Geneticist Pierre Tardivel may not have long to live—he’s got a fifty-fifty chance of having the gene for Huntington’s disease. But if his DNA is tragic, his girlfriend’s is astonishing: Molly Bond has a mutation that gives her telepathy. Both of them have attracted the interest of Pierre’s boss, Dr. Burian Klimus, a senior researcher in the Human Genome Project who just might be hiding a horrific past. Avi Meyer, a dogged Nazi hunter, thinks Klimus was the monstrous “Ivan the Terrible” of the Treblinka Death Camp. As Pierre races against the ticking clock of his own DNA to make a world-changing scientific breakthrough, Avi also races against time to bring Klimus to justice before the last survivors of Treblinka pass away.
Winner of the Seiun Award—Japan’s top honor in science fiction—and a finalist for the Hugo Award, Frameshift is classic Robert J. Sawyer, combining a heart-wrenching human story and cutting-edge science into a pulse-pounding thriller that “delivers the real thing with subtlety and great skill” (Toronto Star).
"Filled to bursting with ideas, characters, and incidents."
—The New York Times
"You hardly need me to tell you to buy his latest, Frameshift. You know it's good, you know he gets the techy bits right, and you know he's interesting and thought-provoking."
—Analog
"Robert Sawyer's science fiction is always ambitious, well-written, and imaginative. With each novel he keeps getting better."
—Kevin J. Anderson
"Sawyer has created a gripping medical sf thriller...Highly recommended."
—Library Journal
Praise for Robert J. Sawyer
"Can Sawyer write? Yes — with near-Asimovian clarity, with energy and drive, with such grace that his writing becomes invisible as the story comes to life in your mind."
—Orson Scott Card
"Sawyer is just about the best science fiction writer out there these days: compelling stories, believable scenarios, science and fiction that really interact."
—Rocky Mountain News
Conspicuously overplotted and unwieldy—the whole Ivan the Terrible subplot would have been better eliminated—but exciting and engrossing, if increasingly improbable.
In Berkley, California, French-Canadian research molecular biologist Pierre Tardivel works on the Human Genome Project even as he expects to die soon due to the probability that he suffers from terminal genetic Huntington's disease. His girlfriend psychologist Molly Bond knows Pierre cares deeply for her especially since she has limited telepathic skills. When someone attacks Pierre, Molly realizes that an unknown person hired the assailant to kill Pierre. --- Both wonder why he would be the victim of an assassination attempt. Pierre does what he does best, conduct research seeking trends. He soon learns that his health insurance provider Condor has had an abnormally high number of deaths of those members with potentially expensive health costs that they would have to cover. At the same time Molly, wanting an offspring of Pierre, but unable to conceive naturally accepts the kind offer from Pierre's boss, Nobel Prize winner Burian Klimus to have an IVF impregnation. However, Burian uses the opportunity to test something different as he impregnates Molly with DNA extracted from the remains of a Neanderthal at the same time the Justice Department Agent Avi Meyer warns Pierre that his superior may be Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka infamy. --- This is a reprint of an exciting action-packed medical thriller that grips the audience from the moment readers meet Pierre and never slows down until the final twist. The story line in some ways will remind the audience of Rosemary¿s baby except the devil is am amoral human using modern science to impregnate the innocent woman. Though the ties back to Treblinka seem forced and add nothing (Klimus can be a modern day scientist with no ethics without the concentration camp résumé), readers will finish this thriller in one exciting sitting. --- Harriet Klausner
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted October 17, 2000
A good read up until about halfway through. The science and tech parts are just right, and no punches are pulled. But after then, Sawyer's desire to make a political point about the health care system entirely hijacks the book, and murders the plot's plausibility. There were also a few too many convenient plot holes (good thing for the plot that Pierre happened to pick that very HMO, instead of the umpteen million others...). But not a bad book, and worth a read.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Overview
Geneticist Pierre Tardivel may not have long to live—he’s got a fifty-fifty chance of having the gene for Huntington’s disease. But if his DNA is tragic, his girlfriend’s is astonishing: Molly Bond has a mutation that gives her telepathy. Both of them have attracted the interest of Pierre’s boss, Dr. Burian Klimus, a senior researcher in the Human Genome Project who just might be hiding a horrific past. Avi Meyer, a dogged Nazi hunter, thinks Klimus was the monstrous “Ivan the Terrible” of the Treblinka Death ...