then set the volcano above her bed to explode at seven in the morning." (p 23) Ha ha! I had an alarm clock that was designed to look like a block of dynamite.
The micros make Chrys rich by funneling their architectural genius thru her: "The roots of the Comb spread gradually wider through each level they penetrated. At the seventeenth level, the roots housed a shopping center frequented by middle-class simians and university students. That was the level Selenite chose to inject the virus containing all the instructions the micros had programmed." (pp 168-169) I suppose that's the "root-down" theory instead of the "trickle-down" one.
In Slonczewski's future, the Theremin has become a portable instrument for minstrels: "By the twelfth course, the golden servers started strolling with harp and theremin". (p 203)
One of the funnier touches is when a microbial artist encourages the human artist who hosts her to start making what's tantamount to microbial porn:
"The next one drew silence, and the next. A very long silence.
""Well?"
""They're . . . effective," he admitted, his eyes still focused.
""Should I show them in public?"
""I don't know. You might get a reputation."
""I knew it," she exclaimed. "I knew that Jonquil would have me peddling porn."
""The children look okay," he assured her. "They're just doing what micro children naturally do. But elders—or elders with children—that's profoundly disturbing."" - p 213
An 'elder' microbe having sex w/ a 'child' microbe is something a bit hard for a human being to imagine. It's too anthropomorphic - but anthropomorphizing microbes is a large part of what this bk is about:
"Incapable of work, the grayish ring jostled aimlessly among the red cells, begging for vitamins. Fireweed brushed its filaments to pass it a few.
" "Why?" asked Jonquil. "Why prolong its miserable existence?"
" "The One True God decreed, 'Love Me, love My people.'"
" "You call that brainless microbe a person?" Mutant children whose brains failed to reach Eleutherian standards were barred from the nightclubs, never eexposed to the pheremones that ripened for breeding, nor did they mature as elders. Worth no more than a virus.
" "There, but for a twist of DNA, go you or I," flashed Fireweed. "All people are one."" - p 222
Microbe 'charity'. I wonder if organized versions of it has CEOs who make enormous profits off donations while very little actually goes to helping anyone.
Joan Slonczewski's Brain Plague
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 9, 2015
I've only read one previous bk by Slonczewski, A Door into Ocean (1986) ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... ). Much to my surprise, I haven't reviewed it - wch means that I read it no later than the middle of 2007: 8 yrs ago! I liked it but I haven't managed to read a single other thing by her in what seems like a rather long ensuing period.
A Door into Ocean was remarkable for its thorough depiction of passive & successful resistance to aggressive imperialism - set in a Science Fiction context. I was impressed by what seemed like the authenticity of the author's engagement w/ such a political position.
Brain Plague (2000) is different. There's a fairly deep non-oversimplifying socio-political sensitivity to it but it's not as much the central content as it is woven into the overall plot fabric. The bk's dedicated "For Elizabeth Anne Hull and Frederik Pohl" Hull is described on Frederik Pohl's "The Way the Future Blogs" as:
"Blond and brainy, Elizabeth Anne Hull (known as Betty to most of her friends and called Betty Anne by her husband, Frederik Pohl), is Professor Emerita of William Rainey Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, where she taught English and science fiction for over 30 years, earning the school’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 1997. The Alumni Association of Northwestern University honored Betty’s contributions to her profession with its Award of Merit in 1995.
Betty has authored essays and short stories, lectured on sf around the world, and led many writing workshops. She edited the anthologies Gateways: Original New Stories Inspired by Frederik Pohl and, with Fred, Tales from the Planet Earth." - http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/e...
Pohl himself, is one of my favorite SF writers & one that I've found to be consistently politically sensitive. Slonczewsk is a biology prof. Brain Plague is about the potentials of microbe communities interfacing w/ human hosts for their mutual benefit or detriment. The hosts become 'Gods' for the microbes insofar as they become the microbe's world upon wch they're dependent. Unintentionally, I followed this novel w/ an intelligent-bacterial-community-vis-à-vis-human-hosts one called Vitals (2002) by Greg Bear so I'm somewhat inundated w/ informed biological prediction at the moment.
