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Limit of Vision
by Linda Nagata
(Tor Books, $6.99, paperback, 352 pages, first published 2001, this
edition, 1 July 2002; ISBN: 0765342111.)
Linda Nagata is possessed of a wild speculative  imagination.
She sees beyond cutting-edge science to the social and personal implications
of its possible applications. Her prose successfully combines understated
elegance and neologistic flair. Nevertheless, Limit of Vision,
her fifth novel, fails to fulfill the promise of these qualities.
LOVs are artificial life forms that exist at the limit of vision (hence
their acronymic name). Illegal on Earth, they are bred in space, where
they are studied via remote systems by a trio of young, brilliant scientists
working for the high-tech firm Equatorial Systems. The three researchers
smuggle LOVs to Earth and implant them in their bodies. This symbiosis
subtly enhances the scientists' emotions and thought processes. Shortly
after one of them dies mysteriously, the LOVs that remain in space engineer
to crash their space station in Vietnam. A renegade video artist, Ela
Suvanatat, and a strange cult, the Roi Nuoc, both enter into symbiotic
relationships with the escaped LOVs. The International Biotechnology
Commission considers this an ecological disaster and wants to exterminate
all LOVs. Add to this mix Ky Xuan Nguyen, a wealthy businessman with
a secret agenda who negotiates a LOV protectorate, and Mother Tiger,
an artificial intelligence worshipped by the Roi Nuoc, and the story
gets rolling.
Sadly, this promising tale collapses under the weight of too many unanswered
questions. How did Ky Xuan Nguyen succeed in negotiating the LOV protectorate?
How did the three scientists smuggle the LOVs to Earth? And what inspired
them to do so? What are the details of the event that first caused world
authorities to be so strict and paranoid about artificial life? While
Limit of Vision is, at first, an exciting read, by the end, the
vagueness of such important plot points nags to irritating distraction.
Originally published, in slightly different form,
in The Montreal Gazette, Saturday, 2 June 2001.
Claude Lalumière's Fantastic Fiction
is a series of
capsule reviews first published in the Saturday Books
section of The Montreal Gazette.
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