The Barnes & Noble Review
In a stimulating dialogue with Cory Doctorow, Jeff VanderMeer laid out the raison d'être or motivating impulse behind Borne, in crystalline, rational fashion: "I'm definitely thinking in terms of fabulist fiction this time around, but I'm also interested in the moral/ethical questions involved with biotech, against a backdrop of a scarcity scenario. I think that's what's beginning to play out now in the world, and I wanted to approach the present through the future in a more direct way than I was able to in the Southern Reach books."
Summaries like this work well as signposts to the author's intent in the most abstract way, but in the case of a work like Borne, the reader is advised that a guidebook is not a safari. It's true that Borne addresses all of those issues and more -- but they are all exceeded by the organic wonders and mysteries and assorted oddities of this novel as a living, breathing work of art, one whose chief function is to deliver a sense of awe at the strange, terrible grandeur of the human imagination. In Borne, sociopolitical themes and ideas about the future give way to positively mythic dimensions.
Our first-person narrative, a tale delivered in the voice of a woman named Rachel, opens in a nameless day-after- tomorrow city, sparsely populated and composed of wreckage, detritus, abominations, and mortal danger. Rachel is a scavenger, talented, resourceful and wily, prowling the urban ruins to bring back food and barterable goods and raw biotech materials to support her and her partner, Wick, in their makeshift fortress, dubbed Balcony Cliffs. Their city is insanely ruled over -- or terrorized -- by an improbable creature: a building-sized implacable killer ursine named Mord -- who can fly, or levitate, if you will. But from time to time, Mord comes to ground for a rest and falls asleep. At such moments, Rachel is determined to comb through the thick fur of his hill-sized flanks for any stray goodies the bear might have picked up in his depredations.
On the day in question, Rachel finds a unique treasure, like infant Moses among the reeds: the entity who will come to be known as Borne:
[A] hybrid of sea anemone and squid: a sleek vase with rippling colors that strayed from purple toward deep blues and sea greens. Four vertical ridges slid up the sides of its warm and pulsating skin. The texture was as smooth as waterworn stone, if a bit rubbery. It smelled of beach reeds on lazy summer afternoons and, beneath the sea salt, of passionflowers. Much later, I realized it would have smelled different to someone else, might even have appeared in a different form.
Taking the small, seemingly innocent creature (for which she feels an inexplicable attraction) with her back to Balcony Cliffs -- where Wick views it with instant suspicion -- Rachel begins a long odyssey that will take her and Wick and Borne through harrowing events, culminating in a kind of apotheosis, a Clash of the Titans, and a theurgic climax, the details of which should be reserved for the reader's full reward.
As we follow Rachel and Wick through their everyday routines, the reader derives the jumbled, incomplete, and enigmatic back-story of their world in snatches that eventually cohere into a solid timeline. First came the Company, a massive biotech concern whose myriad creations were unleashed -- either inadvertently or deliberately, or in a mix of both -- without much regard for the destruction they would bring in their wake. Wick was a scientist for the Company, until they contentiously parted ways. A surviving woman now known only as the Magician was another. The Company itself is defunct. The Magician and Wick remain rivals, with the Magician ruling a different part of the city and seeking Wick's cooperation or demise.
Rachel's back-story is antithetical to the privileged stratum that held Wick and the Magician. An orphan of climate- change-refugee parents, she braced the Darwinian environment head-on and flourished, eventually joining forces with the older Wick. The two are currently lovers, though often bristling because of differing philosophies and goals.
Borne soon becomes the third point of their love triangle. The creature proves able to assimilate nearly anything of an organic nature, and it begins to grow and change -- and to exhibit increasing intelligence. It falls to Rachel to educate her adopted child, for whom she experiences a kind of tender affection, a luxury in this savage landscape. Wick, however, remains leery of the creature -- "Borne is not your friend," he insists -- suspecting it to be unknown Company tech. And as Borne grows it exhibits new capabilities, not all of them savory, Rachel is forced into a choice of allegiance that will have consequences for not only the three of them but for the fragmented world around them.