Not surprisingly (given conventional novelistic development), the reader is slowly introduced to the "brain plague" & its implications, starting off in a Draconian way:
"The brain-plagued hijackers shipped their captives to the hidden Slave World, where they were building an armed fortress for their mysterious Enlightened Leader," - p 14
Eventually the Slave World is depicted like an opium den: "Within the room full of cots, the air was fetid, and flies settled everywhere. The slaves barely treated their wastes, either, she guessed. The humans, all thin and pale, seemd mostly asleep, although some sat up in chairs, their eyes glazed, rocking. One was being spoon-fed by a slave. "Rose? Is this what you call Endless Light?" (p 285)
In between, we learn that:
""Micros are intelligent," he said.
""Well, sure." Intellient buildings, intelligent medical machines—everything was "intelligent" these days.
""Intelligent people."" - p 30
Yes, but are they DIGITAL?! & do they listen to IDM?!
The artist protagonist becomes known to the micros that she hosts as the "God of Mercy" b/c she doesn't usually take advantage of her ability to kill rebellious micros:
"Chrys started to reply but thought better of it. She spread her hands. "If you kill the minion, that's the way to make the whole population read her stuff. Believe me."
""Your population," Selenite corrected. "Mine know better. Very well, you may keep her—but if she ever returns to my arachnoid, she's dead."" - p 140
I'm always interested in the way neologisms work their way into common usage in SF & elsewhere: Heinlein's "waldos" being one example. I don't know who coined "nanoplast" (nanotechnology + plastic) but I did find multiple industry references for such a product online. Here's an example:
"Nano-Plast coating is a natural, invisible and ultra thin, “breathing” and environmentally friendly coating optimally developed for the plastics industries, for polymer, synthetic surfaces, characterized by various plastic compositions and shades.
"The material excels in massive chemical durability to abrasion, with phenomenal lifespan extending properties for repelling water (hydrophobic) oil (oleophobic)." - http://www.nanoztec.com/Nano-Plast-NP...
Slonczewski refers to it: "A breeze from the sea swept her face as it keened across the towers of plast—nanoplast, the intelligent material that grew vast sentient buildings, as easily as it grew the nanotex bodysuits the artists wore. Plast formed the bubble cars that glided over the intelligent pavement". Clearly Slonczewski sees this as a 'material of the (near) future' &, yes, there's a Nanotex company already!: http://www.nano-tex.com/ . Does Slonczewski take money from them to promote their products?
I'm also interested in SF writers cross-referencing each other in other ways: ""Moraeg and Carnelian left for Solaris right after the show, as usual." Solaris, the number one leisure world" (p 141) Solaris, the name of a Stanislav Lem novel & 2 movies based on it: 1 by Tarkovsky, 1 by Soderbergh. Solaris is a thinking ocean planet that finds things in human observer minds that it then somehow materializes for them. It's hard to imagine that Slonczewski isn't making a bit of an inter-textual joke here.
Then there's "wetware". Who originated the term? I don't know. I 1st ran across it in (a) novel(s) by Rudy Rucker.
"Though its exact definition has shifted over time, the term Wetware and its fundamental reference to "the physical mind" has been around from the mid-1950s. Mostly used in relatively obscure articles and papers, it was not until the heyday of cyberpunk, however, that the term found broad adoption. Among these first uses of the term in popular culture were the 1987 novel "Vacuum Flowers" by Michael Swanwick as well as several books from the hand of Rudy Rucker, one of which he titled "Wetware"." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetware_...
"The chair of the board was the giant black sea urchin, reputedly a top market investor like Garnet. Its twenty-odd limbs stood out straight from its body, each ending in a different mechanism for grasping, screwing, or drawing. The sea urchin methodically reviewed the city's needs: so much residential volume, of a dozen categories, from snake-egg to transit system; so many power connections, service conduits, and seage lines; and something called "wetware."" - Brain Plague, p 276
Health insurance is even more of a hot button topic than it was in 2000 when this was copyrighted:
""What a nuisance," agreed Topaz. "Back to the clinic and wait two hours." Topaz and Pearl had Comprehensive Health Care Plan Three. They could afford Plan Three, thanks to the sale of Topaz's portraits. Lady Moraeg, on Plan Ten, looked twenty years for her two hundred. Chrys got by on Plan One, which provided neuroports but did not service them." - p 16
Ah, yes, health insurance in the US - even under the NOT-Affordable Health Care Act it ultimately boils down s/he-who-has-the-money-gets-the-care - wch means the biggest crooks get to live longest. Crime does pay after all, esp if you're connected to Haliburton or some other warlord manifestation masquerading as peace-keeping & reconstruction. Being on Plan Ten enables one to choose their age: "The plan rep molded to the holostage. "Now, according to our records," she observed, "you have yet to choose your age and appearance."" (p 59)
Slonczewski's main character is an artist. "She blinked to close her window for the night, then set the volcano above her bed to explode at seven in the morning." (p 23) Ha ha! I had an alarm clock that was designed to look like a block of dynamite.
