Seed [Hardcover]

Much like Night Shade flag bearer The Wind-Up Girl (Bacigalupi), Seed is a near term science fiction novel that centers around the impacts of climate change and over population on the world's environment. The Hugo Award winning Wind-Up Girl focused on Thailand, but hinted at the problems ongoing in America. In many ways Seed could be that story of America. That's not to say it's derivative of Bacigalupi, but there's certainly similarities in tone and texture to the world playing to the current fears that Earth is reaching 'critical mass'.

Seed is set at dawn of the 22nd century, the world has fallen apart and a new corporate power has emerged: Satori. More than just a corporation, Satori is an intelligent, living city in America's heartland. She manufactures climate-resistant seed to feed humanity, and bio-engineers her own perfected castes of post-humans. What remains of the United States government now exists solely to distribute Satori product.

When a Satori Designer goes rogue, Agent Sienna Doss is tasked with bringing her in to break Satori's stranglehold on seed production. In a race against genetically honed assassins, Doss's best chance at success lies in an unlikely alliance with a gang of thugs and Brood - orphan, scavenger and small-time thief scraping by on the fringes of the wasteland - whose young brother may be the key to everything.

What struck me most about Seed is the poignancy. Right away Ziegler jumps into Brood's nomadic life as he migrates from Mexico to the Mid-West with the imminent arrival of summer temperatures. With his special-needs brother, Brood lives just on the edge of survival. His imperative to protect crackles with emotion and his willingness to do anything to survive is heartbreaking. These threads continue into other parts of the story from the Satori lamenting the loss of their defective sibling to Agent Doss remembering her crippling childhood. Beyond the characters the world itself is bleak and desolate. Ziegler capably takes the small kindness of a drink of water and makes it a seminal moment of compassion.

Despite this being an 'American' novel Ziegler does a great job of integrating Hispanic culture into the pastoral fiber of the country. A pretty good amount of the dialogue is in Spanish often laced with Mexican slang. Elements of Hispanic culture are prevalent in the migrants and in many ways makes Seed not only a glimpse into the future of climate change and overpopulation, but a glimpse at the integration of culture on America's horizon. Juxtaposing this is the Satori which is so disturbingly self-interested and antiseptic as to be reminiscent of William Gibson's cyberpunk corporations.

My only real complaint stems from the lack of scientific underpinning to Satori. For a post-apocalyptic novel the science fiction felt very magical (not in the Arthur C. Clarke sense) in large part because Ziegler never takes the time to ground any of it in science. While he introduces the brains behind it all, they're never given the opportunity to expound upon how or why it all works. In that sense the novel 'reads' more like a fantasy than science fiction, something I believe is becoming a trend in the post-apocalypse sub-genre. Instead, Seed never lets up in its pace, keeping a constant tension throughout that eschews any need for exposition.

As a narrative, Seed is a multi-view point third person novel that I believe stands alone and should continue to do so. Interestingly, I realized none of what I liked about it had much do with the actual prose. I didn't find myself highlighting passages or even taking note of particularly nice turns of phrase. This isn't a negative. Rather than flowery descriptions or particularly evocative metaphors, Seed compelled me forward with... wait for it... a great story. And a great story told well.

Seed is Rob Ziegler's debut novel and another very good one from Night Shade's 2011 crop of new authors. Reading this review it might seem that this is a slow and morose novel. It's not at all. Woven in between scenes of migration and self-reflection is tons of action that culminates in a conclusion that's both explosive and cathartic. This is one you don't want to miss.

About a century from now, climate change has caused a new Dust Bowl in the Corn Belt, resulting in major famine across the United States. Most of the surviving population leads a nomadic existence, migrating across the ravaged landscape in search of habitable, arable land. Decades of war, resource depletion and population decline have left the government practically powerless. Gangs and warlords rule the land.

The only thing staving off full-blown starvation is Satori, a hive-like living city that produces genetically engineered drought-tolerant seed. Its population is a mix of transhuman Designers, Advocate warriors and "landrace" Laborers. When one of Satori's Designers leaves the fold and goes rogue, the desperate U.S. government sends the ex-military Secret Service Agent Sienna Doss to track her down.

Seed follows three separate but connected plots. Brood, Hondo and Pollo are starving migrants trying to make ends meet in the parched America heartland. Through them, the readers gets a look at what life's like for common people in this horrible, gang-dominated future. On the other end of the spectrum are Pihadassa, the Satori Designer who strikes out on her own, and her former partner Sumedha who remains in Satori. They can see and manipulate DNA helices, both of the gengineered seed Satori provides and of the people and clones around them. The third point of view comes from Sienna Doss, the no-nonsense agent tasked with tracking down the missing Designer. Seed smoothly switches back and forth between these three perspectives, and in the process paints a compelling picture of a ravaged country and of the forces that would control it.

