BERNARD BECKETT is one of New Zealand's most outstanding writers and has won many awards in the course of his career. Genesis was written while he was on a Royal Society genetics research fellowship investigating DNA mutations.
More successfully than any other novel I've read recently, Bernard Beckett's Genesis epitomises the investigative ideal of science fiction. By any standards it's a short novel and at 150 pages is perhaps more truly a novella, but in a genre given to overinflated, ponderous tomes screaming out for an editor wielding a samurai sword, there's a refreshing efficiency to Becketts writing. Nothing is superfluous, nothing wasted. Genesis is Beckett's eighth novel and was inspired, we're told, while the author was studying DNA at the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Evolution on a Royal Society Fellowship. Previously published in New Zealand in 2006, it won the 2007 Esther Glen Award and the Young Adult Fiction Category at the 2007 New Zealand Post Book Awards, and went on to ignite a bidding war in 22 countries. The novel is due to get a global release this month, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and in the UK at least will be published as two separate editions: adult and young adult. The themes in Beckett's novel encourage comparison with the work of SF's most successful fictionalising philosopher, Philip K. Dick. Both authors are interested in what it is to be human but their focus is very different. Dick asks what it is to be authentically human and tended to push an ethical agenda; Beckett's concern is the nature of consciousness and that takes him beyond the human to questions of artificial intelligence. And from this perspective ethics are little more than an affectation of human ego. It's interesting and a little disturbing that Adam Forde, the character in Beckett's novel who best epitomises what Dick would classify as authentically human, is not the end-point of Beckett's philosophical investigation but the flawed and misguided genesis of the next stage of evolution. Beckett crafts his story around an interview, or more accurately the academic examination of Anaximander, a young student of history who seeks to join The Academy, the highest authority in her society. Three examiners pose questions intended to draw out the implications of her thesis - and something more - and in defending her thesis she gives us the story of her world and presents the philosophical issues. It's a neat trick for giving us the back-story. The setting is a post-apocalyptic society born from the ashes of The Republic. This was a short-lived social experiment that flowered briefly in the mid 21st Century in the southern islands of Aotearoa following a global conflict that looks to have destroyed the vast majority of humanity. The Republic was established by a wealthy entrepreneur called Plato (of course) who with foresight and incredible wealth bought in to the island economy in the decades before the war until his influence enabled him to move the nation toward a state of technology rich self-sufficiency. With little time to spare he convinced the locals to build a defense system that turned the islands into an impregnable fortress. When genetically manipulated plagues were released in 2052, The Republic was sealed off from the world and the integrity of its borders was maintained from threats without and within with extreme prejudice. Emerging as it did in a period of fear, Plato's Republic was easily imposed on a people simply grateful to be alive. Its motto was "Forward towards the past and it was founded on the principle that change equals decay. The result was a stratified and rigid society in which a person's social class was determined by a genomic reading, and individuality was suppressed in favour of subservience to the state. Where mankind had fallen in the past through embracing change uncritically, The Republic would attempt to control everything, including the ideas in people's heads, in a bid to keep decay at bay. Pure fascism. Anaximander's historical subject is Adam Forde, a long-dead child of The Republic who was key to the collapse of the first Republi --
In the year 2075, on the island Republic (once New Zealand Aotearoa), we witness young Anaximander before exacting examiners, seeking admission to the extremely elite Academy. Her subject for presentation and examination is Adam Ford, whose controversial actions some decades earlier affected the development of the Republic in ways that are only fully revealed in the novel's horrifying conclusion. This New Zealand- authored novel received that nation's highest award for YA fiction, the NZ Post Award. Brilliantly executed, the novel covers classic science-fiction themes such as apocalyptic events, a dystopian society, the nature of consciousness, and artificial intelligence as possible threat to humankind. It also delves into archetypical concerns of YA fiction, including identity, being different to one's peers, and the limits of acceptable thinking and behaviour in society. The book is very suited to audio adaptation, and is the first audio book by British actress Becky Wright. She has an appealing and appropriate voice for the role of Anaximander, but I would have preferred more vocal variation for the other characters. The reading is presented on three CDs, with a running time just under four hours. A contemporary classic of YA science-fiction. Kevin Mark is Australasian data analyst for Global Books in Print