From the very first pages, VanderMeer indicates that his book is going to operate along several fruitfully interlooping axes. Mord is an impossible, surreal object in the vein of Ballard's "The Drowned Giant." At the same time, Mord is totally in the kaiju line, stomping across the city like Godzilla. But then, as in Richard Adams's Shardik, VanderMeer manages to infuse Mord with the totemic power that bears have always exhibited in fable and legend. This multivalent approach -- postmodern, pop- cultural, and archetypical -- is sustained throughout the whole book, rendering it much richer than a text with only a univalent approach.
Borne himself harks back to the tradition of horror and body horror, from the campiness of the Blob to more shuddery modern creations. He is a kind of Lovecraftian shoggoth monster: his many eyes, studded over his amorphous body, testify to that kinship.
As for the hardcore science-fictional tropes that VanderMeer chooses deftly to employ, the lineages go deep and broad. In terms of a world shattered by Faustian biotech, one need only look to Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake cycle, or Kathleen Ann Goonan's Nanotech Quartet for resonant futures. And Rachel resembles Jack Kirby's Kamandi as a beacon of normality in a world where normal is the minority status. The surreal aspects of the organic tech -- healer worms, memory- altering earwigs -- call to mind classic examples like Jeff Noon's Vurt and China Miéville's Bas- Lag universe. Besides the other literary ancestors cited for Borne's makeup, one might adduce the great SF story by Damon Knight, "Four in One," in which humans ingested by an alien continue to experience a new way of life, and Greg Bear's Blood Music, in which a totipotent variety of protoplasm conquers all. When at one point Rachel is entirely surrounded by a protective Borne (without being assimilated), I hear a riff on the living sentient space suit symbiotes found in John Varley's Eight Worlds cycle.
But beneath this hybrid of postmodern and hard SF narrative lies a foundation of eternal human concerns, most vibrantly the motif of family and parenting. Rachel admits that Borne is like a child to her, and she experiences all the frustrations and rewards that parenting has always brought. The rift that Borne engenders between Rachel and Wick is typical of the way marriages change when the first child is introduced. These aspects of the tale rival in magnitude any of the professed and accurate intellectual concerns that VanderMeer puts upfront in his interview.
There are other dichotomies that are richly laid out. The role of mentor (Wick the Magician) versus the role of student or protégé (Rachel, Borne). Natural versus artificial; civilization versus savagery; altruism versus selfishness; introversion versus exploratory tendencies; elder wisdom versus youthful naiveté. VanderMeer juggles these essential oppositions throughout with great zeal and flair, often using taut dialogue to make his arguments. Borne's unique thought processes and way of speaking are a great feature of the novel.
As for the setting, VanderMeer conjures up a kind of Ballardian landscape where the tangible debris comes to represent psychical states. As a lover of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, VanderMeer envisions a similar vast redoubt -- albeit underpopulated by contrast -- in the form of Balcony Cliffs. More to the point might be a comparison to an overlooked cult novel publicly admired by the author: Edward Carey's Observatory Mansions, about an allied urban structure of menace and decay.
And all of this is conveyed in language that at times evokes a fairytale ambiance. In the middle distance, the dead plain and across it, the bear closing in and then the living blot marks of bobbing, lumbering bears that had been drawn to Borne, stragglers who were still behind him in his disguise, but not very far. Some would succumb to the last of the buried biotech that had risen; those defenses appeared like smoke, like emerald-and-azure dust with purpose. Shimmering displays that disappeared into the wind at a thin angle, then reappeared as sheets of undulating microorganisms. We had seen a bear caught in that net buckle and fall, spasmodic, jaws spread wide, as if it could not breathe. But then the net broke, the bear rose, the old defenses revealed as ghosts, the Company without dominion.
In this emotional, primal, monitory fable, which demands visual accompaniment from an artist like Jim Woodring, Jeff VanderMeer has succeeded in creating a kind of love story-cum-odyssey that shows us the power of parental love and spousal commitment when all else has come undone.