The micros make Chrys rich by funneling their architectural genius thru her: "The roots of the Comb spread gradually wider through each level they penetrated. At the seventeenth level, the roots housed a shopping center frequented by middle-class simians and university students. That was the level Selenite chose to inject the virus containing all the instructions the micros had programmed." (pp 168-169) I suppose that's the "root-down" theory instead of the "trickle-down" one.
In Slonczewski's future, the Theremin has become a portable instrument for minstrels: "By the twelfth course, the golden servers started strolling with harp and theremin". (p 203)
One of the funnier touches is when a microbial artist encourages the human artist who hosts her to start making what's tantamount to microbial porn:
"The next one drew silence, and the next. A very long silence.
""Well?"
""They're . . . effective," he admitted, his eyes still focused.
""Should I show them in public?"
""I don't know. You might get a reputation."
""I knew it," she exclaimed. "I knew that Jonquil would have me peddling porn."
""The children look okay," he assured her. "They're just doing what micro children naturally do. But elders—or elders with children—that's profoundly disturbing."" - p 213
An 'elder' microbe having sex w/ a 'child' microbe is something a bit hard for a human being to imagine. It's too anthropomorphic - but anthropomorphizing microbes is a large part of what this bk is about:
"Incapable of work, the grayish ring jostled aimlessly among the red cells, begging for vitamins. Fireweed brushed its filaments to pass it a few.
" "Why?" asked Jonquil. "Why prolong its miserable existence?"
" "The One True God decreed, 'Love Me, love My people.'"
" "You call that brainless microbe a person?" Mutant children whose brains failed to reach Eleutherian standards were barred from the nightclubs, never eexposed to the pheremones that ripened for breeding, nor did they mature as elders. Worth no more than a virus.
" "There, but for a twist of DNA, go you or I," flashed Fireweed. "All people are one."" - p 222
Microbe 'charity'. I wonder if organized versions of it has CEOs who make enormous profits off donations while very little actually goes to helping anyone.
December 21, 2018
It is difficult to describe the plot of Brain Plague, if only because there basically isn’t one for much of its length. This is a novel, more so than any other I’ve come across, which runs almost solely on its base concept. Even when the plot finally materialises, it is quiet and unobtrusive as though ashamed to even be there. Had the concept been less solid, this would have been a trainwreck of epic proportions; as things are, though, the novel indeed holds up.
The concept, put as simply as possible, is this: in the far future, colonies of sentient microbes have begun to interact with and live within human beings. The microbes perceive time much faster than humans do – for instance, an hour of our time is equivalent to around a month of theirs – and so many perceive humans as gods due to humans’ seemingly infinite lifespan. A few microbe colonies, however, have learned differently: they know that by manipulating dopamine levels in their hosts’ brains, they can effectively take over and themselves become the gods. The microbes are developed in ample detail over the course of the book and I consistently found them utterly fascinating; for that matter, I was fascinated by much of the world building seen in this novel.
Brain plague follows the experiences of Chrys, a struggling artist who accepts a microbe colony in the hopes that they will help her in her work. In this regard, they help handily; in others, they quickly cause problems. Chrys finds herself being treated with suspicion by many non-carriers, and her “people” are ever-keen to grant her the reward of dopamine should she allow them to do so. Chrys muddles through the various trials that being a carrier brings; this, really, is the closest to a plot that this book ever gets.
The writing itself is great, albiet a tad dense in places. Chrys and her microbes are developed wonderfully, each with distinct personalities that evolve over time. The same can’t be said, however, for the rest of the book’s humans; all too often they seemed to bleed into one another, and there were a couple of points where I had to go back and remind myself who someone was.
This book is, in fact, the fourth book in a series. Several other reviews recommend reading the previous book first, though having not done that I can confirm it is by no means compulsory. Overall, this is a book far better suited for SF readers than for readers in general, though the former will probably get quite a bit out of it.
