Scan barcode
A review by halibut
Dark Constellations by Pola Oloixarac
While reading, I constantly felt like the book was just about to tell me something important, what all this lurid backstory was leading up to. It never really does though. Initially frustrating, eventually I found myself thinking that might be at least part of the point.
The three timelines revolve around researchers of different types, in the modern and near future narratives on computer scientists and geneticists, the past on botanists. The novel gives a hyperbolic version of the promises of some of these fields; the perceived potential for imminent significant insight by increased computational power, or an increased volume of genetic data, which struggles to be realised. The 'hacker' characters imagine themselves in some way revolutionary, though it's never clear they achieve anything much. The botanist imagines discovering new forms of life, though their discoveries might be nothing more than narcotic self indulgence.
I'm currently a Phd student studying computational biology, specifically ocean microbiomes. One character suggests that understanding the human genome is insufficient to understand the trajectory' of people, as humans are filled with and influenced by poorly understood microbial life. There's a decent scientific literacy throughout the book, we're beginning to characterise the human microbiome, but understanding the impact the body is in very early stages, and even further off for the oceans.
There was some misuse of scientific terms on either the part of the author or translator (DNA sequencers in the fiction seemed to be machines which synthesised rather than read DNA). At other points some of the speculative technology (like the bionose) came close to projects I've heard about recently.
Either the translator or writer refers to the present as the Anthropocene by name, though climate is frustratingly absent from the story. It reminds me of The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman, a story set in LA around the era of WWII, which persistently references significant historic events or figures, but has a protagonist who absolutely refuses to engage with them at all. Where the Teleportation Accident starts frustrating and becomes funny in the lengths it takes to avoid it's context, Dark Constellations stayed frustrating. Perhaps on purpose, but still frustrating.
The three timelines revolve around researchers of different types, in the modern and near future narratives on computer scientists and geneticists, the past on botanists. The novel gives a hyperbolic version of the promises of some of these fields; the perceived potential for imminent significant insight by increased computational power, or an increased volume of genetic data, which struggles to be realised. The 'hacker' characters imagine themselves in some way revolutionary, though it's never clear they achieve anything much. The botanist imagines discovering new forms of life, though their discoveries might be nothing more than narcotic self indulgence.
I'm currently a Phd student studying computational biology, specifically ocean microbiomes. One character suggests that understanding the human genome is insufficient to understand the trajectory' of people, as humans are filled with and influenced by poorly understood microbial life. There's a decent scientific literacy throughout the book, we're beginning to characterise the human microbiome, but understanding the impact the body is in very early stages, and even further off for the oceans.
There was some misuse of scientific terms on either the part of the author or translator (DNA sequencers in the fiction seemed to be machines which synthesised rather than read DNA). At other points some of the speculative technology (like the bionose) came close to projects I've heard about recently.
Either the translator or writer refers to the present as the Anthropocene by name, though climate is frustratingly absent from the story. It reminds me of The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman, a story set in LA around the era of WWII, which persistently references significant historic events or figures, but has a protagonist who absolutely refuses to engage with them at all. Where the Teleportation Accident starts frustrating and becomes funny in the lengths it takes to avoid it's context, Dark Constellations stayed frustrating. Perhaps on purpose, but still frustrating.