Genesis

Genesis by Bernard Beckett

Would you believe all these different covers are for the same book? Can you put together how they might be linked? Would you have guess from these covers that this is a science fiction book? The publishing industry does some interesting stuff.

I truly enjoyed this book, even though it was a fast read, it really had me thinking the whole way through (I love it when a book does that), and then I handed it off to my grade eight teachers who also had felt that it was engaging. I don't quite see this as a young adult novel, as it is being marketed in parts of the world, but is definately for those who like a book to challenge them, and get them thinking in a new direction.

John De Nardo wrote a great summary for this book in SF Signal - "It's hard to believe science fiction has not yet over used the robot trope, but Bernard Beckett's short novel Genesis shows us that the genre still has great robot-related stories left to tell. It doesn't start out as a robot story, though. Instead, it's a unique presentation of a post apocolyptic distopia that morphs into a philosophical discussion of what it means to be a human.

The book is structured around an oral test being taken by Anaximander, who wishes to become a member of the elite academ, the group that controls her secluded island society. As we come to learn through the first part of her examination, the time is the near future and the setting is an island that has protected its borders from the deadly plague that has infected the rest of the world. Society is strictly controlled by the academy: women and men are segragated into separated camps; breeding is restricted; and the citizens are proscribed at an early age to one of four social classes; laborer, soldier, technicians, and philospher. Anax topic of specialization is Adam Forde, an essential figure in their brief history. In the later parts of the exam we learn that Adam -- imprisoned for showing compassion to an outsider who might be carrying the plague -- is chosen to shape the development of an artifically intelligent robot named Art. Here is where the story turns philosophical, contemplating definitions of humanity and free will."