The concept, put as simply as possible, is this: in the far future, colonies of sentient microbes have begun to interact with and live within human beings. The microbes perceive time much faster than humans do – for instance, an hour of our time is equivalent to around a month of theirs – and so many perceive humans as gods due to humans’ seemingly infinite lifespan. A few microbe colonies, however, have learned differently: they know that by manipulating dopamine levels in their hosts’ brains, they can effectively take over and themselves become the gods. The microbes are developed in ample detail over the course of the book and I consistently found them utterly fascinating; for that matter, I was fascinated by much of the world building seen in this novel.
Brain plague follows the experiences of Chrys, a struggling artist who accepts a microbe colony in the hopes that they will help her in her work. In this regard, they help handily; in others, they quickly cause problems. Chrys finds herself being treated with suspicion by many non-carriers, and her “people” are ever-keen to grant her the reward of dopamine should she allow them to do so. Chrys muddles through the various trials that being a carrier brings; this, really, is the closest to a plot that this book ever gets.
The writing itself is great, albiet a tad dense in places. Chrys and her microbes are developed wonderfully, each with distinct personalities that evolve over time. The same can’t be said, however, for the rest of the book’s humans; all too often they seemed to bleed into one another, and there were a couple of points where I had to go back and remind myself who someone was.
This book is, in fact, the fourth book in a series. Several other reviews recommend reading the previous book first, though having not done that I can confirm it is by no means compulsory. Overall, this is a book far better suited for SF readers than for readers in general, though the former will probably get quite a bit out of it.
November 1, 2020
Since the events of The Children Star - the third in Slonczewski’s tales of The Fold - the people of Valedon have come to terms with the microzoöids found on the planet Prokaryon spreading through their population. With some hosts the tiny creatures are under control (usually by means of restricting access to the arsenic necessary for their survival but also via rewards of the chemical azetidine,) in others their proliferation runs rampant resulting in a disease (the Brain Plague of the title,) whose victims become zombie-like. A rogue human element known as slavers promulgates the plague by abducting citizens to their concealed planet.
The book’s protagonist is Chrys (Chrysoberyl,) an artist who can see infrared. Initially she is struggling to pay her rent and keep painting and when she is introduced to her colony of microbes, which reveal themselves and communicate with their host by flashing colours in the host’s eyes, some of her former friends and associates withdraw from her. Since the hosts have power of life and death over them the microscopic creatures refer to their hosts as gods and have only a limited understanding of their hosts’ lifestyles.
Chrys’s colony, known as Eleutheria and whose leaders she gives names corresponding to the colours with which they “speak” to her, give her inspiration and her paintings become collectable. Her microbes are also mathematicians and allow her to gain a contract to refurbish a failing piece of architecture known as the Comb, whose ever increasing structure has become unstable. The colony members’ lifespans are short and they too have their internal politics for Chrys to contend with.
There is plenty of Valedon politics to occupy Chrys outside all this and some intrigue involving the slavers whose secret planet she is the first to be abducted to and return to tell the tale.
Brain Plague is 392 pages of fairly small font size print and continues Slonczewski’s trait of incorporating biological and chemical ideas into her SF. Rewarding enough reading once past the initial set-up.
The book’s protagonist is Chrys (Chrysoberyl,) an artist who can see infrared. Initially she is struggling to pay her rent and keep painting and when she is introduced to her colony of microbes, which reveal themselves and communicate with their host by flashing colours in the host’s eyes, some of her former friends and associates withdraw from her. Since the hosts have power of life and death over them the microscopic creatures refer to their hosts as gods and have only a limited understanding of their hosts’ lifestyles.
Chrys’s colony, known as Eleutheria and whose leaders she gives names corresponding to the colours with which they “speak” to her, give her inspiration and her paintings become collectable. Her microbes are also mathematicians and allow her to gain a contract to refurbish a failing piece of architecture known as the Comb, whose ever increasing structure has become unstable. The colony members’ lifespans are short and they too have their internal politics for Chrys to contend with.
There is plenty of Valedon politics to occupy Chrys outside all this and some intrigue involving the slavers whose secret planet she is the first to be abducted to and return to tell the tale.
Brain Plague is 392 pages of fairly small font size print and continues Slonczewski’s trait of incorporating biological and chemical ideas into her SF. Rewarding enough reading once past the initial set-up.
