Extremophile by Ian Green
I would like to thank Head of Zeus for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Head of Zeus
Published – Out Now
Price – £9.99 paperback £5.03 ebook
Meet Charlie and Parker. Hard-thrashing punks by night, not-entirely-ethical biohackers by day.
Give them your DNA and they'll map the epigenetic topology of your genome to the grand procession of the stars. Zodiac Code: it's a good distraction from the end of the world, if you don't care whether it's true.
But nihilism can only get you so far. Especially when criminals and corporations are hacking humanity for notoriety, immortality and, most importantly, profit.
Charlie and Parker have just the right kind of reputation - and know just the wrong sort of people - to be offered a job that might save the world. Or, more likely, get them killed in the process.
With cyberpunk we very often focus on the cyber element most. The cool technology, the changes to society and even our bodies are a rich source of stories but we often seem to forget about the punk element. It seems to have become little more of a simple label people add onto the latest new subgenre of choice. But punk can itself represent many things - a sense of character, rebellion, style, attitude and more. In Ian Green’s great science fiction novel Extremophile we have an imaginative, fast and pulsating story of the future just over there I the future and delivers a remarkable world and set of characters we come to understand, love and sometimes fear.
London in the future is hot, duty and empty thanks to climate change and the many disasters that have destroyed parts of the world and the wider population. Outside of the elite Zone 1 on the outskirts lives Charlie and Parker. Sometimes they are the up-and-coming punk band Horse Theory and in others they make sidelines as biohackers performing simple cons such as selling Zodiacs based on your DNA and sometimes creating complex changes to bodies and more as humanity now lives in a time where we have pushed genetics to ever more elaborate creations. The duo have attracted the attention of one of the world’s deadliest environmental terrorists who think Charlie could help with a new plan to save the world but in the process, Charlie finds themselves up against an old foe from her previous life and also one of the biggest and evilest corporations out there ruled by a man known in the wider underworld as The Ghost.
Extremophile is very much like a punk rock song - a furiously paced yet lean science fiction novel that starts with a bang and really propels the reader along with it as we jump though the gritty punk world of London, the morally grey corporate and criminal underworlds and all along set in a future that feels imminent and on the cusp of falling between chaos, despair and hope. Once I settled into the tale I loved where it took us.
We rotate chapters from Charlie’s personal viewpoint to the daily life of the Ghost and some other intriguing characters. With the main character of Charlie Ian Green uses a fast flowing style zipping from what is going on to explanations of the world, skipping to personal anecdotes and science principles. Rather than long exhibitions it’s a more mosaic structure where the reader starts to get clues as to how this world works and importantly how much it feels to be on the edge of collapse. For a short novel this is very dense, and I did need to take a few times in between chapters to process things but it really comes together very well
One key concept Charlie explains are the three main mindsets of the world – the Blue – the ones who wish to just make money while there are people alive to pay it and care little for consequences, The Green who want to try and improve things in this tough world and The Black those who cannot see the point in a world on its way out. While Parker is hopeful things can get better Charlie says she is very much finding herself drawn to the Black and can sometimes hide away in VR novels for weeks on end – they’ve often found that through personal tragedies they want to hide away. This is a book exploring those viewpoints which remind us of how they correspond to the various debates we hear even now about trying to stop climate change coming onto us.
In the form of the opposition the Blue (such an interesting colour choice) we have The Ghost and we see his chapters almost as a rolling work day though his life. Board meetings, blood infusions to keep him ever healthy and this delight helping the criminal underworld with genetic projects that are to either make money or punish people’s enemies. For him the wealth is as much an attraction as the sense of power he wields because he can, and equally what he does for criminals you sense a sadistic pleasure at the ideas he faces such as taking a target for a drug cartel and forcing the person’s brain to be transplanted into a live pig. His chapters run with a sleek sense of greed and delight in doing things because no one can stop him, and he very much becomes a villain that feels equal to the story rather than too easy to battle. He even gets a strange apprentice figure in the form of Ellis who we find has been instrumental in what has happened to Charlie a young equally morally ambiguous scientist who wants more and more whatever the cost. They both feel dangerous whenever they arrive on the pages
Charlie’s scenes work as an intriguing mix of Green and Black as being recruited by an infamous environmental terrorist group the duo can’t resist the challenge of the crimes to commit and also the goal. The novel has a delightful heist scene on a well armed agricultural building in a flooded Norfolk that both delivers tension but also some very cool SF and even uses the worst stink bomb imaginable as a plot point. It delivered with verve, humour and intelligence that also brings in other characters from Charlie’s world and this terrorist group and it all feels real. I also really felt the bond between Charlie and Parker two people very much in love and who need one another and in a book that often is loud, fast and has moments of darkness the moments this couple share really bring some warmth and also drive the book’s theme of looking for hope in a world that may not have much left, in many ways the two perspectives of punk that’s its purely nihilistic and without hope is up against the feeling of rebellion and wanting something new and different which really works in the story.
In between the manic energy of Charlie’s life we also meet a character known as The Mole and her story is more flashbacks to how she became the dangerous genetically modified woman we see now and it’s a startlingly more sombre set of chapters as we watch how a young girl born into a mine becomes just a plaything of a corporation pushing its limits and these chapters serve to remind us what Charlie is up against and also how the world has gotten into the mess we now see it is. The Mole very much represents part of the Green and adds some key stakes to the tale as to what may happen if the Ghost is never stopped.
My one issue is pacing. We are going hell for leather in terms of pace and I really enjoy the ride throughout, but I did note around two thirds we were suddenly reminded that a lot of Charlie’s large To Do list is not yet completed and there is a lot being left to do in the final third. In some ways this suits the book’s style this is a short sharp punk tune without the time for too many long middle eights and flights of guitar solos but the finale while also pleasingly inventive and raucous does seem to tie up lots of plot ends very very fast and just possibly some of the reveals as to who is working for whom needed a little more preparation. There is a magnificent but amoral character we meet known as Scrimshank whose scenes are full of sweary violence often for the pleasure of it even if he is a paid thug but by the end the book slightly glosses over his casualness to killing which felt a slightly off kind of redemption for him and just a few more chapters to build some arcs would have made the landing a little more organic without I think sacrificing speed.
There is a scene late on in the book after much adventure being had and before things get even more dangerous when Charlie and Parker attend a punk concert. Green writes this scene from their viewpoints with passion, we feel the frenetic pace, the emotional impacts, the wild joy and release that the characters and the wider crowd experience as music is played by a band wearing werewolf costumes. It is joyous in what often can be read as a dark tale and at the same time Green shows us two characters from outside this punk world arriving and just seeing a lot of noise and things they do not understand. For me this is the fun and challenge of Extremophile it has picked a side and style and runs with it all the way through but some readers who prefer more traditional approaches in their science fiction may be confused. I say though dive in to the mosh pit as there is a huge amount to enjoy and if you enjoy books that take risks, play with style and format then the refreshing Extremophile for you is highly recommended!
