Customer Reviews

Wetware

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

 

 

Once you get beyond the science fiction trappings, the clichés and the weak plotting, which may take some patience and more than one attempt at reading the book, you will probably enjoy the powerfully drawn atmosphere, the seamless sequence of doom, the many excellent details that give this book life in spite of itself. You will also encounter much derivative material; lots of the same ground has been covered far more daringly by people like P. K. Dick thirty years or longer ago. If you like Nova, much of this book takes you back to the crystalline, taut characterizations of his older books, which were absent from some of his more recent works. If you want insight into the issues he raises, such as genetic tampering, corrupt power structures, conflicted and doomed individuals, human identity -- get ready for disappointment, because he barely skims the surface and gets carried away by his elegant, beautiful writing. As a study in ennui, this one's lovely, and brings some of the tortured characters you never get enough of when Nova describes them. Bt that might not appeal to you unless you have a strong affinity with the way he presents the material.

Wetware is another gem in the Nova collection.

I bought the book yesterday and haven't done anything but read it since. Nova combines the adventures of characters Jack and Kay with the more sinister implications of the human genome project in this compelling, suspenseful novel.

Michael Dirda, reviewing Wetware in the Washington Post, said it best:

"This is a haunting, heart-stoppingly exciting, brilliantly structured novel of suspense, ideas and subtle characterization."

The only thing I add is this: a good read is hard find and Nova has once again delivered.

Review of Wetware by Craig Nova

Though officially titled Wetware, this novel would more appropriately be titled Wet Dream. The writer's misogyny is so consistently intrusive that it becomes the novel protagonist. Nova's world-building is vague, unconvincing, and clichéd, often more concerned with what his characters consider a hip outfit than with the physical, political, psychological or sociological description of his unnamed city. The book is dominated by unrealistic, ill-thought-out characters; and by the objectification and humiliation of women, both real and manufactured.
Hal Briggs, the protagonist, works at Galapagos Wetware where his first project "had been to design workers who would do jobs that no one else wanted."
The first and only hint that creating human-like life in a laboratory is controversial also comes in the opening pages when Brigg's boss congratulates himself on beginning to make these creatures "when other people were still worrying about whether or not such things should be done at all."
Not satisfied with creating slaves to work as janitors and garbage men, Briggs creates a gorgeous sex slave (named Kay) and programs her to love him unconditionally. He adds the capacity to reproduce to the mix of characteristics and so the stage is set for predictable disaster.
The novel's fantastic setting is never fully described, the details of his unnamed city shimmer before us like a heat mirage, evaporating as we approach.
What is most disappointing about this book is its deception. In the beginning, it appears to mimic those rare and wonderful works that delve into the philosophical underpinnings of scientific advance, raising questions and providing society with a forum for contemplation, and exploration of possible outcomes. These books live long in our memories: Brave New World; 1984; and closer to home the work of P.K. Dick and Margaret Attwood's The Handmaiden's Tale. True, with the exception of Attwood, these works are often high on meaning, and low on literary language, but the depth of their understanding of the human condition transcends bad writing. Nova's command of language is masterful, but beautiful prose isn't sufficient to transcend his superficiality, amorality, and perversion.
Instead of a novel exploring the moral and philosophical implications of artificial intelligence we have a book that reveals in, indeed celebrates, the possibilities offered by laboratory created life forms.
Nova writes at length about the nature of truth and beauty, yet depriving Kay of free will, thus enslaving her, is a perversion of real grace, beauty and love. Indeed, Nova articulates a lingering American nostalgia for slavery. After all, what else is it when something that looks and feels like a human, but has no free will, is compelled to stroke the needs of its owner up to and including performing sexual acts? Briggs is soothed and nurtured by the love equivalent of breast implants. Genuine female consent, in Mr. Nova's world, is irrelevant to male pleasure, and the erotic is not contingent upon it.
There is little unique or original in Nova's setting, rather it is a hodge podge of hackneyed and clichéd settings from science fiction films like Bladerunner and Terminator. Nova can't even come up with a unique crisis for his society to face. Instead, just as the Bunker-Hunt family did in Texas during the 1980s "a group of investors in India had been trying to manipulate silver futures."
Wetware is thin on plot and suspense. What plot exists is resolved by about half way through. Relieved of the tedium of storytelling, Nova's principal interest--ogling at, and touching women--comes to the fore. Because so many of the women in this book are artificially created replica's, with all their feelings, thoughts, and responses programmed into them, Nova is effectively erotosizing slavery.
The moral and philosophical assumptions of Wetware are repugnant to anyone who values free will. I found the misogynist objectification of women distressing to read.