August 2, 2020
I've read a string of books lately that've felt very "meh" - not bad, but not good either; once I finished them I couldn't really think of any opinions about them worth writing down in a review. Brain Plague, however, I have lot of opinions about, not all of them good, which almost makes giving it a rating hard. Part of me wants to give it three stars, because it missed a lot of opportunities, but the rest of me violently opposes that idea because three is my meh-it-was-okay-rating and Brain Plague was definitely not meh. It was the first book in a while that really made me think about and examine a lot of views I have.
Problem is, it doesn't really examine them itself. It raises the questions, creates an entire world that makes you reconsider personhood and sentience and the right to exist. If microbes can have individual personalities and build entire societies inside someones head, should they then be given human rights even if they can act as a disease? What about the human they live inside of; who comes first if saving the human means killing an entire society of microbes that took them over? And what about the artificial intelligences? How do you look at life when you're literally a sentient house who people hire to live inside of? How different is your experience from that of a human?
There are so many interesting questions thrown out there, but the story never really delves into them. Maybe it does in the earlier installments (because of course I didn't realise this was technically the fourth part of a series before I started reading)?
Still, I think this story deserves its stars for its incredible world building and the way it makes you question things.
Problem is, it doesn't really examine them itself. It raises the questions, creates an entire world that makes you reconsider personhood and sentience and the right to exist. If microbes can have individual personalities and build entire societies inside someones head, should they then be given human rights even if they can act as a disease? What about the human they live inside of; who comes first if saving the human means killing an entire society of microbes that took them over? And what about the artificial intelligences? How do you look at life when you're literally a sentient house who people hire to live inside of? How different is your experience from that of a human?
There are so many interesting questions thrown out there, but the story never really delves into them. Maybe it does in the earlier installments (because of course I didn't realise this was technically the fourth part of a series before I started reading)?
Still, I think this story deserves its stars for its incredible world building and the way it makes you question things.
April 26, 2012
It's not often that I re-read a book that, while I enjoyed it, I had a struggle doing so. However, several of Joan Slonczewski's fans, one of whom I trust quite a bit, encouraged me to re-read her book
Brain Plague.
The basic plot is straightforward: a middle-tier artist who has moved to her interstellar empire's capital world to be part of the art scene is accepted for an "experimental" medical procedure that, she is told, will boost her intellectual capabilities. While this is going on, a "brain plague" is moving through the population at large, a blood-borne disease that turns people into zombies who either die or mysteriously disappear. Our heroine discovers that what she is getting is, in fact, a colony of millions of sentient beings who live at speeds hundreds of times faster than she does, and their 'boost' is in fact her leeching off of their creative efforts. They don't mind, though: they can only live within a human host and she, in effect, becomes their "god," and all they do is for her well-being. The plague, it turns out, is made up of corrupt colonies of these beings who take control of their hosts pleasure centers, addicting their hosts and sending them on an involuntary religious quest to find "the Eternal Light."
From here, much personal and political hijinks ensue.
There are several problems with Brain Plague, not the least of which is the fact that Slonczewski's culture, as it is depicted, should have disappeared up the Singularity centuries ago. It's depicted as a benevolent Empire of some sort, a capitalist structure that's allowed to flourish as long as it pays its taxes. Medical technology apparently allows for the most Banksian of body modifications, but the best tech only extends human life by two centuries. They have nanotechnology in abundance-- their buildings are grown, not built, for example-- but our heroine lives near a slum and, upon getting rich off of her colony's efforts, volunteers one night a week in a soup kitchen. The wealthy suffer from problems that any capitalist worth his salt would have solved with the technology at hand-- and made a bundle doing so.
The distinctions in Brain Plague are artificial : there are uplifted apes, ordinary humans, enhanced humans, hivers of a sort, sentient robots, and super-sentient AIs "who think such deep thoughts that they never deign to use human speech." And never shall the twain intertwine, apparently. Although one human and one sentient robot are depicted as "married," as are one human and one uplifted ape, any shades of grey between the two are viciously suppressed by authorial fiat in order to create inter-identity-group conflicts and politics. The characters in Brain Plague never learned Vinge's Law: "The last thing we will have to do as a species is make a machine smarter than we are." Slonczewski's characters are morally suspect: there's no particular reason that the rich need their doors and windows to be independently sentient beings, and her depiction of serving robots "kept just below the complexity at which they might 'wake up'" struck a false tone in the face of current AI research.
