Lovelock

Famed planetologist Carol Jeanne Cocciolone embarks on a one-way voyage across the galaxy as part of a team of colonists, accompanied by her companion Lovelock, a mentally enhanced monkey with special powers and a thirst for freedom. 25,000 first printing. $25,000 ad/promo.

The Hugo- and Nebula-winning Card ( The Ships of Earth ) teams up here with a relative newcomer (Kidd has published several non-SF novels with Card's own publishing company, Hatrack River) to produce a moral fable about freedom, responsibility and the arrogance of human beings in treating other living things as unfeeling property. The narrator, Lovelock, is a genetically enhanced capuchin monkey trained to function as a "witness," recording the life and thoughts of the person to whom he is attached. Lovelock's master is Carol Jeanne Cocciolone, the world's leading "gaiologist" and now part of an interstellar colonization effort. As Carol Jeanne's family (including her overbearing mother-in-law and browbeaten father-in-law) settle into the strange, self-contained world of the interstellar Ark (whose population is divided into small agricultural communities as practice for their future lives on a new world), Lovelock begins to chafe under the bonds of his psychological conditioning. Increasingly unhappy with the injustice of his servitude and the indifference of his master, he plots to break free. Card and Kidd's passionate depiction of Lovelock's plight, as well as their insightful portrayal of the various human characters, makes for a gripping read. These very elements, however, tend to drown out any SF interest. In addition, but for Lovelock's enhancement, the novel might almost have been set in a small American town of a half-century past.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The first volume of a planned trilogy from Card (The Ships of Earth, 1994, etc.) and hardcover debutante Kidd is set on a huge starship, or Ark, soon to depart from Earth. Among those aboard will be leading planetologist Carol Jeanne Cocciolone, her family- -husband Red, daughters Lydia and Emmy, in-laws Mamie and Stef--and narrator Lovelock, a mentally enhanced Capuchin monkey trained to ``witness'' all Carol Jeanne's doings and record them for posterity. Living quarters aboard the Ark are arranged in small villages whose populations share ethnic ties or religious beliefs. Assigned to the village Mayflower, Carol Jeanne and her family experience difficulties adapting to their new circumstances, problems that arise largely from defects in their own personalities. Lovelock, meanwhile, discovers that his worship of Carol Jeanne derives from deep conditioning--worst of all, she regards him as nothing more than furniture. So-so at best. What really annoys is that, without even a token ending here, this isn't the beginning of a trilogy at all, but the arbitrary opening chunk of a bloated and flabby single yarn. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

As a genetically enhanced "witness," trained to record the daily activities of important people for future generations, Lovelock the monkey accompanies planetologist Carol Jeanne Cocciolone aboard the colony ship Mayflower. Lovelock's gradual metamorphosis from contented "slave" to secret rebel echoes the conflicts of the humans around him as the enclosed environment of the spaceship exposes freedom's illusions. Veteran fantasy/sf author Card (Lost Boys, LJ 11/1/92) and sf newcomer Kidd join forces to create a penetrating exploration of inalienable rights in a story that gives "humanistic" beliefs an unusual twist. For most sf collections.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.