THE MOTHER CODE

A team of scientists scrambles to preserve human life on Earth after a bioweapon unleashes a catastrophic epidemic.

In 2049, the U.S. military releases nucleic acid nanostructures, called "IC-NANs," to infect rebel fighters in Afghanistan. Designed to kill quickly and leave no trace, the viruslike agent succeeds in its mission, albeit all too well: Finding hospitable hosts in desert archaebacteria, the deadly nanostructures mutate and spread at a voracious clip. Six years later, a human child is born inside the accommodating confines of a giant protective robot, called its Mother. Biochemist Stivers' propulsive debut novel bridges the intervening years, cutting between a small cadre of government scientists and their increasingly desperate attempts to derive a solution to the spread of the nanostructures and a child named Kai who wanders the deserts of Utah with his Mother in search of other child survivors like him. The format serves Stivers well, as it reveals the post-apocalyptic aftermath of the pandemic without giving away the secret to Kai's survival. This leads readers to invest seriously in the scientists, among them Sara Khoti and Dr. Rose McBride, who play critical roles in designing the Mothers while contributing more of themselves to the future of the human species than may at first seem obvious. And while some early dialogue has otherwise intelligent characters reiterating plot points for the reader's benefit ("So let me get this straight. The spherical NAN that you sprayed from the drone can infect human cells"), and one may wonder why only a few key people have been entrusted to handle an emergency of this magnitude, the sheer momentum and urgency of Stivers' prose will keep readers riveted to the page.

Fast-paced plague fiction that weds realism and SF while posing truly profound questions about the nature of motherhood.