SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Stronger, Faster & More Beautiful by Arwen Elys Dayton

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: "Stronger, Faster & More Beautiful" by Arwen Elys Dayton https://t.co/QrCO0uSi5v Short Review: 5.5 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) January 26, 2019

Short Review (cont): A book containing a sequence of stories as the body modification technology - 1st for medical purposes, then for other purposes - becomes more and more available has some solid stories but as a whole package feels a bit lost in what it's trying to say. (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) January 26, 2019

Stronger, Faster & More Beautiful is the perfect example of a book that a reviewer has to be careful about, because the direction the book goes is incredibly different than what might be expected based upon the title.  It's one of the classics mistakes as a reviewer to complain about a book not for being bad, but for the book not being what you expected it to be - which is the fault of the reader generally, not the book (and the review ought to clarify what type of book it is anyway).  And Stronger, Faster & More Beautiful is not what I expected from its title - it is not a book about a world where gene/body modification is being used to make people stronger and more beautiful and the implications of such, and readers looking for that will be disappointed.

That said, Stronger, Faster & More Beautiful is kind of a complete mess that doesn't seem to know what type of book it is either.  The book is essentially an anthology of six stories, with each story taking place further into the future, in a world where body modification for medical purposes and eventually for other purposes becomes more available and causes the world to split due to the ethical issues involved with such technology.  The stories don't really build upon each other, and it's never really quite clear what message the author is trying to send, or even if the author is interested in the ethical issues at all.  This is not a topic that is new to science fiction, and given all the other options out there for dealing with it, I can't really recommend Stronger, Faster & More Beautiful - it's not bad, but it's just lost.


----------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
In the near future, body modification technology will become more and more developed - first starting with the use of existing organs of humans to replace or fix failing organs/body-parts of other humans so that at least one person can live and moving on to body parts grown artificially for such replacements for medical purposes.  Then there will be the body modifications done for purposes other than medicine - to create better beings, or more capable beings.  The presence of this technology will cause major changes around the world.

However, not everyone will be accepting of the use of this technology, and it's existence will create new divisions around the world, as factions and countries, fathers and daughters, and more find themselves on opposite sides of a new conflict created by the ethical and religious concerns over such technology.

In this book there are six stories, showing the emergence of these conflicts and possible results of such conflicts as the technology grows more and more advanced.  It may not be exactly what you'd expect....
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So to be clear, Stronger, Faster & More Beautiful is generally more interested in the geopolitical reactions to body modification and organ regrowth technology than the personal implications - This is sort of the focus of Parts Three, Five, and Six, as well as an underlying theme in Parts One and Four.  More personal implications are dealt with in some stories (Parts, One, Two, and Four), but only really in the sense of people who have modifications done not by choice, but for the purposes of medicine and for the purposes of helping fulfill the goals of others.  While individuals using the technology for personal use - such as to adapt their own bodies to what they conceive of as their own identities - is referenced a few times in the stories, it is never an idea that the book is really that interested in taking a big look at.

And in general the stories are well done and varied.  St. Ludmilla (Part Two) is a particularly strong story of a girl whose body undergoes massive changes after it is wrecked in a car crash and her tragic ostracizing by her classmates when they find out, and her devastating reaction.  Eight Waded (Part Four) is a really solid story of a teenage boy artificially created by people hoping for a super intelligent super capable son, only to go not according to plan, and that teenager's final steps toward a new life of his own free choice.  California (Part Five) is the tragic story of a boy whose parents make one mistaken choice of where to use the technology and who gets lost in time and enslaved, with little for him left and the tragedy that results.  Curiosities (Part Six) is even an okay love story between two natural-ish humans who live in a reservation maintained by those with modifications.

The thing is that while some of these stories are well done on their own, they don't really offer up any consistent message about the book's central theme of the impact of body modification technology on the global world, which makes them kind of feel random and disorienting.  It's as if the book is confused as to where it wanted to go, and the stories were all put together from a series of drafts just to make it all work.  And the idea that body modifications, like really any type of technology, could cause a new cold war just isn't that interesting.

It doesn't help that the book doesn't do a great job selling the idea of why the world would split like this.  A preacher, the Reverend Tadd, plays a role in the background of all six parts (and the foreground of Part 3), and his change of mind midway through just never quite seems believable.  And then it's hard to see really such a preacher really making such a big influence - neither he nor his disciples, or really countries caring so damn much about the technology given what we know about the world (the idea that Russia would be a prudish conservative country about the technology even for medical uses is....not really believable - the comparisons to the country's treatment of homosexuality don't work at all imo).

The end result is that as a short story or novelette collection, Stronger, Faster & More Beautiful has some highlights, with three of the six stories being rather good, but as a whole it is less than the sum of its parts and really not that interesting of a collection.  A missed opportunity here - a strong idea that could've said some interesting things instead is a mess of ideas that just don't really say anything interesting or believable.