Author of several acclaimed novels and story collections, including Fractal Paisleys, Little Doors, and Neutrino Drag, Paul Di Filippo was nominated for a Sturgeon Award, a Hugo Award, and a World Fantasy Award -- all in a single year. William Gibson has called his work "spooky, haunting, and hilarious." His reviews have appeared in The Washington Post, Science Fiction Weekly, Asimov's Magazine, and The San Francisco Chronicle.1 Reviewer: Paul Di Filippo
The New York Times Book Review - Wai Chee Dimock
Here is the story about biotech that VanderMeer wants to tell, a vision of the nonhuman not as one fixed thing, one fixed destiny, but as either peaceful or catastrophic, by our side or out on a rampage as our behavior dictates—for these are our children, born of us and now to be borne in whatever shape or mess we have created. This coming-of-age story signals that eco-fiction has come of age as well: wilder, more reckless and more breathtaking than previously thought, a wager and a promise that what emerges from the 21st century will be as good as any from the 20th, or the 19th.
Publishers Weekly
★ 02/06/2017
VanderMeer, author of the acclaimed Southern Reach trilogy, has made a career out of eluding genre classifications, and with Borne he essentially invents a new one. In a future strewn with the cast-off experiments of an industrial laboratory known only as the Company, a scavenger named Rachel survives alongside her lover, Wick, a dealer of memory-altering beetles, with whom she takes shelter from the periodic ravages of a giant mutant bear named Mord. One day, caught in Mord’s fur, Rachel finds the bizarre, shape-shifting creature “like a hybrid of sea anemone and squid” she calls Borne. Rachel adopts Borne and takes on its education over Wick’s objections. But Borne proves a precocious student, experiencing more and more complex transformations, testing Rachel’s loyalty as it undertakes a personal mission that threatens Rachel and Wick’s fragile existence even as it brings painful truths to the surface—truths like Wick’s mysterious past with the Company, the identity of the mercurial rival he calls the Magician, the origin of the feral children who roam the wasteland, and even the circumstances of Rachel’s own interrupted childhood. Reading like a dispatch from a world lodged somewhere between science fiction, myth, and a video game, the textures of Borne shift as freely as those of the titular whatsit. What’s even more remarkable is the reservoirs of feeling that VanderMeer is able to tap into throughout Rachel and Wick’s postapocalyptic journey into the Company’s warped ruins, resulting in something more than just weird fiction: weird literature. (May)
From the Publisher
Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy was an ever-creeping map of the apocalypse; with Borne he continues his investigation into the malevolent grace of the world, and it's a thorough marvel.” —Colson Whitehead
"VanderMeer is that rare novelist who turns to nonhumans not to make them approximate us as much as possible but to make such approximation impossible. All of this is magnified a hundredfold in Borne . . . Here is the story about biotech that VanderMeer wants to tell, a vision of the nonhuman not as one fixed thing, one fixed destiny, but as either peaceful or catastrophic, by our side or out on a rampage as our behavior dictates—for these are our children, born of us and now to be borne in whatever shape or mess we have created." —Wai Chee Dimock, The New York Times Book Review
“The conceptual elements in VanderMeer’s fiction are so striking that the firmness with which he cinches them to his characters’ lives is often overlooked . . . Borne is VanderMeer’s trans-species rumination on the theme of parenting . . . [Borne] insists that to live in an age of gods and sorcerers is to know that you, a mere person, might be crushed by indifferent forces at a moment’s notice, then quickly forgotten.” —Laura Miller, The New Yorker
"Borne, the latest novel from New Weird author Jeff VanderMeer, is a story of loving self-sacrifice, hallucinatory beauty, and poisonous trust . . . Heady delights only add to the engrossing richness of Borne. The main attraction is a tale of mothers and monsters—and of how we make each other with our love." —Nisi Shawl, The Washington Post
"Borne, Jeff VanderMeer's lyrical and harrowing new novel, may be the most beautifully written, and believable, post-apocalyptic tale in recent memory . . . [VanderMeer] outdoes himself in this visionary novel shimmering with as much inventiveness and deliriously unlikely, post-human optimism as Borne himself." —Elizabeth Hand, Los Angeles Times
