- Edenborn
infobox Book |
name = Edenborn
title_orig =
translator =
image_caption = Need Image
author =Nick Sagan
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country =United States
language = English
series =
genre =Science fiction novel
publisher =Penguin Books (USA)
release_date = 2004
media_type = Print (Hardback &Paperback )
pages = 336 pp
isbn = 0451215273
preceded_by =Idlewild
followed_by =Everfree "Edenborn" is a 2004 novel by
Nick Sagan . It is the sequel to "Idlewild", and takes place 18 years after that book. The sequel to this book and the final installment of the trilogy is "Everfree".
In the aftermath of a global plague, a group of gengineered posthumans are trying to rebuild society by
Haji, of the Luxor camp, is going to
Penny, the main character of the Munich base, is obsessed with power, and recognition. When she hears that Pandora has become overworked, and may need an assistant, she puts all of her energy into getting the position. Penny is alienated from all of her peers, especially Brigit and Sloane. She believes that she has supernatural powers and somehow put a "hex" on her sister, causing her to break her leg. She believes herself to be the smartest of the girls, the best athlete, and a great writer of operatic symphonies. Her only desire is to be recognized, to be "queen of the inside" by controlling IVR, and thereby controlling her sisters.She is the kind of person who is only nice when she thinks someone is watching.She offers to pay Brigit and Sloane 5,000 dollars each (in IVR money) if they say good things about her to Pandora. When her sisters demand more money, she resorts to blackmailing them. When she is informed that Olivia, her younger sister, got the job instead, she threatens Olivia, and resolves to "make them pay".
Small items, with no history or sender, keep ending up in IVR. Haji finds a key, and Tomi recognizes it as the key to the cryogenics lab, where the Geanectis scientist Halfway Jim has stored a composite of his personality in a computer. Haji realizes the truth, that he is a clone of Halfway Jim. The Jim composite tells his that he must sacrifice himself, and "download" the personality, so that Halfway Jim, the genius, can help the world. Haji is in the middle of a crisis of faith. His entire life, his religion, stresses the ultimate path to God as self annihilation, fana, the black light that anhialates everything but God. Here he is faced with the decision to destroy himself for the betterment of humanity. He must also consider what his father's intentions were in cloning him, and raising him to believe in what he does. He wonders if he was intended to be a conduit for Halfway Jim, his father's idol; his father's God. Just as Haji gets some solitude to contemplate this crisis, and Penny makes out her hit list, IVR goes down. Everything is exposed, Vasthi's logs and evaluations of the girls that reveal a range of mood-suppressing drugs--including sex-drive suppressants--and
Halloween made a clone of himself to watch his own life. He inserted this clone into IVR to follow his own life. However, the clone did not follow all of Halloween's choices, and Hal realized that the clone was an individual human being, and not really Hal. He named the clone Deuce and brought him out of IVR to raise him as his son. When Deuce makes his strike on the Munich computer network , Pandora goes to Michigan to confront Halloween (she thinks he is responsible), which makes Halloween initially mad. Pandora agrees to take Deuce back to Munich to face a punishment. But Penny, recently unbalanced by the news of the mood-suppressants, is secretly working with Deuce, and the two elope.
Meanwhile, Pandora is tracking
Halloween goes to Munich to track down his son. After brief recriminations, Isaac-- leader of the Luxor camp-- tells them that the three children on the exchange course(and presumably the other human children) are also suffering and will soon die.
Deuce and Penelope go to Britain, and begin a 'last-couple-on-Earth' fantasy. But Penny insists that on fulfilling the fantasy, and the pair go to an air force base and acquire weaponry. After they accidentally shoot down Pandora over the
In the aftermath, the various leaders realise that all their problems came from deceit and trickery. They all move to Munich, where they begin to build, hopefully, a better world.
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