Human Sister - Hardcover

Jim Bainbridge

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 098417382X ISBN 13: 9780984173822

Publisher: Silverthought Press, 2010

Synopsis

The ancient moralities and worldviews of established religions and the ruling majorities of Earth's most powerful nation-states have been fighting a rearguard action against the encroachment of science on what they consider to be the core of the human self: its mind and consciousness. The United Nations Human Genome Protection Act has outlawed all genetic enhancements of human offspring, and the old contenders for world domination, the United States and China, have allied themselves to destroy all conscious nonhuman operating units in every outpost of civilization.

Set in such a world, Human Sister is the story of a prodigy, Sara Jensen, the granddaughter of Professor Severn Jensen, one of the world's leading experts on conscious artificial intelligences, who, with his wife, raises and homeschools Sara on their beautiful California vineyard. Sara's family also includes a secret fourth member-her illegal bioroid brother, Michael, whom she helps raise and who was made by her grandfather in part from Sara's neurons and other cells and who is capable of accessing her thoughts and affections. Amidst a dangerous and darkening outer world, Sara discovers that she also must contend with the secrets and deceptions of those she loves-her grandfather, her boyfriend, and Michael-and she learns that even the best of intentions diligently pursued often have unintended, and tragic, consequences.

About this title

About the Author

Jim Bainbridge is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a National Science Foundation Fellowship recipient for graduate studies at UC Berkeley, from which he received a PhD Candidate Degree in mathematics. He has received numerous awards for his poetry and short stories, which have appeared in more than 40 literary journals in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan.

Review

Jim Bainbridge's novel, Human Sister, is a fast-paced, exciting, and beautifully-written account of an all-too-possible, near-future world in which the ethics and choices of humanity are put to the test. The novel is deceptively easy reading I say deceptive because the plot is intense and the writing smooth but underneath, the book is anchored by complex philosophical and ethical questions, complex characters, and the power of new and innovative ideas. Human Sister takes science fiction into literary territory that it too seldom visits: a place where well-developed characters emerge with sparkling originality through sensuous language and imagery. --Laura Pritchett, author and winner of the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, and the WILLA Fiction Prize

Human Sister proves Jim Bainbridge a writer gifted with far-reaching intelligence, unbounded imagination, and a most caring and empathetic soul. Love and family reign here, threatened as they are by charging science, fluxing societal norms, and an intricate drama of wayward global politics. --Mark Wisniewski, winner of a Pushcart Prize and the Tobias Wolff Award

Jim Bainbridge has crafted a dark, chilling, future thriller that will keep you up late into the night until the final searing page. Set in a time when androids battle humans for control, Human Sister is ultimately about the most human of themes: love, loyalty, family, betrayal, sacrifice; and it has as its heroine one of the most original, brave and fascinating young women to live in literature. If you're looking for something you haven t seen before, Human Sister is it. --Paulette Bates Alden, author of Feeding the Eagles and Crossing the Moon

Edition details

• Publisher: Silverthought Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 098417382X
• ISBN 13: 9780984173822
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 338
• Editor: Paul Hughes