Customer Reviews

Clade

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

CLADE is set 50 years after a catastrophic ecological collapse, the 'ecocaust', a human-caused mass-extinction right up there with the five worst in Earth's history. Civilization was saved by heavy-handed reengineering of the biosphere, but at a cost of billions of lives lost, and a tightly-regimented social setup. Budz does a nice job of worldbuilding in CLADE, and handles the ambiguous costs and benefits of new technology very well indeed.

Decent hard-SF that makes a serious attempt to extrapolate the medium-term future is never in oversupply. This is my favorite kind of SF, so I was very pleased to discover CLADE. There are, unsurprisingly, some first-novel rough spots here, particularly with the thriller-style plot, which suffers from some heavy-handed auctorial hammering-to-fit -- but, hey, you'll happily put up with a few warts for the technically-sweet payoffs in CLADE. Budz is clearly an author to watch. A sequel, CRACHE, is promised for Fall 2004. I'm looking forward to it.

Happy reading!
Pete Tillman
Read complete review: tinyurl.com/57pc3

"Clade" is an excellent first novel from Santa Cruz resident Mark Budz. The novel, set in a near-future world recovering from an ecological disaster, gives a refreshing and original outlook on the future of bioscience. In this future, you are assigned a certain biochemical signature which basically forces you to remain in your specially designated part of the world or suffer from an intense allergic reaction. Neat idea, right? The plot centers on a young man trying to move up in the world, who hopes through hard work and some luck he can get out of the ghetto clade (San Jose of all places!) into which he was born and achieve the middle class American Dream! Now, this wouldn't be a very interesting novel if all the kid did was work hard and remember his boss' birthday, so you have to read the rest of book to find out what happens. I really enjoyed it. The future society was very believable and very frightening in many ways. The main character was also very believable and very likable. You want to see this kid have a happy ending, despite all the problems he encounters. Now, having been to San Jose many times, I can totally understand why the author chose this city for his setting, but many residents may not approve of how the city is portrayed! Other then that, a great debut effort and I enjoyed it more then the author's third novel, "Idolon", which was also very original, but lost me at the end.

Clade has a novel setting in a collapsed biosphere, and a hero living in San Jose (talk about collapse) and made artificially allergic to other places, so snaps for that. On the other hand, the rest of it is tried and true, to the point you could write it in your sleep. Its like going to a "creative" burger or pizza place in that yes, some of the details are fresh and intriguing, but in the end its the same old burger and fries or pepperoni and cheese (anxious striving dweeb, caught between rock and hard place and annoying family and girlfriend, yadda yadda). And the ending, I can honestly say I read exactly the same thing in at least one other book this year... It was really more interesting to imagine some of the OTHER characters telling THEIR stories as opposed to this nebbishy guy we are stuck with. Maybe next time will see more energy in the story and less in the faux angst department.

If you're simply passionately into SF you will love this book. It's a bummer that people write irrelevant reviews (how is 375 pages "a short book"?), but I think anyone who can appreciate a truly inventive vision of a dystopian future will love it. The world that Budz has created is so meticulously detailed and thought out that you never need to suspend your disbelief. I can't wait to read the sequel.

The science fiction aspects of Clade were pretty good, and I wish more people could see the value and the danger of genetic engineering at the same time. Very interesting in that aspect. At first, I couldn't get over all the hispanic themes throughout the book. I just couldn't identify with it I guess. It began pretty slow, and many things were a bit vague. Just what did Ibrahim draw a picture of anyway? I couldn't find it! And the remote link system toward the end was a bit silly. But anyway, I still recommend it, for the forward thinking anyway, though the prose may be unremarkable.

I don't think this book is going to win any major awards but it is nice to read a fresh prospective every once in awhile. This is a fun little novel interesting concept even it is a bit hazy in the middle with a fast narrative flow. It is very rare to read one of these near future cyber-punk novels that doesn't deal humanity outside the solar system and I would like to see more books dealing with Ringo but I don't think thats ever going to happen.

Extremely cool ideas, but a tepid plot. Well written -- wanted to like it a lot more than I actually did. Still, worth reading. My understanding is that this is a first novel; if so, it's a standout effort. I'll be keeping my eye on this obviously talented writer.

The author of this book seems well intentioned, but just was not up to the task. He seems to know quite a bit of Latino slang, but that is not enough to save the book.

The plot is incoherent, the dialogue clunky, and the sex scene laughable. However, I really blame the editor for the mess. He or she seems to have run out of steam after about 100 pages and left the author to founder on his own. I doubt that even he has any idea what is supposed to be happening, and he is completely incapable of explaining it to the reader.

The last straw for me was when he used "penultimate" to mean "ultimate". Buy a dictionary, dude!

Planet Earth is not a self-sustaining orb anymore ever since the ecocaust occurred causing the destruction of humongous land masses all over Terra; killing untold billions. Scientists work feverishly to save theplanet as the ice caps rise, causing the oceans to deepen, drowning islands and shorelines. The ozone layer has more holes than Swiss cheese so that many inland communities are domed.

Populations are confined to certain geographical regions known as ecotectural zones or Clades and bioengineered sensors prevent one community from interacting with another. Genetically engineered plants and trees pump badly needed oxygen in the air and people like Rigo is a sytech working for Neogenetic's and does his best to work within the system, until he understands that through bioengineering and the use of pherions, the powers that be control what one thinks and feels. Now Rigs works within the system to change it.

Thanks to mankind's greed, stupidity and blindness, Earth has destroyed itself. Now instead of starting over, the in crowd is rebuilding the world the way it used to be only now they are in charge. There are such strict class and caste structures that artificial wars exist between people. Everyone knows they are being drugged into docility but very few care and those that do are the true heroes of the CLADE.

Harriet Klausner

Clade will take its place in the canon not so much alongside cyberpunk novels in the mold of Gibson, Stephenson, and Dick but rather with the countless offerings warning of looming catastrophe from climate change and genetic engineering. It also makes pretensions towards the problems of a police state armed with too much power over the (lack of) privacy in its citizenry.  But even for this very forgiving audience it is a highly forgettable book. It is a good idea that got stood up at the altar by the plot. It is a short book that is over before it really found anything to talk about. It may live with some readers for the cool idea (and name) of "clades" as private, autonomous, and closed cultures but really there's nothing here that hasn't already been explored. The canon will completely absorb this book and--aside from pushing notions of what can be done with biological rather than mechanical agents--will do nothing to influence the genre.

WHO SHOULD READ

The hardcore Greenpeace adherent might find some merit in this book and it really appeals to any reader absorbed in the politics of anti-capitalism and climate change. However, those readers would be far, far better served by Kim Stanley Robinson's Forty Signs of Rain. For readers interested in how future technology might change society, there might be some interest here as well but, again, they would do better to read the works of Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. We really don't see much else in this book and we're honestly puzzled where the positive press is coming from.

WHO SHOULD PASS

Every point of plot has been done already and done better as we mentioned above. The coolness of the novel is in the idea of "pherions" and "clades" both of which can be summed up in a 2-page synopsis of the plot without the bother of buying and reading. After that, the best recommendation that the book has is that it's over quickly and that's hardly enough reason for anyone to buy. Here's hoping that those of you who invested in Crache found something better than we found here.

[...]