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I can’t think of many sci fi books in which microbiology is
the core element of the story—actually I can only think of one, the excellent Andromeda Strain of Michael Crichton,
which deals with viral infection from outer space. As to Greg Bear, author of Vitals (2002), he had the brilliant idea
of putting bacteria on center stage with, as we shall see, pretty good
intuitions.
Bear is an accomplished American science fiction writer. His
short story Blood Music won both a
Nebula and a Hugo Award, and his Darwin’s
Radio won a Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2000. He’s considered a ‘hard
SF’ writer, since science has a prominent place in his fictions (which is, by
far, not a prerequisite in science fiction).
Vitals tells the
story of twin brothers, Hal and Rob Cousins, who happened to be microbiologists
(the story is mainly told through the point of view of Hal, but we learn about
Rob via another POV character). The Cousins brothers are in their late twenties
and already very successful scientists. Hal had a tenure track position in
Stanford, however, at the beginning of the book we learn that he has been fired
due to a redistribution of resources at Stanford. So now he’s going rogue, that
is, he’s looking for rich patrons to subsidize his research and he's renting lab
space for his own use—a situation that I thought unrealistic, but I read
something similar recently in Science,
so... Good news for Hal, his trade is the prolongation of human life, a topic
that has the ear of many rich old men. In the first pages of the book we thus
meet Hal on a mission to seek the secret of eternal life in the deep ocean
floor…
