SOLVED. Future Earth story with Hippo-Person Opera Diva. [s]

[Jake]

Hi Folks, I've been searching for weeks for a sci-fi book that I read in the early 90's, about a future Earth dystopia (of sorts). One plot thread included a boy from a tribal-type group who visited "the big city" of human civilization, but that was the least-interesting part of the story.

One aspect was the intermixing of human and animal genes, and a significant plot thread was the murder trial of a person with hippo genes, which made her a famous opera diva. Her trial was intended to ensure that human-animal "cross-breed" were accorded full "human" rights, since you can't place an animal on trial. (It wasn't obvious from her appearance that she had non-human genes.)

Another plot thread concerned a colony of genius children, who were cast off (literally: sent down a river in small boats to die) from the genetic laboratory, because they were considered "defective" in some way. The children created beautiful "cities" of mathematical constructs in a shared mental space. When the AI's that governed the world discovered the "cities", they retaliated out of envy by stopping the flow of new children out of the laboratory, and eventually the colony died out.

Another plot thread was the pursuit of a beautiful woman by a man, through the virtual reality worlds that most humans largely lived in. (The author made clear that one of the tragedies of the story was that they never got together: At one point the man missed the woman in a virtual party because most humans, even in virtual reality, tried to conform to a standard model of beauty, e.g., tall, blonde, busty).

I read the book, which I think was the second of a series, while I was in Australia. I believe the author may have been British or Australian.

I would love to find this series again!

Thanks for the help!

[Kris]

Child of the River or Ancients of Days by Paul McAuley?

[Jake]

Thanks for the suggestions!

It turns out that the book was, The Celestial Steam Locomotive by Michael Coney.

Ancient Days sounds interesting, though, I'm going to pick that up.

[Kris]

Glad you found your book, Jake. Here's the link - The Celestial Steam Locomotive by Michael G. Coney.