Along with Richard Powers' novel Galataea 2.2, this is the best American literary exploration of the human implications of artificial intelligence. This is NOT a science fiction novel. It is a very good novel, with beautifully written passages, that uses emerging biotechnology capabilities to tell a more complex and subtle story than the Philip K. Dick novel on which Blade Runner was based.

What if we could create life to our own specifications? Or in other words, engineer ourselves to be perfect human beings? Good idea? Maybe not. Maybe we would still be searching and yearning--for what? For love? For transcendence? For whatever it is we find only in surrender and giving up control? Maybe the experiment would turn out to be a disaster. Craig Nova explores this (not entirely original) theme with grace and power in Wetware. It is not strictly science fiction although words like "source code" and "DNA" are used freely in the opening chapters. It is actually a philosophical fantasy. What makes this book wonderful is the sheer beauty of the writing, and his treatment of the characters--believable, troubled, yearning, tortured creatures. This book grabs hold of you and you cannot put it down.

I loved the book. What I liked most was the descriptive personalities and the set ups that paid off down the road. A great vision. I looked forward to reading each night. Highly recommended.

Craig Nova is a writer whose work deserves much greater recognition. Wetware is a novel that takes in the near future in a Blade Runner-esque landscape that is as much a meditation on aspiration and revenge as it is on genetic engineering. The narrative is fast paced yet detailed. The chapters on Kay playing piano are worth the price of the book alone. It does falls apart a bit at the end, but definitely one of his best.

The old adage, you can't judge a book by its cover, is never truer than in this case. The premise of the story sounds captivating, a wonderful idea. But the execution is...not necessarily lacking but never reaches the lofty height of the original idea.

Our hero(?) is in charge of making androids, synthetic humans who do the drudge work of society. These creatures are designed with little ability to interpret emotions or interact with reality. They do their jobs and shut up. Hal Briggs decides to change all that by building a new Adam and Eve. A secondary story is that of the looney supervisor who falls in and out of love and is certificable.

Hal himself is an unlovable characters, as forgettable as the androids he designs. For that matter, all the characters in the book (however interesting they appear) do such mundane things that they tend to disappear. This is a depressing novel, one in which people are seen as a cog in a machine, no more important than the phony androids they design. Is there a parable in all this that I did not comprehend?

The escape and their ensuing tales was the best part. Of course there is a reunion and the pregnancy at the end leaves the whole question open to doubt. Will we survive or better, should we survive?

If you a hard-core scifi reader you can safely skip this one. As other reviewers have noted the science is kind of weak. However, if you read more mainstream 'literature' this is a good place to start exploring scifi before moving on to the Asimovs, Heinleins and Herberts.

I hesitated before picking Craig Nova's Wetware off the shelf, feeling a little guilty that I was once again indulging the recent reemergence of my early adolescent fascination with science fiction.

You won't find reviews of science fiction novels in the pages of the New York Review of Books because science fiction is genre, and genre of the very lowest, basest, and most formulaic sort in the eyes of the literati.

Science fiction is so low on the totem pole that it stands apart from the other genres in my local public library. They have quarantined it off in an untouchables section, where each book is marked on the spine with the international symbol of the nerd, a little red rocketship.

OK, I made that up about the quarantine and the little red rocketship on the spine, and besides, there aren't any artsy literary chicks hanging around the Columbia County Public Library that I have to worry about impressing with my impeccable taste. So I snagged the book and looked it over without thinking too much about it.

And was surprised. Turns out Craig Nova might have very well made it into the New York Review. After all he is a Guggenheim Fellowship winner. I'm not sure exactly what that is but I've heard of it before - you don't forget a name like Guggenheim.

The protagonist, Briggs, is a genetic engineer in 2027 working in the maturing industry of genetic engineering. Briggs has done a lot of simple stuff with animals, and been involved in bringing to market the first, well the first subhumans, though they're not called that.

They've been psychologically engineered to function like uncomplaining domestic animals, sweeping streets, cleaning, washing dishes, and the like. They're smart enough to do the work, but too dull to imagine or want anything more.

The next step in the project is to create a creature slightly more advanced. One suitable for higher functions like police work and security, the perfect soldier, and Briggs is creating male and female prototypes.

But Briggs gets carried away and starts going outside the specifications. He decides to endow both prototypes with much more than is called for in the specifications. He gives them the mental and physical attributes to perform the police functions called for, but also genetically codes in everything else that the perfect man, and even more the perfect woman, would have.

A spurned woman's machinations complicate the plot, and lead to a denouement that explores the what we mean by love.

Wetware is a well crafted and engaging read that asks some important questions about what it means to be human, questions that aren't too far away from appearing in the daily news. But it doesn't really venture out of the safe shadow of a naivety that seems hopeful at best.

I dropped it off back at the library yesterday, and as I was walking back to the car I pondered the increasingly philosophical question: could it be that science fiction isn't just for nerds anymore?