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    Bios
    Bios
    Bios
    Ebook249 pages4 hours

    Bios

    By Robert Charles Wilson

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Bursting with ideas, replete with human insight, Bios is science fiction in the grand tradition: a novel of bravery, exploration, and discovery in a universe charged with awe.

    In the 22nd century, humankind has colonized the solar system. Starflight is possible but hugely expensive, so humakind's efforts are focussed on Isis, the one nearby Earthlike world. Isis is verdant, Edenic, rich with complex DNA-based plant and animal life. And every molecule of Isian life is spectacularly toxic to human beings. The entire planet is a permanent Level Four Hot Zone.

    Despite that, Isis is the most interesting discovery of the millennium: a parallel biology with lessons to teach us about our own nature. It's also the hardest of hardship posts, the loneliest place in the universe.

    Zoe Fisher was born to explore Isis. Literally. Cloned and genetically engineered by a faction within the hothouse politics of Earth, Zoe is optimized to face Isis's terrors. Now at last Zoe has arrived on Isis. But there are secrets implanted within her that not even she suspects--and the planet itself has secrets that will change our understanding of life in the universe.



    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 1, 2007
    ISBN9781429915403
    Bios
    Author

    Robert Charles Wilson

    Robert Charles Wilson was born in California and lives in Toronto. His novel Spin won science fiction’s Hugo Award in 2006. Earlier, he won the Philip K. Dick Award for his debut novel A Hidden Place; Canada’s Aurora Award for Darwinia; and the John W. Campbell Award for The Chronoliths.

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    Reviews for Bios

    3.5/5

    135 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Well-thought out, finely crafted tale of our place amongst the stars. I especially appreciate his assumptions about the ubiquity of life, and the precious rarity of consciousness.
    • 3/5
      Beautifully written, tho way too wordy for me, but in the end it is depressing, and I have never seen the point of that.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written and full of ideas, this is something special.
    • 3/5
      Another re-read, just felt like revisiting this. Scientists on an alien world, believable tech, unstoppable alien pathogen. It's like the Andromeda Strain with a home-team advantage. As is usual for Wilson, there's more ideas packed in here than even the initial big premises indicate. I'd forgotten about the casually sexist/infantilizing way the female lead character is treated—and since it's coming from the narrator, not just other characters, it's extra-creepy.
    • 3/5
      My reaction to reading this novel in 2002. Spoilers follow.The idea of the Bios in this novel, a universe-wide mind created by cells retaining a link with each other even after they divide (the analog from quantum mechanics, Bell's Theorem, is referred to), that cells form a matrix for intelligence and sentience much like individual brain cells enable a mind or ink on a printed page (another metaphor from the book) encodes a text, reminded me of the works of Olaf Stapledon -- though, like almost everyone who reminds you of Stapledon, the timescale and style are not comparable at all. This novel is compressed, with the exception of flashbacks to Zoe Fisher's youth and the ending, which is about 150 years later (but, seemingly, still before the sequel story "The Dryad's Wedding".) It was also an idea that reminded me a bit of Poul Anderson's Genesis with its planetary nodes of intelligence. The story moves along surprisingly quick and takes a surprisingly grim turn with all the characters dying, killed by a Bios that can't control the largely autonomic functions of its immune system when confronted with the Terran descendants of some sort of damaged life that seeded Earth. The novel is quite literary, being built around Elam's notion of "life meets life". Zoe Fisher, in effect a tool (designed by the Devices and Personnel section of Earth's totalitarian Trusts -- uncomfortably like medieval China in its attitudes including orchidectomy (castrations) -- of an unpleasant Earth. It's an authoritarian regime justified to end environmental degradation and war, its aristocracy descended from Nordic stock. She meets the odd life of the Kuiper belts, which rebelled from their Earth governors. Fear of plagues requires a long, and not frequently done, killing off of body fauna, for travelers moving between Earth and the Kuiper settlements. Kuipers are an odd, tribal lot that are partly libertine, partly puritanical and largely eschew the thymostats which regulate the moods of the rulers and their tools, like Zoe, of Earth. But the difference in culture and body fauna between those from Earth and those in the Kuiper Belt is nothing compared to the utter, implacable, rapid, evolving hostility of Isis' life to all Earth forms. Yet, Tam and Zoe and the other people involved in Isis' exploration feel Isis calling to them. Zoe, unknowingly stripped (in an act of spontaneous, covert rebellion by a doctor who turns out to have revolutionary descendants) of her thymostat feels not only the up and down of moods and fears but sexual attraction, eventually consummated, with Tam. The Bios, as Zoe lays dying, her life prolonged by her artificial immune system, tries to communicate with her. The image of life interpenetrating is also seen in various prion and viral incursions on the shelters of the colonists. I liked how the relatively simple, understated prose managed to convey the terror of Zoe and Tam being trapped in the underground digger complexes. The only thing not adequately explained is how the exploration party that, 150 years after the deaths of the original Isis' outpost, goes to Isis at novel's end. How is perhaps justified by a continuation of the work that created Zoe. Why the augmentation is chosen is not entirely clear. I did like Isis communicating with the second wave of explorers though it seems that, in this universe, it will take the events of "The Dryad's Wedding" to make that communication literal and detailed. Even then it will only be to one person, briefly, and the knowledge of the Bios will be lost (and a dark hint made that humanity is moving into regions of very alien minds). Another theme is orphandom. Humanity and the consciousness of its members is described as being orphaned from the Bios, and Zoe is an orphan.
    • 4/5
      Wilson is consistently creative, consistently imaginative and usually somewhat dark. Bios is typical in those qualities but what struck me most about this surprising book was that the heart of the book concerns human attempts to recognize and come to grips with a world-wide intelligence composed of all the life forms on the planet. I read Isaac Asimov's Nemesis at almost the same time and was struck by the different ways these two writers developed the premise and used it in their stories.
    • 4/5
      An earlier noel from RCW in which settlers fight for survival on a hostile planet. Lots of cliches there (innocent girl, evil companies, bureaucracy, etc.) but entertaining...
    • 3/5
      Interesting early novel from RCW about first contact provides a sobering and fascinating explanation for the apparent dearth of intelligent life in the universe. Particularly grim, especially towards the end, this is like an SF version of 'Being Dead' by Jim Crace. Also a good antidote to the gung ho Avatar.
    • 2/5
      I really liked this. Humanity on its first world beyond Earth, battling against a hostile environment. It has echos of Cherryth's 40 thousand in Gehenna in its vivid depiction of an alien biosphere, alongside the complexity realised in Aldiss' Hothouse.A short book, but well constructed with a refreshing conclusion - well worth a couple of evenings.

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    Bios - Robert Charles Wilson

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