Brain Plague An Elysium Cycle Novel Joan Slonczewski 9781604504460 Books
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"Fascinating, flawlessly developed, meticulously detailed."-Kirkus Reviews **** "In Joan Slonczewski's Brain Plague...a starving artist on the planet Veledon agrees to let a colony of "brain enhancers" occupy her skull. These microscopic creatures live in the brain's outer linings, causing bursts of genius-or irreparable harm. The creatures themselves are like tiny human beings; one of their greatest concerns is getting their young to breed."- The New Yorker **** "Slonczewski's world building is magnificent"-Booklist
Brain Plague An Elysium Cycle Novel Joan Slonczewski 9781604504460 Books
An excellent addition to the Elysium cycle. I consider it an allegory about addiction in general, and dealing with the temptations. The voices of the little ones, the differences between generations and populations, and the evolution of them are entirely believable. I do recommend that you read The Children Star first - not strictly necessary, but you will have a deeper understanding if you do.Product details
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Brain Plague An Elysium Cycle Novel Joan Slonczewski 9781604504460 Books Reviews
Bottom line Thoughtful, meticulous novel on the nature of sentience, happiness, and religion. Strong on world-building, low on action, a little pedantic, but very much worth the read.
How does it treat women/same-sex relationships? Same-sex relationships are viewed as normal, with bisexuality as the social norm. Most characters have relationships with both sexes, though they are monogamous once married. A character who has relationships with *only* the opposite sex is seen as affected. Characters with enough money and status can switch sexes at will. The main character is bi, has had a serious relationship with a woman, and has a relationship with a man in the course of the novel; it's handled well, and does not come off as "Oh, finally, a man, now my relationship and sex problems are solved!"
Does it have explicit sex scenes? It has one quick sex scene. It is matter-of-fact, but not particularly explicit.
Would I read it again? Yes. It has a clear, precise style that's a pleasure to read and presents thoughtful ideas on what it means to be happy as a human being.
Would I publish it? Yes.
Joan Slonczewski is a big name in feminist SF, author of <em>A Door into Ocean</em>, an all-female-world novel published in 1986 and praised by the mainstream. I'm always skeptical of utopian-women's-world novels (I believe women are human beings, and that human beings are incapable of creating a utopia), so I approached "Brain Plague" with skepticism. Sure, it's not set on the same world as "A Door into Ocean," but it's set in the same universe--would it romanticize women and smooth off their inconvenient human edges?
<em>Brain Plague</em> follows the life of young artist Chrysoberyl (Chrys for short). Chyrs agrees to participate in a lucrative medical trial--allow microscopic sentient organisms ("micros") to live on the surface of her brain and worship her as a god, and she'll receive not only a fantastic health plan (enough to keep her young for decades) but also the assistance of the micros in her daily work. Micros live at superspeed--a month is a full generation for a micro civilization--and they work for their gods. (Imagine an entire mathematically and artistically gifted civilization presenting you with months' worth of work and research, every day.)
The micros pose their own dangers, of course. If Chrys fails to keep watch over her population, they may accelerate her brain's dopamine production, drug her into a blissful stupor, and overrun her brain and body. "Vampires," carriers parasitized by their micros, roam the nastier parts of Chrys's city (and even hijack ships in space).
Slonczewski's world-building is precise, presenting a future urban society so fleshed out you could roleplay in it. From micros to sentient houses to alien art galleries, she describes everything with a guidebook's level of detail, a careful recreation of a unique culture. She uses her setting and society to explore issues of how humans choose to set the boundaries of sentience (is a micro too small to be sentient?), religion (is it ever right to pretend to divine power, and in how many ways can it be wielded?), happiness (how can any carrier resist giving in to the self-annihilation of dopamine overload?), and loneliness (once you've had a civilization in your head, is it possible to survive alone?).
Slonczewski goes over some ground too many times, but, in general, she handles these ethical issues in a thoughtful, careful way. She romanticizes neither women nor men (nor humanity in general), and never veers anywhere near the saccharine, unbelievable "women can create universal harmony!" trope I worried she might.
Read if you have the patience for thorough world-building and like heavily thematic stories on identity and the biological vs. constructed nature of being human.
SPOILER WARNING
Content warnings (may contain spoilers) Drug abuse and addiction, death from drug abuse, painful recovery from drug abuse, voices in one's head, people controlled by voices in their heads, hate crimes and murder (including killing of a pet), deaths of secondary characters. I may be forgetting some; these are what I remember most clearly.
SPOILER WARNING
It is difficult to describe the plot of Brain Plague, if only because there basically isn’t one for much of its length. This is a novel, more so than any other I’ve come across, which runs almost solely on its base concept. Even when the plot finally materialises, it is quiet and unobtrusive as though ashamed to even be there. Had the concept been less solid, this would have been a trainwreck of epic proportions; as things are, though, the novel indeed holds up.
The concept, put as simply as possible, is this in the far future, colonies of sentient microbes have begun to interact with and live within human beings. The microbes perceive time much faster than humans do – for instance, an hour of our time is equivalent to around a month of theirs – and so many perceive humans as gods due to humans’ seemingly infinite lifespan. A few microbe colonies, however, have learned differently they know that by manipulating dopamine levels in their hosts’ brains, they can effectively take over and themselves become the gods. The microbes are developed in ample detail over the course of the book and I consistently found them utterly fascinating; for that matter, I was fascinated by much of the world building seen in this novel.
Brain plague follows the experiences of Chrys, a struggling artist who accepts a microbe colony in the hopes that they will help her in her work. In this regard, they help handily; in others, they quickly cause problems. Chrys finds herself being treated with suspicion by many non-carriers, and her “people” are ever-keen to grant her the reward of dopamine should she allow them to do so. Chrys muddles through the various trials that being a carrier brings; this, really, is the closest to a plot that this book ever gets.
The writing itself is great, albiet a tad dense in places. Chrys and her microbes are developed wonderfully, each with distinct personalities that evolve over time. The same can’t be said, however, for the rest of the book’s humans; all too often they seemed to bleed into one another, and there were a couple of points where I had to go back and remind myself who someone was.
This book is, in fact, the fourth book in a series. Several other reviews recommend reading the previous book first, though having not done that I can confirm it is by no means compulsory. Overall, this is a book far better suited for SF readers than for readers in general, though the former will probably get quite a bit out of it.
I had high hopes for this book but in the end was disappointed. The author created a fantastic world where whole civilizations lived and died inside the skulls of human hosts, communicating with their hosts, other hosts and civilizations, and creating in the outside world. I found this world fascinating and kept hoping for a storyline I could follow. The story seemed to wander all over the place, and after finishing, I'm not sure I could tell someone what the main plot was supposed to be.
I loved the idea, and I loved the libertine Eleutherian community and their nightclubs. Now the microbes experience an entire lifetime in the equivalent of human weeks. Hence my nits. Chrys, God of Mercy, experiences conversation with her various people in her 'real time', yet, so apparantly do the Eleutherians. Shouldn't a conversation be taking place over a span of Eleutherian days? Or weeks? She closes her eyes for 2 minutes to punish people with an eclipse lasting months(?). Yet she sleeps, waking every 2 hours so her people won't start misbehaving - Is that not the equivalent of decades 'without the sun'?
An excellent addition to the Elysium cycle. I consider it an allegory about addiction in general, and dealing with the temptations. The voices of the little ones, the differences between generations and populations, and the evolution of them are entirely believable. I do recommend that you read The Children Star first - not strictly necessary, but you will have a deeper understanding if you do.
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