"Borne, the latest from sci-fi savant Jeff VanderMeer, begins innocently enough: Girl meets strange plantlike creature. But if you haven't read his haunting Southern Reach trilogy, prepare yourself—this is Walden gone horribly wrong." —Esquire
"VanderMeer's apocalyptic vision, with its mix of absurdity, horror, and grace, can't be mistaken for that of anyone else. Inventive, engrossing, and heartbreaking, Borne finds [VanderMeer] at a high point of creative accomplishment." —Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle
"Beautiful . . . VanderMeer's fiction is not preachy by any means. Rather, it probes the mysterious of different lifeforms and highlights our human ignorance at the life around us." —Lincoln Michel, Vice
"VanderMeer’s follow-up to his acclaimed Southern Reach trilogy is fantastical and strange, but with a sincere heart beating at its core. " —Jaime Green, Google Play
"Borne maintains a wry self-awareness that's rare in dystopias, making it the most necessary VanderMeer book yet." —Charley Locke, Wired
"With Borne VanderMeer presents a parable about modern life, in these shaky days of roughshod industrialism, civilizational collapse, and looming planetary catastrophe . . . Think of Borne as a retelling of Steven Spielberg’s E.T, or the character arc of Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s the story of humanity making contact with something strange, alien, artificial, but yet possessed of a personality, a sense of humor, a drive to find love and friendship and community, to be a part of something—and to be respected—respected the way immigrants, refugees, the oppressed the world over have always wished to be respected." —Brian Ted Jones, The Rumpus
"A triumph of science fiction . . . Borne will dazzle you with its wonders and horrors, revealing itself as another piece of the puzzle, a reflection on the terror and beauty of being alive." —Matt E. Lewis, Electric Literature
"Just as VanderMeer subverted your expectations for each sequel to Annihilation, with Borne he’s written something completely different and unpredictable — not just in terms of the story, but also with regards to language, structure, and point of view." —Adam Morgan, Chicago Review of Books
"VanderMeer offers another conceptual cautionary tale of corporate greed, scientific hubris, and precarious survival . . . VanderMeer marries bildungsroman, domestic drama, love story, and survival thriller into one compelling, intelligent story centered not around the gee-whiz novelty of a flying bear but around complex, vulnerable characters struggling with what it means to be a person. VanderMeer's talent for immersive world-building and stunning imagery is on display in this weird, challenging, but always heartfelt novel." —Krista Hutley, Booklist (starred review)
"Supremely literary, distinctly unusual . . . VanderMeer’s deep talent for worldbuilding takes him into realms more reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's The Road than of the Shire. Superb.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"VanderMeer, author of the acclaimed Southern Reach trilogy, has made a career out of eluding genre classifications, and with Borne he essentially invents a new one . . . Reading like a dispatch from a world lodged somewhere between science fiction, myth, and a video game, the textures of Borne shift as freely as those of the titular whatsit. What’s even more remarkable is the reservoirs of feeling that VanderMeer is able to tap into . . . resulting in something more than just weird fiction: weird literature.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Library Journal
03/15/2017
In the blighted landscape of a nameless city, Rachel is a scavenger who roams the land looking for useful biotech scraps, remnants of experiments done by the Company. She brings back her finds to her lover Wick, who was once an employee of the Company, before everything fell apart. On one excursion, Rachel discovers a lump that she cannot at first identify as plant, animal, or machine. She brings it home, names it Borne, and quickly grows attached. As Borne evolves into a seemingly sentient creature, he becomes a bone of contention between Rachel and Wick, who have differing opinions on Borne's nature and possible threat. VERDICT VanderMeer ("Southern Reach" trilogy; Finch) delivers a work of dystopian ecofiction that will appeal to fans of Margaret Atwood's "MaddAddam" trilogy, albeit with a weirder sensibility. The language is lush and playful, with surreal touches, such as the building-sized bear that wanders a ruined landscape, attacking the sparse human population.—MM
