Wildlife

Surely SF's loudest tempest in a teapot in the past 25 years was the so-called cyberpunk vs. humanist debate. Attention was paid when Bruce Sterling, editing the definitive cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades , included ``Solstice'' by humanist writer Kelly. Wildlife , a fix-up novel which includes ``Solstice,'' a novella called ``Mr. Boy'' and two other sections, indicates that the battle is over and the winners are the readers. Kelly's novel deals with the effects artificial intelligence could have on society through the relationships of three generations of the Cage family. In the near future, journalist Wynne Cage witnesses (and abets) the theft of Wildlife--a computer program designed to create a cognizor, a human-equivalent AI--for a brilliant man in a decaying body. In ``Solstice'' (now changed from third to first person), Wynne's father Tony, muses on his relationship with his daughter, actually a female clone, ``a twin, except that we were carried to term in different wombs and her birth came some 28 years after mine.'' ``Mr. Boy'' is the only section that does not deal with some version of Wynne and seems too long, but Kelly ( Look into the Sun ) has combined the virtues claimed by the humanists with the technological possibilities that are the cornerstone of cyberpunk in a book that delves into the very core of what it means to be human. (Feb.)