Times are not so easy for the human race in Wil McCarthy's novel Bloom. We are no longer in possession of our home planet Earth, we live as refugees in colonies on the asteroid belt and eke out an existence on the moons of Jupiter. Now humanity refers to itself as the Immunity. We have not been evacuated from our planet by a race of starfaring aliens looking to expand their empire, rather, we have been replaced by a the Mycora. These atom sized machines are almost unstoppable. Their sole function is to devour and remodel everything they come into contact with. John Strasheim, a shoe maker, is inexplicably picked to be one of a seven manned crew which is to be sent to Earth, a planet now forever changed, onboard a new state of the art ship as its reporter. This novel opens promising enough with tales of how the communities which live with the constant danger of a bloom erupting in their quadrant. Dealing with the fear and paranoia of being dissembled atom by atom by a microscopic entity which is never satiated is a horror that permeates the consciousness of all humanity. The novel peaks as soon as you read the first few chapters. The characters which dot this novel's pages are adequately portrayed but McCarthy's narrative I found to be very flat. He peppers this novel with tedious references to the intrinsic workings of atomic and biological minutiae. Something called Conway's game of life is liberally mentioned, a game/simulation which tries to explain how the Mycora exist and propagate. The storyline very much takes a backseat to the heavy handed approach of trying to get the reader to understand the mechanics of the mission. I found this to be a tiresome, tedious and turgid piece of literature which made me yawn more often than I care to remember. Avoid!






I am never one to give up on an author no matter how much I may have disliked a novel that he or she may have created that I had previously read and disliked. I disliked Bloom immensely but decided that I couldn't leave it at just one book. I decided to pick up The Wellstone and completely forget that I had read one of his novels before, it succeeded. Over a four day period I read a science fiction tale of teenage angst, rebellion, unbelievably wondrous materials, an Earth and its colonies rules by a monarchy, and fax machines which allow instantaneous travel across immensely large distances. Thrown into this we have a population of twenty five billion citizens who are immorbid, not immortal. People can die but an earlier pattern of themselves can be brought to life should their current incarnation suffer death. This is a very well thought out novel containing good characters, a moderately enjoyable plot and some hard science fiction. I can't go into too much detail as it would reveal the storyline, but, overall this was an enjoyable read layered with a somewhat didactic narrative.

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