MADreads

In the company of immortals

February 5th, 2010 Kathy - Meadowridge

Sadly, J.D. Salinger wasn’t the only author who died last week.  Kage Baker didn’t write an iconic coming-of-age novel like Salinger, but she did write a witty and captivating science fiction series that started with In the Garden of Iden.

In Baker’s Garden, twenty-fourth century corporation Dr. Zeus, Inc. has figured out how to accomplish both time travel and immortality.  You’d think that would be enough of a market niche to dominate, but the Company has other ideas.  They use their knowledge to place undercover operatives throughout history to rescue artifacts–both natural and man-made–that would otherwise have been lost in the mists of time.  These operatives are immortal cyborgs: orphans whom the Company has rescued from grim circumstances, modified to Company specs, trained in a specialty, and sent off to work in the shadows of history for their benevolent overlords.  Depending on how you look at it, this is either a noble or a nefarious undertaking.

Botanist Mendoza is assigned to 16th-century England, tasked with gathering samples of extinct plants–extinct in the 24th century, that is–that will yield big pharmaceutical profits, once they are sent forward into the future to be “discovered.”  While grubbing around amongst the flora of the English countryside, she breaks a major Company taboo by falling in love with a mortal.  Naturally, complications ensue.

Don’t let the immortal cyborg thing put you off.  Watching Mendoza and her fellow technologically advanced immortals living among and blending in with the locals is hugely entertaining and often laugh-out-loud funny.  Baker’s take on time travel is a bit different from the norm, and her descriptions of Tudor-era life and language are lush and richly detailed.  History, science fiction, romance, and wicked humor blend together to provide a little something for almost everyone.

There’s a lot more to the Company’s story than Mendoza’s troubles, though. In the Garden of Iden spawned several sequels, as well as short stories and novellas set in the Company universe, all careening forward through history toward a mysterious Big Thing that’s supposed to happen in 2355.  Not the kind of stuff that defines a generation, but a cracking good read nonetheless.  R.I.P., Kage.

Entry Filed under: Science Fiction