“But for all our progress, ten million people die of hunger every year. We have hyperloops and rampant nativism. Phones more powerful than the computers that took us to the moon, but no more coral reefs. And year after year, nothing really changes. If there’s a solution, it has to lie in rescuing us from our ambivalence. Our apathy.”

 

I’ve read 3 Blake Crouch books in the past year. I’ve never been one to choose a sci-fi thriller, but he keeps me coming back for them. This particular book, Upgrade, tells the story of a post-pandemic type world where they discover how to change the genetic code of humans. Manhattan is underground, people are starving, and some people believe the true problem lies within humans and their limited capabilities. Changing someone’s genetic code, the story tells us, will give humans almost super-human-like abilities that can change the course of the world, or it can kill them; there is no middle ground.  Our main character has to grapple with this change and figure out how to "save" the human existence.

 

Blake Crouch has a knack for writing about scientific events that feel like they can actually happen. Modifying genetic code doesn’t seem like something that is too far off in our future. I think I’ve always struggled to read science fiction because I was never very interested in science; it all seemed to theoretical or I couldn't fully understand what was happening. Crouch chooses instead to grapple with scientific problems that are happening in the world around us right now. In reading his books, I have discovered that I am very interested in working through moral and ethical dilemmas and the science world offers a lot of those. 

 

Another tactic that Crouch tends to use in his writing is to split his story up in sections anchored by quotes. Each part of the book has its own quote to ground in the moral dilemma that that particular section deals with. Part one of this book opens with the following quote:

 

You can stop splitting the atom; you can stop visiting the Moon; you can stop using 

aerosols; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs. 

But you cannot recall a new form of life. - Erwin Chargaff

 

I was instantly hooked. All of these things that you associate with science are choices that the scientist is in complete control of, however, once you start creating new life forms, you are in danger of losing control. This book argues that you can’t truly predict what a new form of life will do because all life has a mind of its own. 

 

I thought this was a fascinating concept especially now with the rise of AI. My question would be what constitutes a living being? I think AI can be considered living. It is programmed to respond to you and have its thoughts based on research. At what point do humans lose control of AI? I know there are thousands of stories about this concept, but this novel seemed to attack the issue from a different angle by not including artificial intelligence at all. The whole demise of the human race in this book was because of one overly ambitious person, not A, but yet I still think it is relevant to this conversation.

 

I do have a few qualms with this book - the ending does provide a glimpse into a major lesson in life and provoke many interesting questions, but I think it negates the whole point of the book. The main character just ends up making a similar mistake and I guess that is the true dilemma of the human race - no matter how many times we make a mistake, we never do truly learn from it.

 

Many moore thoughts to come,

Elizabeth