January 17, 2013
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The least SF book of SF I’ve ever read
JDN 2456310 EDT 20:13.
Frameshift was set Twenty Minutes into the Future when it was written in 1997, so by now it is actually set in the recent past. This is not as weird as it sounds, because actually most of the events in the story could actually have happened. If there were a little girl who was a cloned Neanderthal growing up in secret somewhere in California, we might not actually know that. Also, it’s almost certainly possible. Honestly, it’s the action scene at the end that culminates in a helicopter crash that would be least likely to happen (and that we’d definitely know if it had).
There are really only two parts of the novel that are SF: One is that one of the main characters is telepathic, which frankly didn’t even need to be the case given how little impact it has on the narrative. The second is that the protagonist geneticist discovers something about introns that is not only untrue, but actually ludicrous in Darwinian terms (the discovery happens right at the end, and annoyed me to no end). Also, this ends up having something to do with the telepathy and a stupid notion of “Evolutionary Levels”. It was unbearably disappointing to see that Robert Sawyer is someone who knew enough about DNA to know what introns and PCR and RFLP are, and then said something so incredibly stupid about evolution.
The basic story is a murder mystery, which centers around neo-Nazis and corrupt insurance executives, both of which assuredly exist. A key theme is the very real issue of how insurance companies may use DNA information. Overall, it might be a good story for introducing mystery fans to SF as a genre, since it’s so light on the actual SF. But I wasn’t impressed.
Comments (2)
Evolutionary levels? What, like those Pokemon things? Yay for completely arbitrary and useless distinctions, I guess.
Telepathy isn’t ‘sci fi’ at all, it’s fantasy. There is no locus of ‘thoughts’ in the brain. Even empathy transmission is dubious.
Are you using the ‘science’ definition of ‘science fiction’ or the ‘mumbo-jumbo anything with lazer gunz’ definition? Because the latter is a shitty one.