NOT QUITE DEAD GENIUSES AT LARGE ON AN ANGRY PLANET

In Raham’s SF novel, long after an asteroid apocalypse has erased human civilization from Earth, various alien interlopers compel the planet’s guardian spirit to take drastic measures.

The author continues his tongue-in-cheek Dead Genius SF series, launched with A Singular Prophecy (2011). Earth has, for eons, been either settled or seeded by space-traveling civilizations that largely rise and fall haphazardly while myopically failing to note the others’ existence or respect other forms of intelligence. Following an asteroid strike that ended the present human era, Earth was colonized by the Jadderbadians, insect-folk who spend most of their long lives in worm/maggot stages. Their religion blinds many of them to the truth that the scruffy Earth “primates” who serve as their pets (or irritate them as pests) are actually remnants of advanced Homo sapiens. Among the other exotic races and entities in the mix is Gaidra, a planetary consciousness annoyed by the eco-injuries inflicted by all the egocentric life forms fixated on their own greed, grandeur, and procreation. Only a few comprehend the Big Picture, including the digitized personality of Rudy Goldstein, a tech genius who was (unwillingly) turned into sentient code after his biological death, and Mnemosyne, Rudy’s AI caretaker, who presents herself to the degraded remaining humans as the Spider Woman, a tribal goddess (“They say she lives in a metal mountain and speaks to them in times of great danger”). An imminent seismic disaster means they all must unite to survive. Raham uses the book’s complicated setup for clever excursions into exobiology, interspecies culture-clash farce, evolutionary eccentricity, catastrophism comedy, and SF in-jokes (oh, was that a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference that just went by?). The finale is more like a series cast-reunion frolic, and the weird science becomes quite a potluck party, though the ultimate message is clear: Even the most bizarrely divergent beasties should cooperate for the common good. New readers to the series will particularly appreciate the author’s drawings, charts, and timelines, which should offset some confusion.

An increasingly madcap conclusion to an eco-themed SF saga of a weary Earth chafing under its alien tenants.