Blood Music (Paperback)

Blood Music starts off with a promising concept and treats
it in a relatively sophisticated manner. Through the use of
recombinant DNA research, Vergil Ulam, creates a sentient single
cell organism. These organisms subsequently begin to build a
society to fit their needs. This means changing the molecular
structure of living creatures, including human beings, to suit
them. Thus begins (and ends) Blood Music.

The better aspects of Blood Music involve the exploration of
the possibility of intelligent single-cell organisms. The scenes
where organisms actually "talk" or communicate with Vergil and
later Bernard had great potential. Unfortunately, most of the
novel reads like a second rate horror flick. I have not read the
novelette that won a Hugo so I suspect the more carelessly
conceived aspects of the novel were left out. The "blob" that
takes over New York city and the "ghosts" that appear to convince
Suzy to "join" them are simply trite B-movie devices.

It's hard to recommend reading the entire novel. Only the
first third and second third are worth the effort.

The main plot is
1. scientist discovers plague
2. plague takes over America
3. plague is actually next evolution for human species

Now I believe pretty much anyone can write an end-of-the-world novel and make it at least somewhat compelling, and surely this book is an acceptable page turner. But there are several problems with Blood Music that left me disappointed.

First, the initial discovery and explanation of the noocytes (individual cells that are intelligent) is poorly done. Bear does a hack job of really explaining this at a biological level and I was never convinced.

Second, the idea of an intelligent plague is an intriguing one, but is has been used for a better end in other books, most notably Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. Bear never really builds up the ethical dilemma of what does it mean if we eradicate this disease.

Third, any end-of-the-world novel is going to need to seem epic in nature. The Stand by Stephen King is I think a great example. You really need more character's viewpoints to get the whole picture. Instead, we are given about five characters to follow. This leads to another problem:

Fourth, the characters are very poorly done. Virgil, Edward, Bernard - all three are pretty much interchangable as they go through their plague symptoms. Bear uses a lot of strange syntax to show their mental states, but it is confusing to read. Also, for some reason his plague survivors are all mentally deficient, so we have to follow characters around that don't really provide any thought-provoking moments.

Fifth, I was irked by the poor editing of this book. It seems to be at a high school level. Besides the numerous typos, there are many examples where someone is talking and it is not at all clear who it is. The whole book really stands out to me as a low class effort by both author and editor. It is originally from 1985, but maybe it should have been re-edited for the 2000 edition.

Finally, we have this whole idea of the plague really being a next evolution of humanity. This is fine. But by the end we never really resolve anything. What exactly is the next evolution beyond the noocytes? Bear dissolves into this pseudo-sciency mumbo jumbo and as far as I can tell all humans join this sphere that flies off into space. Hmmm. He could have asked a lot more interesting questions with his premise along the way. For example, if human personalities are integrated into the plague, can new personalities appear or will no new humans ever be born? He skims over some other interesting points - what about evil humans that join the utopian-like plague, is there a point to the plague to actually accomplish anything?

Overall Bear is playing with some grand ideas, but many authors have taken these same ideas to greater heights. When you write a book of this low quality and have bad characters, it is hard to pull off that epic and transcendent experience that he seems to be going for at the end. So my advice to you is look elsewehere for a good SF book. Here are three related recommendations, Contact by Carl Sagan, Speaker for the Dead - OSC, and The Stand - by Stephen King.