Description:
When mainstream writers break the unwritten rule of literary realism (don't consider the future) and venture into science-fictional territory, the resulting novel can be brilliant (Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale) or weak (Paul Theroux's O-Zone). Literary author Craig Nova's futuristic novel Wetware does not achieve the brilliance of Atwood (or of literary SF writers like Ursula K. Le Guin or Maureen F. McHugh), but his novel is very good, and will please most readers of both mainstream and SF literature. Briggs is a biotech programmer, creating mice that say "I met you at the Seattle World's Fair" and beavers that sing a toothpaste jingle. Now he's lead designer on the project to create "creatures more like humans than the originals," engineered to do "the worst jobs, the ones that most people didn't want to do." Designing the male and female prototypes, Briggs finds himself making additions that aren't in the specs: a sense of beauty, musical talent, the ability to reproduce, the ability to love. The themes of Pygmalion and Frankenstein inform this intelligent, fascinating novel of humans with the godlike power to create new life. --Cynthia Ward
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