Almost everyone in the book is bisexual. The only strictly heterosexual character-- a character given to Liberace-esque self-aggrandizement-- is pelted in every scene he is mentioned with the epithet "medieval." He's also conveniently dead and therefore can't defend himself; his story is told in news reports and flashbacks. To add insult to injury, it turns out he was incompetent as well. The more I think about it, the more annoyed I become with it: the "war of the sexes" can be reduced to the "wrestling match of the sexes: play hard, play fair, nobody hurt" without making gender irrelevant or trivial, but Slonczewski chose instead a convention as artificial and as unrealistic as the New Soviet Man Thesis.
Slonczewski's story is supposed to be "of the far future" but, if it is, then the future was depressingly static for a long, long time. The book opens with a Future That Is Like The Present, Only Moreso. By the end of the book, interesting possibilities suggest themselves, but only suggest. Slonczewski is a very competent writer: her scenes flow, her plot works from her first principles, her characterizations are strong. But I found some of the lesser themes in her work bizarre if not downright irrational.
I was hoping, upon re-reading, to discover that I had read the story incorrectly. I had not. Instead, I found the story even more bizarre. The characters flit from starsystem to starsystem in starships as casually as you and I take a subway. Sentient AIs have a scatological problem: mentioning "waste heat" is even more offensive to them than any epithet human beings use among themselves. Despite the enormous variance among the AI characters, they're all trying to found a city on a planet for AIs only just to show the protein machines that they can. There is no investment scheme targeting poor villagers living on the backward from which heroine Chrys comes, exploring the economic value of an entire planet that it's quite cheap to exploit, no capitalist at work trying to make the universe more productive. The economy, the social structure, the moral milieu, everything about this universe exists only by authorial fiat.
There is a class of writer that does not understand how the world came to be the way it is. She looks around and see class divisions and economic segmentation and doesn't understand why those institutions exist-- and then she extrapolates, badly, from the existing to an analogous SFnal setting. Slonczewski has done that with Brain Plague, but in the process she has given her class segments and economic segments (or their progenitors) capabilities that should destroy and re-arrange the distinctions with which she's trying to analogize.
Slonczewski remains a great writer of characters and their relationships (except when she doesn't; she does a poor job of communication Chrys's social life, using it primarily as an excuse to drive her into the grubbier bars), but she introduces ideas willy-nilly into her story without really grasping the consequences of her actions.
The basic plot is straightforward: a middle-tier artist who has moved to her interstellar empire's capital world to be part of the art scene is accepted for an "experimental" medical procedure that, she is told, will boost her intellectual capabilities. While this is going on, a "brain plague" is moving through the population at large, a blood-borne disease that turns people into zombies who either die or mysteriously disappear. Our heroine discovers that what she is getting is, in fact, a colony of millions of sentient beings who live at speeds hundreds of times faster than she does, and their 'boost' is in fact her leeching off of their creative efforts. They don't mind, though: they can only live within a human host and she, in effect, becomes their "god," and all they do is for her well-being. The plague, it turns out, is made up of corrupt colonies of these beings who take control of their hosts pleasure centers, addicting their hosts and sending them on an involuntary religious quest to find "the Eternal Light."
From here, much personal and political hijinks ensue.
There are several problems with Brain Plague, not the least of which is the fact that Slonczewski's culture, as it is depicted, should have disappeared up the Singularity centuries ago. It's depicted as a benevolent Empire of some sort, a capitalist structure that's allowed to flourish as long as it pays its taxes. Medical technology apparently allows for the most Banksian of body modifications, but the best tech only extends human life by two centuries. They have nanotechnology in abundance-- their buildings are grown, not built, for example-- but our heroine lives near a slum and, upon getting rich off of her colony's efforts, volunteers one night a week in a soup kitchen. The wealthy suffer from problems that any capitalist worth his salt would have solved with the technology at hand-- and made a bundle doing so.
The distinctions in Brain Plague are artificial : there are uplifted apes, ordinary humans, enhanced humans, hivers of a sort, sentient robots, and super-sentient AIs "who think such deep thoughts that they never deign to use human speech." And never shall the twain intertwine, apparently. Although one human and one sentient robot are depicted as "married," as are one human and one uplifted ape, any shades of grey between the two are viciously suppressed by authorial fiat in order to create inter-identity-group conflicts and politics. The characters in Brain Plague never learned Vinge's Law: "The last thing we will have to do as a species is make a machine smarter than we are." Slonczewski's characters are morally suspect: there's no particular reason that the rich need their doors and windows to be independently sentient beings, and her depiction of serving robots "kept just below the complexity at which they might 'wake up'" struck a false tone in the face of current AI research.
