Rebel Sutra
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Description
The colony world of Maya is run by the Changed: a carefully inbred aristocracy clustered in their hillside city, high above Babelion and its wretched swarms of poor colonists. For generations now the Changed have been altering their own genes and their children's. They're smarter, faster, longer-lived, better with computersand acutely aware of their own superiority. What they don't admit is that they have become a separate species.
Every year, the Changed generously allow a handpicked group of human children to come up from Babelion and be tested alongside their own young. But the Changed know, as the humans do not, that it's a sham. The humans will always fail. They don't have the right genetic makeup, the years of intensive training, it takes to mesh properly with the computer system where the test takes place. Their best will never be enough. It's a subtle way of teaching them their place.
Then, one year, Arsen shows up: strong, smart, wildly charismatic, and not at all convinced of the superiority of the Changed. Still, he's nothing the system couldn't cope with--until he hooks up with Della, Changed born and bred, but every bit as rebellious as Arsen. She, too, doubts that the serenely self-absorbed Changed have all the answers. She even has ties to the Tinkers, the mysterious vaga-bond scientists who make Maya one of their stopping points.
What starts between Arsen and Della will tip their whole on its side, and start it rolling downhill . . .
Maya is a world controlled by a self-perpetuating aristocracy, the Changed, who maintain their superiority by tinkering with the genes of their children. This long tradition of genetic manipulation and the brain patterning that goes with it allows the Changed to interface with the Exchange, a computer-based community of blended intelligences. Those who are merely human are denied such opportunities and are consigned to the squalor of the city of Babelion. When Arsen, a young man of Babelion, meets Della, a young Changed woman--both of whom, naturally, are strong, smart, and single-mindedly rebellious--the stage is set for a galloping SF adventure. Arsen, unfortunately, gets killed (in a series of events designed to showcase the natural evil of the Changed), though not before Della becomes pregnant. Their son is Anselm, who is destined to change the world.
Using multiple viewpoints (some of which work better than others), Lewitt (Memento Mori) shows us a young man who not only struggles to understand himself and his dual heritage but manages to lead a full-scale rebellion and discover, in passing, that Maya itself is a mere pawn in an Imperial power struggle. A healthy dose of philosophical and spiritual self-examination, spiced by a little romance and dollop of Hindu cosmology, leavens this otherwise traditional tale of the triumph of the human spirit over technological oppression. --Luc Duplessis
