Overview
Blending fierce, fast plots with vivid characters and mind-bending ideas, Greg Bear has mastered a powerful alchemy of suspense, science, and action in his gripping thrillers. Darwin’s Radio was hailed across the country as one of the best books of the year. His newest novel, Vitals, begins with a harrowing descent to a netherworld at the very bottom of the sea–and then explodes to the surface in sheer terror.
Hal Cousins is one of a handful of scientists nearing the most sought after discovery in human history: the key to short-circuiting the aging process. Fueled by a wealth of research, an overdose of self-confidence, and the money of influential patrons to whom he makes outrageous promises, Hal experiments with organisms living in the hot thermal plumes in the ocean depths. But as he journeys beneath the sea, his other world is falling apart.
Across the country, scientists are being inexplicably murdered–including Hal’s identical twin brother, who is also working to unlock the key to immortality. Hal himself barely eludes a cold-blooded attack at sea, and when he returns home to Seattle, he finds himself walking into an eerie realm where voices speak to him from the dead . . . where a once-brilliant historian turned crackpot is leading him on a deadly game of hide-and-seek . . . and where the beautiful, rich widow of his twin is more than willing to pick up the pieces of Hal’s life–and take him places he’s never been before.
Suddenly Hal is trapped inside an ever-twisting maze of shocking revelations. For he is not the first person to come close to ending aging forever–and those who came before him will stop at nothing to keep the secret to themselves. Now every person on earth is at risk of being made an unsuspecting player in one man’s spectacular and horrifying master plan.
From the bottom of Russia’s Lake Baikal to a billionaire’s bionic house built into the cliffs of the Washington seashore, from the darkest days of World War II and the reign of Josef Stalin to the capitalist free-for-all that is the United States, Vitals tells an astounding tale of the most unimaginable scientific secret of all–exposed by the quest for immortality itself . . .
Synopsis
Blending fierce, fast plots with vivid characters and mind-bending ideas, Greg Bear has mastered a powerful alchemy of suspense, science, and action in his gripping thrillers. Darwin's Radio was hailed across the country as one of the best books of the year.
Publishers Weekly
Bear's last novel, Darwin's Radio, won the 2000 Nebula for Best Novel. This inspired but disjointed SF thriller probably won't, though you wouldn't know that from rave blurbs by Tess Gerritsen, Stephen Baxter and David Brin. The book starts strong, with narrator Hal Cousins deep ocean diving in search of Vendobionts, primitive organisms harboring primitive bacteria that he hopes will catalyze his scientific quest for human immortality. Hal finds his Vendobionts, but as the sphere carrying him and his pilot ascends toward the surface, the pilot inexplicably attacks Hal, then the sphere. All survive, but soon after Hal learns that his twin brother, Rob, has been murdered. Both Hal and Rob had been pursuing similar paths to immortality, involving research into bacteria that colonize our bodies and that factor greatly in human life span; this research has brought them both into contact with a vast conspiracy called Silk, engineered by ex-Soviet scientists, that permits mind control through bacterial manipulation, with the trigger bacteria now infecting much of the world's population, including the U.S. president. If all this sounds far-fetched, it is, though the science is sound, and Bear doesn't make it more believable with flourishes such as a spooky Silk research facility in the middle of Manhattan hiding the immortal bodies of Russian elite including Stalin, and a book-ending assault on the seaborne headquarters of Silk; these and other narrative gambits smack of the Bond ethos at its hokiest. The novel is further undercut by Bear's confusing choice to alternate narrative duties between Hal and the former naval intelligence officer whom he turns to for help. Still, Bear creates strong characters and makes his pages fly, and his many fans will likely wallow happily in his paranoid vision. 8-city author tour; simultaneous BDD Audio. (On sale Jan. 2) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewHal Cousins was never close to his twin brother, Rob, despite the fact that both were microbiologists searching for the key to longevity. So when Rob calls to ask him if he has talked to their deceased father lately, Hal is confused and irritated, but not interested enough to follow up. He's focused on convincing a wealthy, eccentric financier to fund his controversial research.
Three weeks later, his backing secured, Hal is in a deep submersible in the Juan de Fuca Trench, looking for the primordial bacteria that long ago invaded human cells and developed into mitochondria. Hal believes that mitochondria, now essential to human cellular activity, are also the triggers for the cellular decay that leads to aging and death. Hal's hope, his all-consuming passion, is to find a way to use "mitochondrial chromosome adjustment" to stop this decay and give human beings immortality.
But deep in the trench, 8,000 feet below the surface, the submersible pilot freaks out and tries to kill Hal and wreck the sub. Hal initiates an emergency ascent, but things on the surface are no better. A scientist on the research ship has also gone on a rampage, killing several crew members while searching for Hal. Under suspicion by the FBI, Hal loses his funding, and his precious deep-sea specimens are destroyed. As devastating as that is, worse yet are the two messages on his cell phone. One is a strange warning and goodbye from his twin brother. The other is from Rob's estranged wife, Lissa, telling him that Rob has been found shot to death in a New York City alley. When a mysterious man who calls himself "K" approaches Hal with a package of documents from Rob, Hal learns that he is the target of a shadowy organization trying to stop his search for immortality. After his research is discredited, his apartment ia burned, and he's attacked on the street, Hal, K, and Lissa go on the run, trying to follow the clues in Rob's papers to the unravel identity of their tormentors and the truth behind Rob's death.
Vitals made me wish I'd paid more attention in biology class and told me more about the symbiotic bacteria that live in the human body than I ever wanted to know. But Bear does an excellent job of explaining the science in layman's terms without dumbing it down. The story takes us from the bottom of the sea to the Satlin-era Soviet Union to a top-secret facility in New York City to a venerated doctor's Caribbean paradise, all united by a fascination with the properties and possibilities of bacteria. Another bonus in Bear's books, often not bothered with in "thrillers," is the wonderful complexity of his characters. Hal Cousins is at first too arrogant and obsessed to be likable. But, as he delves deeper into the puzzle and learns some hard truths about himself, his brother, and the scientific community they were immersed in, he becomes someone who can at least be respected. The cast of supporting characters is equally nuanced, with each never being quite what they seem, to either Hal or the reader.
I thoroughly enjoyed Vitals and wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who wants a story to be as smart as it is exciting. (K.C.)