Subject: THE BOHR MAKER by Linda Nagata

From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C Leeper)
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 1995 00:19:27 GMT

THE BOHR MAKER by Linda Nagata
       Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-56925-2, 1995, 325pp, US$4.99
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper

     Linda Nagata is one of the (surprisingly) small number of Asian-
Americans writing science fiction today.  (Offhand, I can think of only
three others.)  THE BOHR MAKER is her first novel (though her short
fiction has appeared previously), and this story, which combines nano-
technology and virtual reality concepts should fit right in with the
current trends.

     Which is, of course, a bit of the problem.  Nagata is a good
writer, but the ideas all seem recycled from other books.  There's a
space elevator, and a group that believes in the Gaia concept, and an
underclass living in slum cities, a female member of whom gets hold of
an advanced technology and becomes a sort of messiah, and politics
around the Indian Ocean.  (Having just read Neal Stephenson's THE
DIAMOND AGE, perhaps I found this even more familiar than it might
otherwise have been.)

     Nagata's main character is Phousita, a young woman of the slums
who lives with her "family" in an abandoned warehouse in a nameless
city which the publicity material claims is in India, but by ethnic
make-up seems more to be somewhere around what is now Malaysia, or
perhaps Singapore.  This sense of location is reinforced by the
repressive government and strict punishment system.  Phousita
accidentally becomes "infected" with a "bug" that gives her healing
powers even beyond what she realizes.  But the bug is proscribed
technology, breaking the chain of life by not just modifying an
existing genotype, but by creating a new one.  So Phousita is the
object of pursuit of the government, as well as those who were
releasing the bug in the first place.

     As I noted, there are many similarities to Stephenson's DIAMOND
AGE (as well as to many other "nanotech future" books).  But Nagata's
writing is not as dense as Stephenson's, making THE BOHR MAKER more
accessible to readers.  My main complaint would be that Nagata starts
out with a more interesting (to me) character than most in Phousita,
then shifts the point of view to some more traditional (and less
interesting) characters--the renegade scientist, the manipulative
politician, and so on.  I know you need these characters, but it seems
a pity to me that Nagata spent so much time on them at the expense of
her original character.  Naturally, your opinion may differ, but in any
case I would recommend THE BOHR MAKER for those who like the virtual-
reality, nanotech sort of future.

     * The other three Asian-American science fiction authors I could
think of are Ted Chiang, Somtow Sucharitkul (a.k.a. S. P. Somtow), and
William F. Wu.

%T      The Bohr Maker
%A      Linda Nagata
%C      New York
%D      April 1995
%I      Bantam Spectra
%O      paperback, US$4.99
%G      ISBN 0-553-56925-2
%P      325pp

-- 
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked]
"There are no scientific tests for race ... blood is blood, and bone is bone.
Race is a con game.  Don't play."  --Will Shetterly