School Library Journal
★ 07/01/2017
The setting, plot, and characters of this novel are richly realized, but it's the almost unbearably poignant tone that will draw in readers. Rachel lives with her reclusive lover, Wick, in a postapocalyptic city ruined by corporate greed. A giant bearlike creature flies overhead, trash stuck to his fur. He was designed to help restore order, but instead he wreaks more havoc. Rachel scavenges what she can and brings it back to Wick. Barricaded within their deteriorating apartment, they figure out what they can use. When Rachel finds a throbbing blob that reminds her of sea anemones and happier times, scientist Wick wants to kill it to understand it, but Rachel insists on letting it live. She names it Borne, and it grows quickly until one day it speaks. Borne's coming-of-age is also Rachel's, but as the two mature, Rachel's and Wick's lives—and the city itself—are at risk. Themes such as the consequences of science without ethics, attraction vs. addiction, secrets and trust, and the rewards and heartbreak of parenting (pets, children, or monsters) provide food for thought on top of an exciting survival story. VERDICT Suggest this title to teens who love layered, unusual, harsh, yet ultimately hopeful dystopian tales such as Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven or Ernest Cline's Ready Player One.—Hope Baugh, Carmel Clay Public Library, Carmel, IN
AUGUST 2017 - AudioFile
Narrator Bahni Turpin brings a haunting melancholy to VanderMeer’s enormous weird world, transforming what initially seems an outlandish dystopian tale into a deeply personal journey. In a ruined and polluted city persecuted by a vicious giant bear, Rachel survives by scavenging—which is how she first discovers “Borne.” As Borne begins to grow, move, and learn to speak, Rachel begins to care for him more than she should—especially when the real danger that Borne poses becomes chillingly clear. Though she manages this challenging narrative with aplomb, Turpin doesn’t differentiate between characters, so the dialogue can be difficult to follow. She manages, however, to build a palpable and audible bond between Rachel and Borne that makes this story gripping, unsettling, and thoroughly memorable. B.E.K. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2017-02-02
"Once upon a time there was a piece of biotech that grew and grew until it had its own apartment": an odd, atmospheric, and decidedly dark fable for our time.VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy (Acceptance, 2014, etc.) set high standards for dystopian fantasy, and the wizardry was as much in the writing as in the storyline. This latest is much the same: supremely literary, distinctly unusual, its title character a blob of something or another that earns its name, in part, because it's carried from place to place—when we meet it, in fact, it's tangled up in the fur of a giant bear that just now is busily marauding through the ruins of a once-thriving city in what would seem to be the very near future. The Company, an unfeeling and monstrously inclined biotech giant, once held sway there, but now what's left is a whole bunch of one-time experiments gone awry. Mord, the bear, is one, Borne another. Alternately dodging and caring for them is Rachel, an eminently resourceful young woman who doesn't quite know what to make of the little creature at first: "I knew nothing about Borne and treated him like a plant at first. It seemed logical, from my initial observations." Logical, yes, but Rachel is no Mr. Spock: she brims with feelings, some of them for her fellow survivor Wick. Just as Borne is able to morph into semblances of other beings, though, including an uncanny other-Rachel, so Wick would seem to have logged some hours in the lab himself. The reader is treated to the intriguing spectacle of Borne's acquiring consciousness in the middle of all the mayhem: "I became entangled in Mord's fur. (Who entangled me?) Where did I come from before that?" That the genetic basis for life is nothing to tinker with is plain throughout, especially in the moments where VanderMeer's deep talent for worldbuilding takes him into realms more reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's The Road than of the Shire. Superb: a protagonist and a tale sure to please fans of smart, literate fantasy and science fiction.
