Darwin’s Radio is heavy on genetic science, and I will admit I do
not have a firm grasp of the technical terminology Bear and his gene-savvy
protagonists throw around in their quest to understand a radical break in human
evolution caused by a long-dormant virus. But here’s an effort to explain the
novel’s plot:
The human genome contains the “junk code” of old viruses
(viruses even older than humans or their immediate evolutionary ancestors) that
found a way to infect sperm or egg cells. The human genome, in fact, contains a
lot of so-called “junk DNA” that does not really have a clear purpose; when
cells are replicating, this information does not result in the creation of
actual cells or parts of cells. Rather, the junk DNA just hitches a ride.
Bear asks, “What if this junk DNA, one of these dormant
viruses that have found a way into our genes, suddenly reactivated itself?”
More daringly, Bear asks, “What if these viruses could change the genetic
characteristics of an organism?” In Darwin’s
Radio, a big biological computer guides evolution. Sudden environmental
stresses cause dormant retroviruses to reactivate within the human genome. These
viruses possess the ability to change an organism radically in just one
generation. Bear speculates that such a change may have led to the break
between Homo Neanderthalis and Homo Sapiens in our evolutionary past. Darwin’s Radio imagines an evolutionary
successor to modern humans. The SHIVA virus, as Bear’s fictional researchers
term it, reactivates itself within the human genome, and causes women to give
birth to Homo Sapiens Novus.
For a more extensive discussion of the novel, see Hayles
essay “Wrestling with Transhumanism” in Transhumanism
and its Critics (2011). The key point that I want to record here is that
Bear imagines humans and their genes as part of a larger embodied system
physically connected to the environment. What happens in the environment not
only has indirect consequences (lack of food, pollution, disease, etc.) for
humans, but also can literally trigger the human to become something different.
This is a speculation about an alternative mode of evolution in which changes
happen suddenly, rather than gradually over eons. Because the human genome
contains dormant codes that can be reactivated by the SHIVA virus, the human
can rapidly change to meet new environmental stresses, thus becoming posthuman.
The novel implies that the source of this stress comes from
modernity and the increasing pace of life. The Homo Sapiens Novus, who Bear introduces at the end of the novel,
develop much more quickly than human infants develop, and possess the ability
to communicate through chromatophores on their faces (like a squid or cuttlefish).
They also possess heightened intellects and the ability to communicate
information much more rapidly using specialized speech organs. This rapid
evolutionary change is not something humans control. Rather, it is a monstrous
emergence that takes place within a human, technological, environmental, and non-human
system.
Wild Seed, Octavia
Butler
Doro is a spirit that inhabits the bodies of his victims. He
has lived for millennia. Sudden pain or fatigue will cause his consciousness to
leap instantly to the next available human host. When Doro possesses a host,
the host immediately dies, and Doro assumes control of the body. When Doro
leaves a body, then, just dead flesh remains. Doro can occupy a strong, young
body perhaps for a couple of years, but eventually he develops a hunger that
requires him to kill and possess a fresh body. Doro cannot die. Nor does he
have a choice but to kill.
The novel begins when Doro meets Anyanwu. Anyanwu possesses
the ability to take on any animal form provided she has tasted that animal’s flesh.
She also has the ability to control her body at a cellular level, allowing her
to shape-shift, regenerate herself from injury, and create medicines within her
own body. Like Doro, she does not die.
Doro has never encountered “wild seed” like Anyanwu. Doro is
a collector: he uses his unlimited time to assemble “seed colonies” containing
individuals who possess special abilities like telepathy or telekinesis. Over
centuries, he directs various bloodlines, coercing people to procreate with
threats and manipulation, and even siring hundreds of children himself using
various bodies he has appropriated. His aim is to create a race of posthumans
who combine the best attributes of the gifted individuals he gathers together. However,
not even his best creations can match Anyanwu.
Wild Seed is a
fascinating novel that could yield a lot of analysis: there is a commentary on
slavery and the African Diaspora, race, gender, sexuality… it is hard to know
what to take away from the text. Doro is truly an unusual character in the SF
universe. Although there is no high-technology in the novel, no cybernetics,
Doro is truly a disembodied subject: he exists only as a mental pattern to
which embodiment is secondary and inferior. However, he expresses no resentment
toward the “meat world,” like Case in Neuromancer
or Agent Smith in The Matrix.
Nonetheless, he does come very close to losing his “humanity” (if that’s the
right word) when he begins to regard people solely as bodies useful to his breeding
projects. With few exceptions, Doro has no respect for the sacredness of
individual people or bodies, especially if they do not exhibit the qualities
he desires or lend themselves to his manipulation.
Both Wild Seed and
Darwin’s Radio are SF texts that
offer powerful challenges to commonly-held conceptions of what bodies are and
what bodies can do. There is an entire subtext within Darwin’s Radio dealing with the social issues engendered by pregnancy
caused by a virus rather than male sexual partners: men become confused and
angry and violence against women escalates. The National Institute of Health is
also placed in the untenable position of advocating abortions to snuff out the
emergence of a new variation of human, which puts them at extreme odds with
religious fundamentalists in the US.
If you want to talk about embodiment, Wild Seed is a great potential primary text. The novel imagines controlling and possessing bodies, changing into animal forms, changing genders, changing race, and intimacy between
humans and animals; the body and all of its possibilities and permutations are
on display and under consideration in Wild
Seed.
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