Almost everyone in the book is bisexual. The only strictly heterosexual character-- a character given to Liberace-esque self-aggrandizement-- is pelted in every scene he is mentioned with the epithet "medieval." He's also conveniently dead and therefore can't defend himself; his story is told in news reports and flashbacks. To add insult to injury, it turns out he was incompetent as well. The more I think about it, the more annoyed I become with it: the "war of the sexes" can be reduced to the "wrestling match of the sexes: play hard, play fair, nobody hurt" without making gender irrelevant or trivial, but Slonczewski chose instead a convention as artificial and as unrealistic as the New Soviet Man Thesis.
Slonczewski's story is supposed to be "of the far future" but, if it is, then the future was depressingly static for a long, long time. The book opens with a Future That Is Like The Present, Only Moreso. By the end of the book, interesting possibilities suggest themselves, but only suggest. Slonczewski is a very competent writer: her scenes flow, her plot works from her first principles, her characterizations are strong. But I found some of the lesser themes in her work bizarre if not downright irrational.
I was hoping, upon re-reading, to discover that I had read the story incorrectly. I had not. Instead, I found the story even more bizarre. The characters flit from starsystem to starsystem in starships as casually as you and I take a subway. Sentient AIs have a scatological problem: mentioning "waste heat" is even more offensive to them than any epithet human beings use among themselves. Despite the enormous variance among the AI characters, they're all trying to found a city on a planet for AIs only just to show the protein machines that they can. There is no investment scheme targeting poor villagers living on the backward from which heroine Chrys comes, exploring the economic value of an entire planet that it's quite cheap to exploit, no capitalist at work trying to make the universe more productive. The economy, the social structure, the moral milieu, everything about this universe exists only by authorial fiat.
There is a class of writer that does not understand how the world came to be the way it is. She looks around and see class divisions and economic segmentation and doesn't understand why those institutions exist-- and then she extrapolates, badly, from the existing to an analogous SFnal setting. Slonczewski has done that with Brain Plague, but in the process she has given her class segments and economic segments (or their progenitors) capabilities that should destroy and re-arrange the distinctions with which she's trying to analogize.
Slonczewski remains a great writer of characters and their relationships (except when she doesn't; she does a poor job of communication Chrys's social life, using it primarily as an excuse to drive her into the grubbier bars), but she introduces ideas willy-nilly into her story without really grasping the consequences of her actions.
June 30, 2017
Interesting, if a little stilted, bio-punk story of sentient microbes that serve as worshipful mind enhancers, except when they don't, and enslave the mind. I picked up the book when Sloczewski guest-blogged for Charlie Stross several years ago, and I've followed her blog since, but never got around to the book until a recent trip.
Some great hard science, some nice mingling of art and technology that reminded me a lot of Metropolitan by Walter Jon Williams (artist reluctantly pulled into a powerful but feared part of society, with an organic science that's almost magic)... but some awkward things like all the inhabitants of one planet (perhaps just the elite, but that's all you see) being named after various minerals.
Not the best book I've read this year, but worth a read, and worth finding more books by the author.
Some great hard science, some nice mingling of art and technology that reminded me a lot of Metropolitan by Walter Jon Williams (artist reluctantly pulled into a powerful but feared part of society, with an organic science that's almost magic)... but some awkward things like all the inhabitants of one planet (perhaps just the elite, but that's all you see) being named after various minerals.
Not the best book I've read this year, but worth a read, and worth finding more books by the author.
May 13, 2021
Amazing. An oasis in an ocean of shitty unoriginal dudebro sci-fi.
Now my #2 most favourite book ever (but only just barely) after Woman on the Edge of Time.
This hit so much of my sci-fi wishlist: female authored; handles issues of poverty, racism, class, religion; non cis-het normative; queer; unique and engaging science; minimal spaceships.
As an artist it was such a happy surprise to read a sci-fi novel where the protagonist is a practicing artist AND ALSO offers critique on art, academia, galleries and the public?!
This hit all the best weird hot spots in aaaallllll the right ways. This book is a fucking TREASURE, thank you Joan. I will be purchasing a copy for my own collection.
Brain Plague is the first book I have read in the Elysium Cycle. Looking forward to checking out the others.
Now my #2 most favourite book ever (but only just barely) after Woman on the Edge of Time.
