Book recommendation: "Genesis"

[Skybird]

I thought I lose a word or two on a fascinating little book I have read the past two days, and will finish later today: "Genesis", by Bernard Beckett, available under the title "Das neue Buch Genesis" in German, too.

This is a short novel that you indeed can consume in two rushes, if you want, putting you into a setting you hardly expect to meet in a novel. The story is told from the perspective of the "heroine" being locked in an oral examination where she is assessed by three tutors who will decide whether her performance qualifies her to meet a mysterious Academic institution or not. The whole book is told from inside this setting of talking, questions and answers and explanations. This frame gives it the appearance of a stageplay, with all and everything being told in dialogues, although these give images on past events as well. No change in settings, it all happens inside just one room.

What it is about, in the first half of the book reminds a little bit of utopian, or better: dysutopian stories for late teenagers or maybe a younger adult audience (as which it is indeed advertised on the german market). Here I thought: "Okay, not bad, but also nothing that catches my attention that much". The reader learns about our immediate future and the hazards and disasters that ruin mankind, and the attempt to build an ideal state on basis of Plato's republic that from beginning on is oriented towards the past and thus necessarily leads to a form of legalised inhumanity that for us people living today in the West is hardly acceptable, nevertheless this ideal society still gets eroded from withon, by the same flaws and human weaknesses that ruin our current oscieties as well: corruption, self-interest, supremacist messiah complex.

But in the second half, the thing that has started to amuse and to fascinate me begins: the verbal sparring between man and machine, biologic versus artificial intelligence. And here they touch upon the most fundamental question there are: what is life? What is mind, what is consciuousness? What is evolution, what is it'S goal, is there such a goal? What is human? What is artificial?

I am not yet finished, but my guts feelings tell me that the novel will have a surprising, maybe even unpleasant outcome, I expect a twist, a sudden moment of bad surprise, an enlightened "Aha!" experience. However, this must not be something bad. Sometimes, important things in life are just like that: unwanted, and not meeting your previous expectations. So far, the book, in just some short scenes of dialogue between man and machine, have already made me widening my understanding of evolution already. It's as if some mental mines had been planted. I do not know if and when they will go up.

A short novel that is just that little bit different, and with just a few pages sends your mind on the eternal hunt for some of the most profound questions man has battled with since all time. Very recommended, and maybe especially helpful for teachers wanting to soften up any school courses on stiff and abstract philosophy and evolution. Can be easily turned into a stageplay as well: it already has the format of a screenplay, one could say.

Readers' feedback at Amazon lists over 100 entries, overwhelmingly positive.
http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Bernard-Beckett/dp/B004JZWMXU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343642896&sr=8-1&keywords=bernard+beckett

There the author himself is quoted by this comment:

When I tire of my computer it's considered quite acceptable, environmental issues aside, for me to bin it, bury it, or rip out its innards and convert the shell into a fish bowl. It is considered less acceptable for me to do any of these things to my still functioning cat. And that feels much as it should be.

Yet my computer routinely beats me at chess, while my cat struggles to use a cat door. Whatever we believe sets the animal apart from the machine, with each passing year it becomes harder to believe that processing power is the defining factor. And that's the apparently harmless thought at the heart of Genesis.

Our instincts cling to the mysticism of the life force, the élan vital that appears to animate the world of creatures and separate them from our machines. Instincts though are rarely enough. The modern understanding of evolution makes it easy to view life as little more (or less) than a trick of chemistry, and the harmless question takes on an edge.

The novelist though mustn't be content with simply exposing the edge. I am drawn to stories that tear at me. I like my reading to leave a little scar tissue and I aspire to create stories that might do the same. Just as we are sure that cats and computers are not just different things, but different kinds of things, so we quite naturally draw a line between a cat and human that feels inviolable. The life force may no longer be so puzzling, but surely the mystery of consciousness remains secure. Not everybody thinks so, and that provides the gap into which a story can be wedged.

This thought spent a good few years trapped inside my own consciousness. I knew that at the heart of the novel would sit a confrontation between a man and a machine. I knew humanity would be represented by a criminal, imprisoned both by the justice system and his own inflexible beliefs. I also knew the machine would be charming, irascible and provocative. What I didn't know was anything about the story in which this central conceit would be wrapped. I wrote a short play in which the prisoner was a psychopath and spent a couple of years trying on and off to develop that into a novel but it never worked. I needed a trick that would position the audience first with the human and then somehow twist that loyalty, ideally without them realising it was happening.

As is so often the case I didn't get to the final product small step at a time. Rather I tried, failed and turned away. And then, a couple of years later while distracting myself from another task I found the problem had solved itself offstage. Such are the strange workings of the mind.

On the author, Wikipedia has this:

Bernard Beckett (born 1967) is a New Zealand writer of fiction for young adults. His work includes novels and plays. Beckett has taught Drama, Mathematics and English at a number of high schools in the Wellington Region, and is currently teaching students at Hutt Valley High School in Lower Hutt.

He has won several NZ prizes in the "books for young adults" category.

I will check if his novel "August" is available in German, too. It is focussing on life, death, and free will.