Book Review: Genesis - Bernard Beckett

Genesis by Bernard Beckett
My rating: 9 of 10 stars

Despise the YA shelf this book is in, it is much more than it. It's a philosophical debate about conscious being. A debate of what makes human... human. A debate between a AI and a human. This is a philosophy novel disguised as a YA dystopia novel.

I was hoping a fast paced book about a dystopia novel but I get a really surprise. This book is fictious future history of a society told in a four hour exam by Anaximander. She, is great admirer of the hero Adam Forde as she tells his tale of how he came to rebel the militarist society sparing a little girl life. To save his life from death he agrees to interact with an android, Art, the first android ever built. From this moment on, we have a debate about what means to be human.

The ending was the best part of the novel. It has a twist like The Sixth Sense.

I was blown away. Advisable to anyone. At meager 200 pages why not?

Some phrases...

"People did as they were told because they were working together, focused on a common threat, a shared enemy. But time passes. Fear becomes a memory. Terror becomes routine; it loses its grip. The founders of The Republic sought to deny the individual, and in doing so they ignored a simple truth. The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate, and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them. "

Platonic images come to my mind...
“I talk to you, you make a sound. I kick this wall, it makes a sound. What's the difference? Perhaps you're going to tell me the wall is conscious too?" "I don't know if the wall's conscious," Art replied. "Why don't you ask it?"

"I can't comment on the minds of others. But I can say I believe it suits our purpose to make Adam the noble fool. This is always the problem with building heroes. To keep them pure, we must build them stupid. The world is built on compromise and uncertainty, and such a place is too complex for heroes to flourish."

This is one of those books I will re-read in ten or twenty years.

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