Fiction Reviews
The Secret of Life
(2001 / 2022) Paul McAuley, Gollancz, £12.99, pbk, ix + 402pp, ISBN 978-1-399-60377-5
This is a Gollancz SF Masterwork title, first published in 2001, so is now 25 years old, blimey. Having been published in 2001, it appeared on the awards short-lists in 2002 for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the BSFA Award for Best Novel. It is strange reading this novel given it is now 25 years old, as it was set in 2025 on a damaged Earth where the quest for scientific solutions is hampered by commercial greed, political infighting and a mass fear that whatever we do, we can only make things worse. Then a miracle. Scientists at the Chinese Martian base have discovered the 'Chi' -- an active micro-organism several kilometres below the surface. Very active. Left undisturbed for 2 billion years, it has super evolved and is able to swap DNA at will, maximising its survival whatever the environment. Against all protocol the 'Chi' is brought secretly back to Earth. Where it is stolen, and accidentally plunged into the pacific Ocean. Only a few weeks later, a giant slick of plankton is found growing at an exponential rate. It is sucking the seas dry of life. And the question must be asked. Who is colonising whom? And also, what can be done about it?
The novel is told over 3 parts – Life on Earth, and Life on Mars, then Fugitive Life, but first we an introduction written by Pat Cadigan in 2022, highlighting McAuley’s ability to write uncannily accurate Martian landscapes, but also the perils of trying to predict what is going to happen on Earth with two examples, one featuring the almost addictive aspects of social media, and the other, set a few years later when society was bowed by CoVID.
However, the uninitiated might think that Paul McAuley has written a self-help book, given the title, but what we have here is a science fiction thriller where a Chinese expedition to Mars has secretly brought back a microbe that they hope to exploit, which is no sooner released into the Pacific after a botched attempt at stealing it by the all-powerful biotech firm called Cytex. The microbe has a DNA/RNA structure which gives it the ability to adapt and it finds in the ocean the perfect conditions to grow into floating islands which also have the capacity to kill the native marine life and disrupt the food chain.
The Americans then launch their own trip to Mars, which includes genius, maverick, scientist Mariella Anders whose character really jumps off the page because she is so different to everyone else in the novel, including the Cytex scientific stickler, Penn Brown, who takes control of the mission for his own nefarious ends, or rather his company’s.
There is a real sense of adventure as the expedition journeys and lands on Mars and has a nod to The Thing as the life-form infects the Chinese party who have been boring through the surface of the planet searching for more samples of the organism “Chi”. The adventure continues as Mariella returns to Earth and goes on the run from NASA and Cytex, taking with her some samples of the Martian organism and a cat and mouse game begins as Mariella finds herself at the mercy of governments, and organisations and eco-groups, all with their own agendas, but one common way to achieve them – take control of the Chi. The plot is marred occasionally by a tendency to over explain in some weighty info-dumping passages and some tantalising side-references which turn out to be dead-ends, or just fizzle out. Apart from all this “telling”, the book is written in present-tense which I suppose adds to the immediacy of the narrative drive and sense of danger, but it may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
Given that the book is now twenty-five years old, it is interesting to see what McAuley got right when looking into his scientific crystal ball, but if anything his predictions about social divides, dominant corporations, and the super-rich are more on the ball than his extrapolations about climate change, and scientific advancements. Strangely enough, there has been some recent concerns about the over-abundance of certain types of seaweed which are both native and invasive, creating large blooms with some seaweeds becoming free-floating and then able to reattach elsewhere affecting coral reefs and some sea life as well as coastal communities, so who needs a Martian organism to mess things up? The Secret of Life starts well, but the ending is a bit of a let-down, finishing with a hopeful whimper than a bang, but it is still worth reading, and miles better than most techno/bio thrillers.
Ian Hunter
See also Arthur's review and also Jonathan's.
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