Sims

March 10, 2003
What started as a series of three inventive and exciting novellas by SF veteran Wilson has now become a single volume, complete with two new sections and a creepy, satisfying ending. In the near future, sims—chimpanzees enhanced with human DNA created by a company called SimGen—are used as cheap labor and medical guinea pigs while denied even the right to family. Patrick Sullivan, a labor lawyer, and Romy Cadman, an activist, team up to change the classification of sims from property to persons in order to improve their treatment and to bring SimGen's shady beginnings to light. In the fourth part, the search for the missing pregnant sim from the third novella, Meerm
(2002), intensifies as further implications of her baby's nature emerge. The reader at last is able to follow the thoughts of Zero, the perpetually masked reclusive genius behind the effort to destroy SimGen, and, eventually, to learn his identity. Portero, the unreliable SimGen enforcer, finds his life spiraling out of control as Patrick and Romy continually gain ground with the help of newly discovered and somewhat disconcerting friends. Each section adds intrigue, portents of doom and layers to the characters—good and bad. While he neatly ties up all the loose ends in his frighteningly possible world, Wilson offers no simple answers. (Apr. 22)FYI:Wilson is also the author of
The Haunted Air (Forecasts, Nov. 4, 2002) and other novels in his Repairman Jack series.

July 31, 2000
In a world in a time frame parallel to our own, the bioengineering firm SimGen, run by two brothers with a dirty secret, has created the biological equivalent of robots: simians who are genetically altered to become servile apes smarter and more capable than chimps but still subhuman. Sims work in jobs often deemed degrading by humans. They are leased out by SimGen and sent back to the company when they "go D... defective, disabled, diseased or decrepit" (rules reminiscent of US Robotics and Mechanical Men Corporation's policy on robots in Isaac Asimov's pioneering SF about robots (I, Robot, etc.). In this first novella of a proposed series, one group of sims has hired a lawyer, Patrick Sullivan, to defend their right to be a family. Sexually inactive, sims' only family comes from workmates, but as they are legally considered property their lessees can trade them at any time, just like slaves. Wilson's novella is all setup and promises. Just when the reader is fully clasped in the anticipatory grip of a good battle and the revelation of sinister deeds, the book ends. It's too early to tell how Wilson's new series will pan out, but if it fulfills the promise of its first installment, readers should be satisfied both emotionally and morally.