cover image The Jonah Kit

The Jonah Kit

Ian Watson. Gollancz, $14.95 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-575-07389-0

British SF writer Ian Watson, author of the screen story for AI, crafts an intricate and elegantly written tale of a boy and some whales or, more accurately, a tale of defection, thought replacement and the death of the universe in The Jonah Kit. The boy, an escapee from a Russian research institute, bears the mind of a dead astronaut, a famous scientist claims to have discovered God's absence and whales learn the true nature of humans to devastating effect in Watson's terrible brave new world.