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November 27, 2004
Blind Lake, by Robert Charles Wilson
I’ve read three Robert Charles Wilson books before Blind Lake, Darwinia, The Chronoliths and Bios, and while all three books intrigued me, I had certain problems with each and every one of them. For instance, Wilson begins to introduce us to the entire rationale of Darwinia halfway through the book and finally we understand that nothing we’ve understood made the least bit of sense. Chronoliths and Bios both left me rather cold as well.
Wilson departs from strenuously bizarre premises in Blind Lake, and I finally found a book like his that I could say I enjoyed through and through. Short of a few editing problems within, and a character on the book back cover that doesn’t exist within the novel, Blind Lake is a wonderful and imaginative journey in the near future.
Central to the book are Chris, the author of a widely read and devastatingly unauthorized biography leading to the apparent suicide of its subject, Marguerite, the chief observer and exozoologist and watcher of a distant, alien, specimen, Tess, her odd 10-year old daughter that suffers from hallucinations and Asperger’s Syndrome, and Tess’s estranged father, Ray, who is the default head of the Blind Lake instillation.
Early on in the novel, Blind Lake becomes quarantined from the outside, with nobody knowing what is taking place, so the novel takes place in sort of a limited setting. The entire installation is following the passage of this one alien creature, using a novel and not-yet-understood self-replicating computer technology known as O/BECs.
Unlike Wilson’s prior work, he maintains a consistent story throughout, with a slightly surprising but not strenuously outlandish explanation for the quarantine and the discovery of new life. Everything is plausible and fits in with the time period.
I enjoyed Blind Lake and finished most of it during my Thanksgiving trip to my mother’s. And sadly, I have no more books to read!
This book can be found here: Blind Lake
Posted by Bastique at November 27, 2004 10:00 PM