Set in 2075, this brief novel concerns an isolated island society created as a refuge from an otherwise devastated planet. Founded on the model of Plato's Republic, it stresses security and order over freedom. A young woman named Anax is about to take her entrance examination to the elite Academy, the island's governing institution. Her exam centers on the story of Adam Forde, a soldier who rescued a young girl from an approaching raft (outsiders are to be shot on sight as potential carriers of the plague) in a rare example of freedom of choice. Offering a riskily original interpretation of his trial and sentence (he must work with an advanced robot named Art in order to enhance its intellectual development), she will discover that Adam's story and the Academy itself are far different from what she imagined. Framed as something of a 21st-century Platonic dialog with an sf twist, this deeply philosophical if somewhat didactic novel is ultimately successful in conveying its message about the potential consequences of the interaction of humanity, technology, and the environment. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/08.]-Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, North Andover, MA Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
More successfully than any other novel I've read recently, Bernard Beckett's Genesis epitomises the investigative ideal of science fiction. By any standards it's a short novel and at 150 pages is perhaps more truly a novella, but in a genre given to overinflated, ponderous tomes screaming out for an editor wielding a samurai sword, there's a refreshing efficiency to Becketts writing. Nothing is superfluous, nothing wasted. Genesis is Beckett's eighth novel and was inspired, we're told, while the author was studying DNA at the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Evolution on a Royal Society Fellowship. Previously published in New Zealand in 2006, it won the 2007 Esther Glen Award and the Young Adult Fiction Category at the 2007 New Zealand Post Book Awards, and went on to ignite a bidding war in 22 countries. The novel is due to get a global release this month, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and in the UK at least will be published as two separate editions: adult and young adult. The themes in Beckett's novel encourage comparison with the work of SF's most successful fictionalising philosopher, Philip K. Dick. Both authors are interested in what it is to be human but their focus is very different. Dick asks what it is to be authentically human and tended to push an ethical agenda; Beckett's concern is the nature of consciousness and that takes him beyond the human to questions of artificial intelligence. And from this perspective ethics are little more than an affectation of human ego. It's interesting and a little disturbing that Adam Forde, the character in Beckett's novel who best epitomises what Dick would classify as authentically human, is not the end-point of Beckett's philosophical investigation but the flawed and misguided genesis of the next stage of evolution. Beckett crafts his story around an interview, or more accurately the academic examination of Anaximander, a young student of history who seeks to join The Academy, the highest authority in her society. Three examiners pose questions intended to draw out the implications of her thesis - and something more - and in defending her thesis she gives us the story of her world and presents the philosophical issues. It's a neat trick for giving us the back-story. The setting is a post-apocalyptic society born from the ashes of The Republic. This was a short-lived social experiment that flowered briefly in the mid 21st Century in the southern islands of Aotearoa following a global conflict that looks to have destroyed the vast majority of humanity. The Republic was established by a wealthy entrepreneur called Plato (of course) who with foresight and incredible wealth bought in to the island economy in the decades before the war until his influence enabled him to move the nation toward a state of technology rich self-sufficiency. With little time to spare he convinced the locals to build a defense system that turned the islands into an impregnable fortress. When genetically manipulated plagues were released in 2052, The Republic was sealed off from the world and the integrity of its borders was maintained from threats without and within with extreme prejudice. Emerging as it did in a period of fear, Plato's Republic was easily imposed on a people simply grateful to be alive. Its motto was "Forward towards the past and it was founded on the principle that change equals decay. The result was a stratified and rigid society in which a person's social class was determined by a genomic reading, and individuality was suppressed in favour of subservience to the state. Where mankind had fallen in the past through embracing change uncritically, The Republic would attempt to control everything, including the ideas in people's heads, in a bid to keep decay at bay. Pure fascism. Anaximander's historical subject is Adam Forde, a long-dead child of The Republic who was key to the collapse of the first Republi --
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