The Second Angel - Hardcover

Kerr, Philip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805059628 ISBN 13: 9780805059625

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 1999

Synopsis

A dark, dystopian high-velocity thriller in the cult-classic tradition of Kerr's A Philosophical Investigation.

July 2069: centennial of the Apollo 11 moon walk. What would Buzz Aldrin see if he were here? On Earth, plagues have destroyed the major food supplies, climatic changes have brought constant winter to the once-industrialized West, and a new and virulent virus--P2--has infected Earth's population, bringing radical change in economic, political, and social structures. P2 is curable--but only with an infusion of uninfected blood. Indeed, blood has become the currency of choice: It is banked, speculated in, traded, hoarded, but only by those wealthy enough (or healthy enough) to have a clean, uninfected supply. And the moon? It is now home to sex hotels and penal colonies. Home, too, to the "federal reserve" of blood banks--the most impregnable high-security installation in the world. It is the brainchild of one man--and he has every reason to destroy it. Acting on the most human of motives--revenge--he will take on the impossible. Unbeknownst to him, he will have help from a very strange source. Call it 2001 updated. Call it a chillingly convincing mix of prophecy and science. Call it Philip Kerr's best book yet. The Second Angel: 1999's prologue to 2069, a terrifying forecast of the future.

About this title

About the Author

Of Philip Kerr, The Washington Post Book World wrote: "He has the talent to convey the big idea and to take you places you have never been." The author of ten wildly imaginative and acclaimed novels, including A Five-Year Plan (Holt, 0-8050-5176-7) and Esau (Holt, 0-8050-5175-9), Kerr--one of Granta's "Best Young British Novelists"--led In Style to say, "Move over Mr. Grisham, the new master of books-to-movies is Philip Kerr."

Reviews

Quantum physics collides with metaphysics in this futuristic thriller, and sends its plot careening into wildly unpredictable territory. In the year 2069, most of the earth's population is infected with P2, a slow-acting parvovirus that inevitably brings ghastly death. A small, uninfected sliver of humanity lives in secluded aseptic environments and stores uncontaminated blood reserves on the moon in a bank whose impenetrable security system has been designed by architect John Dallas. But after Dallas challenges the decision to deny blood to his sick daughter, he's viewed as a potential security risk. When a botched attempt to kill him leaves his wife and child dead, Dallas schemes to break into the blood bank and destroy his employer's business?a stratagem that will force him into dangerous confrontation with protective nanotechnology, radioactive defense mechanisms and a transcendentally evolved artificial intelligence that oversees the bank. Kerr's (A Five-Year Plan) blend of science and intrigue merits comparison to the work of Michael Crichton, and his protagonists?a team of infected desperadoes who will use the heisted blood to cure themselves?will put readers in mind of Donald Westlake's tales of likably larcenous bank robbers. Once off the earth, however, the narrative deteriorates into a dilettantish display of SF cliches that includes fuzzy computer technology, speculative epidemiology, and an overlong adventure in virtual reality. Ultimately, Kerr depends on an omniscient Outer Limits-type control voice and intrusive historical and scientific footnotes to pull the tale's chaotic elements together. Though its suspense is as taut as a tourniquet, this excursion into philosophical science fiction could stand a transfusion of logic. Agent, A.P. Watt Ltd.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Unpredictable Kerr's latest (A Five-Year Plan, p. 287, etc.) is a wildly ambitious space opera set in a future grimly colored by the specter of an AIDS-like virus. A hundred years after the first moon landing, things aren't looking so rosy for pla net Earth. Global warming has dumped tons of the Greenland ice cap into the Atlantic, killing the Gulf Stream that used to warm Europe. A painstaking series of footnotes explains why there are no dogs, no wine, no fertility for most men, and no hope for m ost people infected with P, a deadly virus that's stricken 80% of the population, prompting furious battles over control of the blood supply and unprecedented polarization of the human race. But life is good for Dana Dallas, the chief designer for Terotec h, a firm that builds security systems for protecting precious stores of untainted blood, the basis of the 21st-century economy. Wealthy and successful, Terotech's golden boy and heir-apparent to the present CEO, Dallas has it made, until the one flaw in his otherwise perfect life turns him into a fugitive from justice, hunted by the law and by contract killers. Building an unlikely but familiar coalition of rebelsan ex-con pilot, a one-armed wife-murderer, a pair of professional criminals, and one of the killers Terotech has set on his trailDallas implausibly swears revenge on the system: he'll break into the impregnable First National Blood Bank on the moon and sell its vast reserves on the black market. Even though Dallas, who designed the security sys tem for First National, knows its weaknesses better than anyone, his plan will require a harrowing stint in a virtual-reality simulator and a break-in endangering every one of his buddies. But who's the olympian narrator chronicling every step of this ela borate caper? Cobbling together leftovers from Robert Heinlein and The 39 Steps, Kerr gilds them all with his trademark philosophical speculations and comes up with a story vastly more provocative in its vision of the politics of blood and cybernetics tha n its workaday plot would suggest. (Film rights to Warner Bros.) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In Kerr's high-tech dystopia 70 years hence, virus-free blood is so valuable that a supersecure blood bank has been built on the moon. Its existence springs from the depredations of a virus that suffocates victims by blocking hemoglobin's oxygen uptake. Among the fortunate fifth of humanity without the dread disease is Dana Dallas, designer of the sanguinary Fort Knox. It's not difficult to discern the theme: designer-confronts-his-creation. Kerr, for reasons unclear, indulges in footnoted digressions on virology, quantum mechanics, the Doppler effect--the list of subjects is a long one, and the effect is pedantic. As long as he cleaves to Dallas' doings, which accelerate after he eludes a contract killer, the novel stays on track. Dallas soon infers his boss is the contractor, and after escaping the assassin a second time, Dallas hatches a plan for revenge: flood the market with pure blood. Knowing where it is, he recruits comrades with rocket-flying skills; he'll handle the rest. When Dallas and company arrive at the lunar hotel, they simulate their ingress plan on computer, foil the inept assassin again, and proceed to the showdown with the quantum-computerized fortress. This rapidly paced dose of horrific futurism, with a few blemishes, should captivate readers who liked Kerr's Esau. Gilbert Taylor

It's a bleak Earth in the year 2069; plagues and disasters have decimated food crops, and the world is sharply divided between the healthy rich and the diseased poor. One of the elite, Dana Dallas is a designer of high-security vaults that store the world's most precious resource?healthy blood. His allegiance to his company and class is about to be radically reversed as revenge drives him to attempt the impossible: to steal what he has spent his career successfully protecting. Kerr's characterizations start strong but weaken as the fast plot gains speed. Dallas makes the shift from creature of convention to renegade too quickly to be believed, and his associates are mostly two-dimensional. However, the narrator is a most interesting character, ready to share technical details and philosophical musings. Once again, Kerr (A Five-Year Plan, LJ 4/1/98) has an intriguing plot with an ingenious setup and many colorful details. Recommended for general and sf collections.
-?Devon Thomas, Highland Twp. Lib., MI
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805059628
• ISBN 13: 9780805059625
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 340