#40. BLOOD MUSIC By Greg Bear

Published : 1985
Pages : 262
Overall Mark : 7/10

Virgil Ulam is a maverick researcher working on biochips which will use DNA as a means of information processing. Ignoring guidelines for genetic research, he goes further, producing intelligent cellular matter which can outperform laboratory rats. On being found out and ordered to destroy the experiment, he injects himself with some of the culture, and walksout carrying a seed which will develop far beyond the limits of his brilliant but blinkered imagination.

GREG BEAR (1951-)
Born in 1951, Bear published his first story in 1967, and his first novel in 1979. Although his academic background is in English, he has established a reputation as one of the finest contemporary writers of scientifically rigorous SF. Blood Music won both the Hugo and Nebula awards in its first, shorter version. His other novels include Eon, The Forge Of God and Eternity.

VERDICT
This is a pretty humorous yet subtly intriguing look at how a simple virus could potentially transfom humanity into something barely recognisable. Bear brings us a vision that is both worryingly alien and scarily possible, and his slow pacing makes it a journey that feels real as each stage of the virus progresses. A fascintaing vision of a simple mistake leading to a complex change in mankind.