Brain Plague

by Joan Slonczewski

Book Overview

"Brain Plague" is the new hard SF novel by Joan Slonczewski, set in the same future universe as her award-winning" A Door into Ocean" and "The Children Star "(a "New York Times" Notable Book). 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, carriers, they are brain enhancers,...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812579143
• ISBN13: 9780812579147
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 4.2" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

Great Book!

I really love the idea of a symbiotic relationship with a civilization of microscopic organisms. The book explored this complex topic without becoming more technical than any average reader can understand. I liked the universe the author had set up so much that I read all the other books part of the Elysium universe, and they were just as great as this one.The realistic element of still having corruption, violence, and abuse in society made the story seem more life-like rather than having it as a perfect future where society is self-sufficient and without crime.This book had everything I could want in a science fiction novel: adventure, conflict, character development & interaction, as well as that undefineable element of a good story that won't let you put the book down until you're done reading it.I highly recommend this and other books by this author to any Science Fiction fan.

Powerful, lyrical story about technology, art, & being human

Brilliant, powerful, beautiful -- at times terrifying, at times humourous -- with finely developed characters from the human protagonist to the generations of microbial creatures developing in her brain. The story is deep without being pretentious, fast-paced and thrilling but with an attention to detail. I picked this up, of all places, in a supermarket, because the cover caught my eye. I have not read any of this author's previous work, but I'm looking forward to reading anything else available. It's been a long time since a story captured my imagination so completely that I would give up a night's sleep to read it through to the end. Dawn is nearly here, I've turned the last page, and my very first thought was to write a review.The protagonist, Chrysoberyl, is an artist who creates moving sculptures of light, and the author paints each creation in vivid description. The story deftly moves the reader from the infinitesimal world in Chrys' mind, through the various environments of the "outside" world, through art galleries and slums and mansions and soup kitchens and nightclubs. Chrys' story plays out in a relatively short space of time, while that of the microbes she interacts with spans hundreds of their generations. In contrast, in the outside world there are humans, unlike Chrys, whose lifespans are centuries long. All the varying cultures maintain a faltering balance, threatened by the "brain plague" of uncontrolled nano-infestation, the victims of which are scorned as "vampires." When Chrys volunteers to become host to a presumable benign colony, she finds herself at the thin line between "carrier" and "vampire."Cybertech is not my usual reading choice, because it often feels impersonal to me, more about ideas than humanity, but this story is as human as it gets, examining the impulses that make us creative, loving, hate-filled, loyal, worshipful, petty, just.The integration of human brain with this sort of nanotechnology is rushing toward us ever more quickly -- with its advantages and disadvantages, its benefits and threat of brain plagues. It may be a long time before every facet of our livesisare ruled by nanotechnology, but this book gives us a glimpse of what we might hope or fear to become, and a solid story, as well.

Fish out of water?

The main character of the book is a young female artist--a creative and ambitious girl (not woman) who seeks a shortcut to making her art better. She agrees to allow a colony of microsized "people" to live on the outskirts of her brain, in exchange for their willingness to help her with her art projects. She gets far more than she bargained for, and finds herself embroiled in the lives of her "people" and their sister colonies who live inside other carriers. Although the carriers are a diverse group who mostly seem to consider her an upstart who can't properly "control" her colony, they slowly learn to respect her differences as she in turn matures and learns. In the long run, the "people" learn a great deal from her as well, and they end up helping her in ways having nothing to do with her art. Altogether, a fascinating and diverse group of characters interacting in plausible ways. I look forward to another book set in this world.

Listening to your inner micropeople -- or should you?

In "The Children Star", the preceding novel of this series, intelligent microbes were the solution to a mystery. Here they are the point of departure for an "alien relations" story like no other. We've met all kinds of aliens in science fiction: implacable aliens that wanted only to eat us up, benevolent aliens welcoming us to an advanced galactic civilization, and all manner of dispositions in between. There have been parasites that snatched human bodies, and occasional symbiotes that provided free medical coverage. Joan Slonczewski, with her longtime concern for social and bioethical problems, and her heartfelt championship of universal rights, has cooked up a breed of aliens that maximally perplex both conscience and prudence.These microbes, you see, are not just intelligent. They are also social, in the way that humans are social (not bees). Individuals retain enough individuality to have clashing wishes and clashing ideologies. So microbial societies develop distinct cultures -- as variegated as human societies. Add to this that they live and die radically faster than humans. For good measure, on their home planet they evolved to colonize non-sentient animals of approximately human scale. So on invading human hosts, their initial impulse is to control these hosts as they would control mindless beasts. In "The Children Star", humans almost decided to wipe them out, but relented because the colonies in some humans developed more symbiotic cultures, with dazzling services to offer.Now they've been around a while, and human society is caught in a maelstrom. Virulent microbial societies have become a "brain plague", controlling their environments -- their hosts -- in short-sighted, destructive ways. A secret community of carriers, however, has learned to pass around microbes with friendlier or more submissive cultures. Living as fast as they do, the microbes also think faster, and confer great benefits as brain enhancers. Besides which, they're company to the lonely human soul, and some worship their hosts as "gods". It's a dangerous game, however. Generations of microbes parade by in what for humans is a short while. New generations bring new fashions and ideas. A human carrier can wake in the morning to find that overnight there has been a revolution. Now the microbes are bad.That's all I'll say about plot, though there's plenty more. What about plausibility? The one and only attempt to make "micropeople" plausible occurs early on, when the protagonist of the story objects, "It's absurd. Nothing that small can have enough ... connections to be self-aware." The doctor answers, "Self-awareness occurs in sentients with about a trillion logic gates. A micro cell contains about ten times that number of molecular gates." Gating what, though, and how? Electrical signals? Connections in humans take place at synapses, where electrical signals are transmitted by chemical packets that take about 15 milliseconds to cross the gap. What sorts of pathways are

Believable! Good Characterization! Slightly sappy ending.

While the premise, that of intelligent microbes colonizing human brains, sounds far-fetched, Joan Slonczewski's biology background helps her to make it quite believable. Unlike most science fiction writers that gets so caught up in scientific ideas that they forget to add plot or characterization, Mz. Slonczewski's characterization is excellent and detailed, while her plot is lively and interesting.While the micobial sub-plots exhibit great depth, the young woman's over-story exhibits "princess syndrome" to some degree, where a young, powerless girl overcomes everything to end up with everything she ever wished for and more. If not for this defect, I would say Slonczeweski was on her way to being an Ursula K. LeGuinn. I'd highly recommend it, especially to young women.