Product Description

A young Russian boy, accompanied by his devoted minder, turns up in Japan and presents a problem to the American security officials who take on his case. For the boy appears to be part of a sophisticated Soviet experiment and to have the mind of a dead astronaut imperfectly imprinted on his own. If the boy is to be believed, then the experiment has been extended to a whale... And in Mexico, ground-breaking research by Nobel Prize winner Paul Hammond and his disparate team has shown that what we perceive as the Universe is no more than the ghost of the real thing. Signals received by his radio telescope show that the Universe God created no longer exists. Then the whales start singing their death-yantra throughout the oceans of the world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #680457 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Ian Watson was born in 1943. He lectured in Tanzania and Tokyo and taught Future Studies at Birmingham Polytechnic. He began publishing sf with 'Roof Garden Under Saturn' for NEW WORLDS in 1969 but it was with the publication of THE EMBEDDING in 1973 that he really established himself as a writer of rare power and vision.

Customer Reviews

Flawed Yet Fascinating
A fascinating, early sci-fi novel by reknowned British author Ian Watson. This is a mindblowing though somewhat flawed novel that weaves together a multi-stranded narrative structure, centering around communication, perception of language and the origins of our universe and written in a manner that makes it one of the finest examples to emerge from the New Wave movement.

Foremost among the narrative structure, a Soviet (this book was written in 1975) research establishment based at a remote outpost on Sakhalin Island has established a method of imprinting the human consciousness into the brain of a modified, programmed whale, with the future aim of using such programmed whales to provide military intelligence on the locations of US naval shipping and for economic use. In Japan, a 6 year old Russian child, with his minder, has turned up from the above-mentioned Soviet establishment and seemingly appears to possess the mind of a supposedly dead Soviet cosmonaut. High up in the mountains of Mexico a Nobel Prize-winning megalomaniac of a scientist, Paul Hammond, has made the earthshattering discovery that signals received from his radio telescope demonstrate that the Universe is really composed of antimatter particles and that this matter universe is really only a 'ghost' of the real Universe that will eventually collapse in on itself. These revelations eventually come together in a shocking climax that is quite disturbing in its bleak nihilism.

Where this book excels is in its excellent use of characterisation and structure. This is perhaps at the expense of pacing as the first half of the novel is quite slow and appears at times to plod along though admittedly the pace picks up considerably towards the end. However Watson's evocative use of language to describe the psychology of the novel's characters, their surroundings and the environment at large, particularly the oceans, more than makes up for that particular shortcoming. Watson's speculations on the origins of the Universe and the method of imprinting human consciousness onto whale brains are also quite bold and daring, written in such a way that they come across as quite plausible to the reader and easily understood. There is also however the minor annoyance of certain characters briefly popping up midway through the book, namely the Italian journalist Gianfranco Morelli who exists only to offer alternative explanations to the origins of the Universe.

Ultimately this novel is all about communication. Communication between humans, communication between humans and whales, communication between animals, communication between humans and the Universe. This novel is a vivid reminder that without communication, we then lose our common humanity and we are subsequently nothing.