Bios
Robert Charles Wilson's Bios is a short but rewarding novel about the exploration of Isis, a distant planet that is earthlike in many important but that is also toxic to humans. Humans can only leave the protected outposts in bulky and not always reliable containment suits. Until Zoe arrives. Zoe brings with her new technology, both external (a new type of suit) and internal (she has been biologically modified in order to better withstand the toxic environment of Isis). The book is concerned with the scientists who are living on the planet and trying to understand its dangers and its promise, Zoe and her place as a pioneer and an unwitting experiment, and the bureaucrats and managers who live and watch all of this from a space station orbiting Isis. Over the course of the book, one crisis after another arises as Isis rejects the newcomers, breaching their defenses and killing them, sometimes one by one and sometimes en masse. In the end, the question is not whether any of them will survive but what the future will bring for Isis and for humanity as a whole, how this doomed expedition might affect the lives of each and what it can reveal about life in its entirety.
Bios is an exploration of Isis, of human motivation, and of life and consciousness. A recurring motif in the book is the concept that "life talks to life," that "life touches life" (83), and it is this idea that guides the last quarter of the book.
But this motif is not a simple one. Degrandpre, the manager of the orbiting space station (IOS), afraid of contamination (biological, social, and metaphorical), represents the fear of the power of life, ever-changing and unpredictable: For once, he envied his father's stubborn faith. A prophet to pray to. Here, there was no prophet, no Mecca, no Jerusalem. No paradise or forgiveness, no margin of error. Only a devil. And the devil was fecund, the devil was alive. (148)
This devil is life itself in the form of a virus. To Degrandpre, this is terrifying. Later, he continues this line of thought:Here was the real horror, . . . this breaking of barriers. Civilization, after all, was the making of divisions, of walls and fences to parse the chaotic wild into ordered cells of human imagination. Wilderness invades the garden and reason is overthrown. . . . The tragedy of Isis was the tragedy of walls made vain. Not only the physical walls. He thought of Corbus Nefford calling him a "friend." He thought of the hygienic lies he broadcast to Earth on a daily basis. (167-8)
But Degrandpre is not a sympathetic character, nor is he particularly in tune to anything but his own paranoia and fears.
Zoe, on Isis, faces this breakdown of barriers as well and loses her life as a result, but for her this breakdown of barriers is liberating and even, at times, joyous. It is only the breakdown of her barriers, both internal and external, that allows her to discover the truth of Isis and of the universe, a truth she has long felt but not fully understood:We're not alone in the universe, Zoe. But we're damned near unique. Life is almost as old as the universe itself. Nanocellular life, like the ancient Martian fossils. It spread before the galaxy before Earth was born. It travels on the dust of exploded stars. . . . Look at it this way. You're a living, conscious entity. And so are we all. But not in the same way. Life flourishes everywhere in the galaxy, even in the hot and crowded core of it, where the ambient radiation would kill an animal like yourself. Life is supple and adaptable. Consciousness arises . . . well, almost everywhere. Not your kind of consciousness, though. Not animals, born in ignorance and living for a brief time and dying forever. That's the peculiarity, not the rule. (196-7)
Instead, she is told, planets live and talk to each other. Isis is one of them. "The stars--or at least their planets--were alive and had been talking to themselves (singing to themselves, Zoe understood) for billions of years" (198), and only by becoming contaminated by Isis, by becoming a part of Isis, is Zoe able to understand this.
In this way, Bios is ultimately about the fragility and the strength of life itself. The novel illuminates the fragility of human life in the context of a foreign and hostile world, in the presence of biological hazards and unfamiliar life forms, while simultaneously revealing the strength of life itself, in all its many forms. Zoe asks, "Why do humans worship gods, Tam?"
Because we're descended from them, Zoe thought. We're their mute and crippled offspring, in all our millions. (205)
For Wilson, in this novel, conscious life, whether seated in planets like Isis or humans like ourselves, is what is truly sacred. It can be damaged and, at least on the individual level, it can be taken away, but it is nothing less than the center of the universe.
Bios is an exploration of Isis, of human motivation, and of life and consciousness. A recurring motif in the book is the concept that "life talks to life," that "life touches life" (83), and it is this idea that guides the last quarter of the book.
But this motif is not a simple one. Degrandpre, the manager of the orbiting space station (IOS), afraid of contamination (biological, social, and metaphorical), represents the fear of the power of life, ever-changing and unpredictable: For once, he envied his father's stubborn faith. A prophet to pray to. Here, there was no prophet, no Mecca, no Jerusalem. No paradise or forgiveness, no margin of error. Only a devil. And the devil was fecund, the devil was alive. (148)
This devil is life itself in the form of a virus. To Degrandpre, this is terrifying. Later, he continues this line of thought:Here was the real horror, . . . this breaking of barriers. Civilization, after all, was the making of divisions, of walls and fences to parse the chaotic wild into ordered cells of human imagination. Wilderness invades the garden and reason is overthrown. . . . The tragedy of Isis was the tragedy of walls made vain. Not only the physical walls. He thought of Corbus Nefford calling him a "friend." He thought of the hygienic lies he broadcast to Earth on a daily basis. (167-8)
But Degrandpre is not a sympathetic character, nor is he particularly in tune to anything but his own paranoia and fears.
Zoe, on Isis, faces this breakdown of barriers as well and loses her life as a result, but for her this breakdown of barriers is liberating and even, at times, joyous. It is only the breakdown of her barriers, both internal and external, that allows her to discover the truth of Isis and of the universe, a truth she has long felt but not fully understood:We're not alone in the universe, Zoe. But we're damned near unique. Life is almost as old as the universe itself. Nanocellular life, like the ancient Martian fossils. It spread before the galaxy before Earth was born. It travels on the dust of exploded stars. . . . Look at it this way. You're a living, conscious entity. And so are we all. But not in the same way. Life flourishes everywhere in the galaxy, even in the hot and crowded core of it, where the ambient radiation would kill an animal like yourself. Life is supple and adaptable. Consciousness arises . . . well, almost everywhere. Not your kind of consciousness, though. Not animals, born in ignorance and living for a brief time and dying forever. That's the peculiarity, not the rule. (196-7)
Instead, she is told, planets live and talk to each other. Isis is one of them. "The stars--or at least their planets--were alive and had been talking to themselves (singing to themselves, Zoe understood) for billions of years" (198), and only by becoming contaminated by Isis, by becoming a part of Isis, is Zoe able to understand this.
In this way, Bios is ultimately about the fragility and the strength of life itself. The novel illuminates the fragility of human life in the context of a foreign and hostile world, in the presence of biological hazards and unfamiliar life forms, while simultaneously revealing the strength of life itself, in all its many forms. Zoe asks, "Why do humans worship gods, Tam?"
Because we're descended from them, Zoe thought. We're their mute and crippled offspring, in all our millions. (205)
For Wilson, in this novel, conscious life, whether seated in planets like Isis or humans like ourselves, is what is truly sacred. It can be damaged and, at least on the individual level, it can be taken away, but it is nothing less than the center of the universe.