Blood Music

Oh man. That was fun. Gory, messy, ridiculous fun.

The story is that usual sub-sub-genre of the “mad scientist” trope, where the mad scientist's mad experiment goes terribly wrong (or right? depends on your perspective, I guess) and takes down most of everything else with him. It combines that rarest of emotional harmonies: horrifying/disgusting, with hilarious. The zany grotesque, if you will. Think David Cronenberg, or that wonderful, underrated jewel, Slither. It's gross-out, and it's funny, and it's mostly beautiful pulp (pun intended?!). I also think it's a bit anti-science/anti-tech, cuz, you know, all hell breaks loose in Silicon Valley, and what sort of message is Mr. Bear trying to send the kids? Eh?

Much of the book is a post-apocalyptic disaster movie, which is also fun, but - honestly - the premise promises more than it delivers. One day, Silicon Valley-type Vergil Ullam (who I picture as Danny Huston - also underrated!) is confronted by his genetic engineering firm employers over the creepy “smart” viruses he's creating down in the corporate lab. He promises to flush them down the toilet, but first saves a few... IN HIS VEINS, MWA HA. And ttthhhence begins the glorious orchestrations of the, ahem, BLOOD MUSIC. i.e. The smart viruses start to take shit over, and much fun is had by all (sort of - well, mostly by the virus). The rest is a post-apocalyptic disaster movie.

All that said, I was surprised by how sloppy much of the book is, with weird typos (blame Amazon/publisher?), weird dangling plot threads (whatever happened to the twins and Ullam's mom in LA?), lazy and jarring scene changes/POV shifts, and - that most deadly of spec fic failings - a complete inability to see beyond a white male perspective.

YO, IMMA LET THIS REVIEW FINISH, but first I just gotta vent: the characterizations in this book were so godawful sexist that sometimes I wanted the book itself to get infected with smart viruses which could turn it into blood music-humming mush. Because, COME ON. This was approaching Alfred Bester levels of retrograde gender stereotypes. Except that Greg Bear was writing this 20-30 years later, in the 1980s. Thus this was ostensibly Cyberpunk/Biopunk period, not Golden Age of Sci-fi (Sexism)/Good Ol' Boy Period period. Bechdel test = FAIL. Survivor girl who is meek, pouty and (self-described) dumb: FAIL. Survivor man who is Upstanding White Elder Statesman who is, in contrast, fully intelligent, informed, and all about his big thoughts blah. And who muses on his past ladytroubles. Fail, fail. So much fail. Color me disappointed, Greg Bear!

So things pretty much peter out by the end, which is a shame. But it did whet (pun intended) my appetite for Rudy Rucker's post-human stuff, a la Postsingular or the wetware stuff.