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There's a fascinating sadness about Nick Sagan's EDENBORN.
It builds, page-by-page, into a gut level conviction that all the hope and potential combined in his futuristic characters will not be enough to overcome the relentless extinction of humanity. In fact, we readers may well be traveling the last journey with our not-so-distant descendants.
Sagan builds on some speculative premises already familiar to science fiction fans of all periods and persuasions: worldwide plague wipes out all but a few dozen humans; super-sophisticated technology allows remaining humans to isolate themselves from infection; technology combined with old-fashioned human vices proves an even greater threat to their survival. Will there be another generation? Will the deadly disease strike again without warning?
Sagan provides much information but deliberately few direct answers. So if the ending is a drop-kick into almost certain biological oblivion and the means are well-worn genre cliches, is there a point to it all? I'm glad to assert there is --- and it's expressed with a riveting poignancy far beyond most writers of such recent emergence.
Drawing on the imaginative energy of young minds caught in a psychological web between real time and virtual existence, Sagan unfolds EDENBORN as a series of interwoven personal narratives by a cast of chemically constructed new humans. Nurtured in a utopian virtual reality "womb" by infertile adults desperate to preserve the human genome, their children must face the challenge of being weaned into a devastated planet where humans no longer matter.
Yet each member of Sagan's eccentric, winsome, and fatally flawed family is drawn with an eloquent devotion and care that raises EDENBORN far above the usual plague-tale formula. The outcome is a bittersweet mixture of tragedy and self-discovery that will resonate with readers of all ages, and leave us all asking better questions about the future we are making now.
--- Reviewed by Pauline Finch (paulinefinch@rogers.com)
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