This hit so much of my sci-fi wishlist: female authored; handles issues of poverty, racism, class, religion; non cis-het normative; queer; unique and engaging science; minimal spaceships.
As an artist it was such a happy surprise to read a sci-fi novel where the protagonist is a practicing artist AND ALSO offers critique on art, academia, galleries and the public?!
This hit all the best weird hot spots in aaaallllll the right ways. This book is a fucking TREASURE, thank you Joan. I will be purchasing a copy for my own collection.
Brain Plague is the first book I have read in the Elysium Cycle. Looking forward to checking out the others.
March 4, 2025
Book Four of a series that began with 'A Door into Ocean'. I re-read the first book recently, it's been on my shelves for decades. I logged it here, and found out that it was the first of four. Well, bless my cotton socks ... I had to buy the other three.
I have loved reading these books, and will have a hell of a book hangover over the next few days. Late twentieth century feminist hard sf is very much for the win. The series explores what it is to be human, it looks at speciesism, environmental destruction, the inevitable conflict between longevity, fertility and environmental protection, and then brings the series to an awesome conclusion by turning human beings INTO the environment that needs to be protected from intelligent microbes with an overwhelmingly 'human' urge to breed and explore. I wish there were more books in this series.
I have loved reading these books, and will have a hell of a book hangover over the next few days. Late twentieth century feminist hard sf is very much for the win. The series explores what it is to be human, it looks at speciesism, environmental destruction, the inevitable conflict between longevity, fertility and environmental protection, and then brings the series to an awesome conclusion by turning human beings INTO the environment that needs to be protected from intelligent microbes with an overwhelmingly 'human' urge to breed and explore. I wish there were more books in this series.
November 5, 2017
I like the rest of this series more. The potential for the concepts explored here is immense but the book really never goes very deep. Maybe it has to do with the slipping of time between when the author came up with the concepts and when she worked on this book? It doesn't help that the main character seems shallow, callow, self-serving and plain old petulant... not the kind of lead character that you want to spend a lot of time with. Too bad for the little critter civ in her brain.
May 28, 2019
My dad found this book at a library sale and picked it up because it sounds like a terrible B movie. But it was actually pretty good, with deep, intriguing world-building and and interesting story.
January 20, 2020
4.5 stars.
March 7, 2020
Not up to the standard set by The Children Star.
February 12, 2021
I read this book several years ago and it haunts me to this day. I often think about it and how much it fucked with my head. I was just telling my partner about it. And think I’ll read it again.
March 2, 2021
This one really didn't grab me as much as the previous books. Found the treatment of timescales too inconsistent. Most times the micros spoke I just couldn't suspend disbelief at the conversations.
August 10, 2023
Could not finish. Nowhere near the quality of the earlier books in the series. Got a second star, just because I admire Joan Slonczewski's other works.
September 11, 2023
What an engaging book. I rarely give five stars, but this one will stay with me for a long time. It was written in 2000, yet the story has so many parallels to today.
September 3, 2016
I think I first read this book about 10 years ago. Back then, it was out of print and I've cherished my hardcover copy. Since then, I've read this book many times over. Maybe a weird choice, but this is probably my favorite book.
One of the best things about this book is how unique it is. It's a great mesh of fantasy explained by science fiction. Elves, vampires and robots - all manage to fit into Joan Slonczewski's world and be explained away in scientific terms. She does such a great job of painting a totally different futuristic world.
She really makes you fall in love with the main characters. She makes you care so deeply about these small beings, even though their short lifespans result in a high turnover in main characters.
While Chrysoberyl can sometimes fall into the typical heroine trap of making stupid decisions to be the hero, she is such a well-developed character, that it doesn't take away from the book..
Love, love this book and suggest any sci-fi/fantasy fans to read!
One of the best things about this book is how unique it is. It's a great mesh of fantasy explained by science fiction. Elves, vampires and robots - all manage to fit into Joan Slonczewski's world and be explained away in scientific terms. She does such a great job of painting a totally different futuristic world.
She really makes you fall in love with the main characters. She makes you care so deeply about these small beings, even though their short lifespans result in a high turnover in main characters.
While Chrysoberyl can sometimes fall into the typical heroine trap of making stupid decisions to be the hero, she is such a well-developed character, that it doesn't take away from the book..
Love, love this book and suggest any sci-fi/fantasy fans to read!
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