Review of Bios by Robert Charles Wilson

To inform my current novel-in-progress, I went to all the vendors at WorldCon this August, requesting books about biological plagues from outer space. Bios was one of the recommendations. I am posting a discussion of his book because I am thinking of reviewing Margaret Atwood's latest dystopia as literary take on the SF genre. It's an issue Robert Charles Wilson has both written about and discussed at Word on the Street, Toronto. In preparation, then, here are a few words about Bios. Wilson's post-plague book is set, not on Earth like The Year of the Flood, but on a Kuiper Belt planet. The Kuiper Belt is a region beyond Neptune where scientists estimate there may be 70,000 heavenly bodies with diameters of at least 60 miles. Pluto is a Kuiper Belt object, formed by the whirling gas and dust left over when the solar system was formed 4.5 billion years ago. These kinds of details, assumed to be part of ordinary SF readers' background knowledge are part of the Science Fiction writer's bag of tricks. A mainstream literary writer would not expect readers to be so science literate. Robert Charles Wilson's story is suspenseful. He hints at a greater political universe, while retaining dramatic tension. This story has a narrow focus, tight time lines and no way for his characters to escape. His world-building is impeccable, based on one of the hot astronomy areas of the day. Bios is set in a post-plague future, where mankind has spread to Mars and several small Kuiper colonies to survive. The rebellious post-Earth settlers are forced to work with each other and with surviving Earth humans. This post-colonial relationship breeds resentment and economic politics, side conflicts which enrich the classic main conflict: Man versus the environment. Isis appears to be a planet of jungle paradises, snow-capped peaks and clear water. It is the landscape Zoe has been cloned, surgically upgraded and trained to study. Her cheerful loyalty to the "Family," a dynasty which controls much of Earth, is maintained by an internal hormone regulator or "thymostat." Part of the emotional interest in this book comes from an act of sabotage. A surgeon secretly removes Zoe's "thymostat," on the eve of her launch to Isis. As a result, Zoe must cope, for the first time, with normal levels of anxiety, arousal and unhappiness. On Isis, the microbes have evolved to be so aggressive, a breath of the air liquifies a human in minutes. This high toxicity makes the planet a profitable pharmacopoeia well worth the inherent risks. Unfortunately, the outside life is starting to find it's way into the research stations. Zoe, with her upgraded immune system and superior exploration suit, looks like she can survive this bios on her own. She is so confident, she interacts with the dominant life form, a social insectoid which reminds her of humans. This mistake, based on human prejudices, allows her to discover the spiritual secret of Isis: intelligent life in the rest of the universe is radically different from that on Earth. I have to recommend Bios as an example of quality SF. It's a page-turner that constructs a unique and compelling fictional world which doesn't MacGyver happy ending.