Seed

by Rob Ziegler | Science Fiction & Fantasy |
ISBN: 1597803251 Global Overview for this book
Registered by TomHl of Pewaukee, Wisconsin USA on 1/4/2016
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1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by TomHl from Pewaukee, Wisconsin USA on Monday, January 4, 2016
I bought this trade-sized paperback today at a used book store in Brookfield, Wisconsin, USA.

Journal Entry 2 by TomHl at Pewaukee, Wisconsin USA on Thursday, December 15, 2016
I was participating in a science fiction reading challenge that required me to read a first novel by a new science fiction writer published in 2011. So I looked at Locus’s recommended reading list and found mostly fantasy, but a few that would qualify, and this was one of them. Ultimately, I didn’t get a copy at that time. But I remembered it and picked up a copy at a local used book shop this year when I saw it.

Seed was nominated for 2012 Locus First Novel Award, and was also a finalist for 2012 Campbell Award.

The setting is a dystopic climate changed US, mostly in the intensely warmed and drought stricken southern plains. Most surviving people have become migrants, obtaining seeds of crops engineered to survive in the new climate from a single source (located in Denver) that controls everything, including a vestigial US government. Travel to and from Satori is a desperate and dangerous journey in broken down vehicles, and amid criminal gangs.

Initially, we are introduced to three sets of characters at different places in this world, whose paths will later intersect. The first, and strongest is centered on Brood. Brood and his autistic little brother Pollo are orphaned migrants who originated in Mexico and travel with Hondo, who survive not by farming seed, but by scamming it off of others. There is quite a bit of Spanish and Mexican slang in Brood’s words and it is not one of my languages, but perhaps other readers know more of this. I was able to figure out most of it from context, but combined with worldbuilding revelations, I found it challenging.

A recurring attribute of all of the characters is loss of loved ones and the need to maintain meaning and identity while driven to violence in order to survive. Eventually, the violence became a bit more pervasive than I appreciated, but never without loss of the sense that this was something the main characters are driven to, either by circumstances or by design in the case of engineered beings.

The comparison to Paulo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl is inevitable, because both involve human populations that have become dependent on food engineered for control. However, while both also involve bio-engineered beings, The Windup Girl puts the technology under the control of corrupt corporations – while in Seed, Satori is a macroscopic engineered organism that organizes other life. Satori’s original purpose was survival in the new climate of Earth, but it has taken on its own imperatives. The realism of this conceptual extension is more fantastic and scientifically weak.

I found this a very strong first novel, and am disappointed to see there has been little further output from Rob Ziegler in the couple of years since it was published. Hopefully, something is in the works.

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