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Accidental Creatures
by
Anne Harris
Anne Harris returns with an outstanding look at the near future. Never before has her technological insight been so acute, or her portrayal of sex and gender issues more startling or insightful.
A bio-technology corporation has created a new species, intelligent, four-armed, humanoid "tetras" who can live in the vats in which "the company" grows biopolymers. Both the tetras...more
A bio-technology corporation has created a new species, intelligent, four-armed, humanoid "tetras" who can live in the vats in which "the company" grows biopolymers. Both the tetras...more
Hardcover, 288 pages
Published
May 15th 1998
by Tor Books
(first published 1998)
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A corny collection of biochemistry puns - picture a future where manufacturing is no longer an industry as everything is grown from biopolymers that exist in toxic vats. The world is in castes, the shrewed businessmen, the nearly omnipotent scientists who live comfortably in ivory towers, and the downtrodden proletariat, working to their deaths in cell culture factories riddled with danger.
It's so goofy, everything is bio related. It's not paint, it's a self-repairing solar-powered mix called P...more
It's so goofy, everything is bio related. It's not paint, it's a self-repairing solar-powered mix called P...more
It's future Detroit, the automobile industry is rendered obsolete, biotechnology is the new commerce and the leading manufacturer is GeneSys, the world's leading producer of an artificial, organic fabric called biopolymer. This corporation also creates (and exploits) a mutant species called the "tetras"; humanoid vat divers who can live in the highly toxic liquid vats down in "Vattown" and harvest the biopolymer grown to meet the material needs of America and the world.
Strongly centering on biot...more
This is a kind of odd book cover to be reading on public transport. In Vattown, workers dive in toxic vats to harvest biological materials, while the company who runs the town experiment with genetic manipulation in order to create creatures who can dive in the vats without toxic effects. They succeed (hence our multi-armed chick on the cover), and the story gets a leetle bit crazily ambitious from there. It had some cool ideas though, and I liked the vat creatures.
Jan 14, 2008
Michelle
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
radical queers looking for entertaining scifi.
Shelves:
science-fiction,
gender-sexuality-feminism
Anne Harris is wonderfully entertaining. I recommend this one frequently. It's about a dyke couple growing up in a working class community of laborers in future Detroit. They're living in the aftermath of a vicious class war/union organizing campaign, surviving in one of the most dangerous industries around: vat diving. They don scuba gear and dive into genetically engineered growth pools. The material is highly toxic, and they all suffer from severe health problems. This follows one of their ki...more
It's futuristic and weird, two things I love in a novel.
interesting premise, good (diverse!) characters, and set in future Detroit.
Jun 16, 2008
Colin
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Colin by:
bruin trouble
This book was awesome, and really, really strange! I swear, sometimes I don't know where fiction writers get their ideas. Super political, smart, and interesting. Lots to think about in terms of labor, "normalcy," environmental justice, corporate power, and resistance. Recommended.
This was a time passer. What I enjoyed most about it was that it took place in Detroit. I didn't love it though and found myself skipping through it. It was well written, probably just not the right time for me to dread it.
Feb 06, 2013
Heidi Miller
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
seton-hill-writers
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