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Amazon Best of the Month, April 2009: If robots began to self-evolve, learning to feel and create as we do, what traits would set humans apart--and help us survive? Beckett isn't the first to dramatize this question, and his
Genesis pays subtle homage to his predecessors (including Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke , and Philip K. Dick). But his near-future tale feels unique, and oddly credible. As the young historian Anax endures an examination by the Academy--an order of philosopher-rulers as imagined in Plato's
Republic--we're brought up quickly on a catastrophic backstory: accelerating climate change, dust storms, rising fear and fundamentalism, the Last War, and the rise of a new Plato, who builds an island republic and seals it behind a Great Sea Fence. Plagues decimate human populations outside, while the Republic's surveillance society (thick with shadows of Huxley, Atwood, and Moore) flourishes under the Orwellian motto "Forward towards the past"--until it falls to forces led by the young rebel Adam Forde. The Academy interrogates Anax on Adam's period of imprisonment with the most advanced android of his time, and we witness their vicious sparring on the virtues of men and machines, the nature of consciousness, and what gives any life worth. It may not sound gripping, but
Genesis reads like a thriller to the last word, propelled by the power of ideas longing to be unleashed. --
Mari Malcolm
--Ce texte provient de la
Hardcover
édition.
Product Description
“Explain to us why you wish to enter The Academy.”
Candidates for The Academy must endure a grueling entrance exam, and young Anaximander has chosen as her special subject the life of Adam Forde, her long-dead hero. She begins by telling Forde’s story:
Late in the twenty-first century the island Republic has managed to survive a devastating worldwide plague by isolating its citizens completely from outside contact. For many years, approaching ships and planes are gunned down, refugees are shot on sight. No one is allowed in or out. The islanders are safe, but not free. Until a man named Adam Forde rescues a girl from the sea...
“Anaximander, we have asked you to consider why it is you would like to join The Academy. Is your answer ready?”
To answer that deceptively simple question, Anaximander finds she must struggle with everything she has ever known about herself and her beloved Republic’s history. What is the nature of being human, of being conscious? What does it mean to have a soul? And when everything has been laid bare, she must confront The Republic’s last great secret, her own surprising link to Adam Forde, and the horrifying truth about her world.
Genesis is a provocative novel of ideas that forces us to contemplate the very essence of what it means to be human. You will want to finish it in one sitting, and you will want to listen to it again and again.