Customer Reviews

Proteus in the Underworld

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Published in 1978, the first Proteus book, Sight of Proteus, featured a popular seventies' idea, biofeedback, carried to bizarre and implausible extremes. In the future, "form change" machines will enable the human will to mold the human form via biofeedback processes. The hero of the novel is Bey Wolf. As an agent of the Office of Form Control, he looks for "unauthorized" and dangerous forms in the multitude of shapes humanity has taken for fashion and profit. Sheffield continued the series ten years later with Proteus Unbound, and this is the third and latest in the series though it is not really necessary to have read the earlier books.

Wolf is now retired and developing form change technology himself. However, a distant relative, Sondra Wolf Dearborn, asks him to help her solve a crucial puzzle. All human children are given "humanity tests". If they can consciously and deliberately alter their form they avoid being sent to the organ banks. However, some defi

Bey Wolf is what you could call a shapeshifter detective. Not so much that he turns into a werewolf, but in a world where people can change their shapes he is involved in policing the dangerous and outlawed varieties of this technology.

Now, though, he has packed that in and is working on some of the science aspects himself when a relative approaches him for help in this area, and he must do some mystery solving again.

the proteus books are probably sheffield's best. great characters, compelling locations, dynamic storylines, interesting science. what's not to like? i fail to see the "implausible" aspects of these books referred to in an earlier review (after all, sf is supposed to be a little aggressive in the science department - and this series is more about the _effects_ of the science than about the science itself). they're just plain cool.