Pulpy and awkward adaptation from a Podcast
(2/5)
Have you ever read a novelization? I’ve
read a few (the Alien trilogy being quite good [1] [2] [3]) but two in mind felt quite
wooden, awkward on the page: Gipe’s mildly interesting Back to the Future (1985)
and Telep’s disastrous Red Planet (2000). Of course, a novelization is a
novel written from the screenplay of a movie, but sometimes that doesn’t
translate very well and it leaves the novelization, as said, wooden and
awkward, unfit for the story to be experienced as a novel.
Finding new SF is a difficult process.
I have my entourage of favorite modern authors (e.g., Hamilton, Banks,
Reynolds, Bear, Brin, Brown, Robinson, Egan) but I’ve nearly read all their
bibliographies. I tend to read novels from the 1970s but sometimes I want
something fresh, so I take a chance on a newer novel from the secondhand
bookstore. I spotted Ancestor and it sounded like the perfect fusion of SF and
horror—a difficult sub-genre to do well. Unknown to me—because I haven’t been
in the technological loop for 12 or more years—Scott Sigler is well known for
producing the first serial novel via Podcast from 2005-2006 and one year later it
was printed as a novel. And like a novelization, the story, again, felt wooden
and awkward, poorly adapted from one medium to another (Podcast to novel).
Rear cover synopsis:
“On a remote island in the Canadian
Arctic, a group of geneticists has dialed back the evolutionary clock to
re-create humankind’s common ancestor. The method? Illegal. The result? A computer-engineered
living creature, an animal whose organs can be implanted in any person, with no
chance of transplant rejection.
The breakthrough could save millions of
lives—and make billions for the company backing this desperate gambit.
There’s just one problem: these ancestors
are not the docile herd animals their creators envisioned. Instead, their work
has given birth to something big, something evil… something very, very
hungry.”
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I should pay attention to covers more
closely. I would have jerked knees, elbows, jaw and toes if I had read more
finely that Sigler is compared to both Michael Crichton and Stephen King. He’s
also compared to Richard Matheson (of I am Legend [1954]) and Chuck
Palahniuk (of Fight Club [1996]) but I have no experience with those authors.
However, Crichton and King are two mainstream writes who I do have
experience with and, generally, their writing feels as mediocre as their
popularity—where does their popularity stem from, I am clueless.
Rather than feeling like the modern
pulp fiction of Crichton or King, Ancestor feels like a James Rollins
novel, books of whom I thankfully haven’t read since 2007 when I realized,
after three novels, that he was a shit writer (Deep Fathom [2001] is one
of the top ten worst books I’ve ever read). After three novels, the writing was
so systematic that it felt soulless and then it got worse by being ridiculous.
So, in essence, Ancestor has the
bad qualities of a novelization and systematic pulp. There everything you would
expect from a pulpy thriller novel: (1) a corporation willing to do anything to
get what they want; (2) a scientific experience that goes awry; (3) remote
locations that isolate the plot and characters; (4) a healthy dose of
helicopters, planes, guns, and explosions; (5) military bigwigs aching to
topple the project; and (6) a romance overshadowed by tension. But don’t forget
that this is also a so-called science fiction novel, so it must adhere to the clichés
of the genre: (1) pedantic scientific lingo, (2) brief orations about the same
lingo, (3) obtuse deductions that are always perfect, and (4) features the most
gifted—but ultimately flawed—mind.
The entire cast of characters are a bit
flat; though some history is provided for each, it feels dull and forced,
thereby lending no motivation to their actions… that is, aside from the pivotal
character of Liu Jian Da. She’s the one character who makes or breaks the
transgenetic project and who also saves them or kills them all. She’s a genius
and in the top of her field (see SF cliché #4) but has hallucinations stemming
from her work of mixing genes and body parts. Her own motivations, as she later
finds out, are beside herself; she understands what she has done but not
why she has done it. She watched the horror unfold, knowing only unto
herself that this was a big, big mistake.
That big, big mistake was
supposed to be a herd of tame herbivores that would grow human organs for
transplant. That what she thought she had coded into the genes of the
ova, but she later finds out that she coded for something entirely different
for reasons she’s unclear of. Either way, the multiplying cells in the cows’
wombs are growing at a ridiculously accelerated rate—something she did code for—but
not to the size that they are becoming. Rather than hooved ungulates passively
chewing grass, the little monsters within are sharply clawed, have jaw of
menacing power, and exhibit a carnivorous appetite while in utero
(originally all the sets were developing as twins, but one of them devoured the
other). It’s a predictable (based on the synopsis) ruse but aside from the
orations of the lingo, this is thick of the novel, this is what you’re paying
for. Unfortunately, there very little else to carry it.
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In the end, the publisher is pushing
this to be a mainstream thriller, so they print enticing quotes from authors
everyone knows in order to entice the easy-to-please mainstream reader. Maybe
there’s a small resemblance to a “the more of the story is…” but the thriller
aspect of the novel distracts from the possible message of scientific ethics. It’s
not altogether terrible, nor is it terribly exciting or interesting to read; it
teeters on the brink of mediocrity and slides into the chasm of pulp.
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