Sci-fi classic worth dusting off

There may be no nerdier statement you read today but, if we take the mental leap and compare authors to rock stars, then books can be thought of as songs. Or, more accurately, albums.

I realise the above is ludicrous. First, there are no more rock stars. All we have left is the Gallagher brothers of Oasis calling each other names on social media. 

And second, if any active creatives deserve the “rock star” label, it’s all the edgy, cool-attitude celebrity chefs who have crawled out of the woodwork in the last 15 years or so.

But here’s why I make this leap. Yes, it is great when a new artist comes onto the scene or when an established god-tier artist comes out with something new. 

But, every now and then, you just want to hear the old hits — taking you back to a time and place — which are hits for a reason.

And with this in mind, usually, the esteemed staff at the Mail & Guardian reserve this space for fresh, new books but today let’s look at an older one that many more people should read.

Quick autobiographical note — in 1996, I was a first-year student at what was then known as the University of the Orange Free State. Coming from what was then the semi-rural Western Transvaal, even the relatively modest size and appearance of Bloemfontein and the UOFS blew my mind.

But, mostly, UOFS had the Sasol Library. Seven storeys of books? All available to me? Well, I do declare, this might be the best thing to happen to me since alternative rock reshaped my world.

I won’t lie and say I read every book in that library, top to bottom, but I certainly tried. 

I had no car or girlfriend for the entirety of 1996, so free time was dripping out of my pores. And lack of funds meant I had to lean on what the world gave me for free. It’s in situations like this that you find novels like Blood Music by Greg Bear.

Now, anyone who knows the slightest thing about sci-fi literature will immediately associate Bear with his ground-breaking book Eon. And rightly so.

Published in 1985, Eon brought Bear to the public consciousness. 

I’m trying hard not to spoil a 40-year-old book here but it deals with themes of parallel universes, manipulation of space-time and the concept of, “How infinite is infinity, actually?”

It does so with grace and candour, preserving the essential warmth and humanity of the central characters. This is no mean feat in a hard sci-fi book and it’s something Bear managed with most of his novels.

Eon is let down massively by its lukewarm sequel Eternity but let’s not concern ourselves with that. Let’s turn our attention to another book also published by Bear in 1985, Blood Music.

In this novel, we are introduced to brilliant renegade biotechnologist Vergil Ulam. He has figured out a way to convert white blood cells into very simple proto computers. In short, he has imbued single-cell organisms with the intelligence of rhesus monkeys. 

Ulam dubs these new cells noocytes and is excited by the implications of their existence.

His employers less so. Intimidated by the concept of what are essentially the world’s first nano computers, they order Ulam to destroy his work. 

Ulam, on the verge of doing so, looks down at a petri dish containing his creations and sees that they’ve organised themselves into a striated, hierarchical system.

It dawns on him that, if he were to hold that petri dish over a flame, it would be the action of a wrathful god destroying an entire civilisation of his own creation. 

Unable to continue his work at his place of employment, but desperate to continue it elsewhere, and not commit what is, to his mind, genocide of a species, Ulam injects himself with a sample of the noocytes.

Over the next few weeks, Ulam experiences something unexpected. The noocytes are evolving. In large numbers, their intelligence is formidable and they have decided to reshape their environment.

It’s in subtle ways, at first. Ulam’s shortsightedness and back problems disappear, as his noocytes reshape his body from the inside. He begins to feel more energetic, more productive, stronger, faster. Even his sexual performance improves.

His new cells have noted the deficiencies in their host and begun to correct them.

But then, as will all intelligent civilisations, the noocytes begin to modify their environment to make things easier for themselves.

As an example, they set up a rapid-transit system, which takes the form of a series of channels under his skin, giving it an odd, veiny appearance. And soon, one vessel is not enough. 

During his evening bath, Ulam notices that the water is turning pink, as the noocytes are sending envoys out of his body to seek other “worlds” to colonise.

The second half of the book deals with what happens when our intelligent macroscopic civilisation encounters the intelligent microscopic civilisation of the noocytes. 

It is akin to the Gaia Hypothesis, if humans were planet Earth.

Bear successfully explores the concepts of the subjectivity of reality and consciousness and gives us a conclusion in which the nooctyes display a stronger grasp of the anthropic principle than humankind does.

In summary, if you’ve never read this book, and you like sci-fi, I urge you to give it a go. If you have read it, dust it off again and remind yourself of how good it is.