What's interesting about Seed are the huge differences in tone between the three plots. The story of Brood, Hondo and Pollo is grim and violent. They lead desperate lives, navigating the land between gangs and desperate, nomadic families, scavenging to make ends meet. Their chapters have a post-apocalyptic, almost Mad Max-like tone. By contrast, the sections set in Satori have a futuristic, post-human flavor. The Satori Designers are eerie creatures, manipulating human beings like science experiments or breeding stock, helped by their drone-like landraces and protected by the terrifying, inhuman Advocates. And finally, the Sienna Doss chapters feel like solid military SF, with Sienna taking the lead as the complex, kick-ass heroine who moves heaven and earth to achieve her mission objective and recapture the rogue Designer.

The way Rob Ziegler manages to weave these three highly disparate stories into one cohesive narrative is impressive. He confidently writes in all three modes, as different as they are, and gradually brings the plots together into a spectacular resolution. It's hard enough to write a good post-apocalyptic story, or a transhuman/bioengineering one, or a military SF one, but to write all three and weave them together into one captivating plot is simply amazing--especially for a debut author.

The resulting novel is a real page-turner filled with interesting characters and pulse-raising action scenes. It offers both the grit of a post-apocalyptic survival story and the mystery of the Satori composite clones. The pace is full speed ahead right from the start and doesn't let up until the end, but Ziegler infuses enough character depth and genuine emotion into the story to make it much more than just another action-packed SF adventure.

Night Shade Books seems to have made it its mission to produce great, dark science fiction debuts on a regular basis--The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, Necropolis by Michael Dempsey, God's War by Kameron Hurley and Soft Apocalypse by Will Macintosh, just to name the ones I've read in the last twelve months or so. To that list we can now add Rob Ziegler's excellent debut Seed, one of the best SF novels I've read so far this year.

If you've ever wondered what would happen if we actually let Monsanto take over the world, you know, the way we kind of are... Well, you might want to pick up Seed by Rob Ziegler.

Seed is a tightly woven story set in the not so distant future of the late 21st century. A future so close that I could still trace the path that got us there, could still see the remnants of the lives we are all choosing, could see my own tough ass girls trying to scrabble through the dust and eek a life out of the ruin and rubble. It is true futuristic sci-fi without the cheat of sticking humanity on a fresh planet.

The world has reached the tipping point of global climate change and gone over the edge. While there are hints that over in Europe and a few other places there are still semi-functional governments trying to hold on to what's left of civilization, here in America we have done what we do best and privatized. A mega-corp called Satori, founded by a former CEO of Monsanto, now runs the nation. But Satori isn't just any corporation, it's a seed corp. Producing all of the drought resistant and weather resistant seed that the people of America need in order to survive. Of course, as a private corporation, Satori's interest isn't really the betterment of the human race, thus the kill codes put into every seed to make sure that no plant produces viable seed of its own.

Seed follows three stories, showing us multiple facets of this dusty, dry new world. There is the story of Brood and his brother Pollo, who's not quite right in the head and just might have the dreaded Tet. Tough migrant kids trained to fight, steal or kill for a handful of precious Satori seed. They're just looking for enough to survive another year in the blighted southwest, and they're willing to do whatever it takes to get it, and keep it.

Then there is Agent Doss, the government's agent of last resort, a master of destructive violence that almost always hits the right target, along with a few others that were in the way. She follows orders and keeps her people in line, unless you cross her. And then, watch out, because you really don't want to be on the wrong side of this chick.

Last we get to meet Satori itself, more than a corporation, it's also a living city, built on the ruins of Old Denver. We meet Satori through its "Designers", genetically designed humanoids with the ability to see into any living thing's DNA. Responsible for creating the seed that keeps the nation afloat, as well as in permanent bondage, the fate of the nation rests with Satori's Designers.

In all the many books I read each year, it's rare that I read one that pulls me in so completely, sells me so totally and convinces me so perfectly.

I'm a skeptic at heart, and as much as I love a good book and especially a good sci-fi or fantasy, it takes a lot of skill to bring me along, because I don't want to have to take a giant leap of faith in order to enjoy the story, and I don't want to be battered into accepting the world either. I want to be brought in slowly and sweetly, wrapped up in the world completely until it cocoons me and I have no choice but to live it.

Rob Ziegler has done that and more. When I first met his Designers I didn't want to believe, I didn't want to go with them into their living city, it seemed too unreal. After all we are talking about a future so near that my children might touch it. But Rob took me by the hand and led me in slowly, one delicate step at a time, until I was able to look up and realize that I did believe. I saw, and felt, and understood Satori. It was real.

The dusty, dry, post apocalyptic world of Brood, Pollo and Doss was an easier buy-in. After all, I live here in the dry Colorado desert. I know first hand how cold these winters get, how hot the summers grow. A few more degrees either direction is both completely fathomable, and entirely terrifying.

While Seed is, at least on the surface, a dark and thoughtful read, there is also light. There is hope. Indeed, if there is one outstanding message, one outstanding theme, feeling, truth within the pages of Seed it is that even in man's darkest hours, there will still be hope, and we will rise to the occasion to right our own wrongs. Even if it takes us a few generations to see them clearly.