Title: Queen of Angels
Author: Greg Bear
Date of First Publication: 1990
Place of Publication: Warner
Type: Novel
Characters: No Character
Themes: MAD SCIENTIST/MONSTER; RACE/POLITICS; SYMPATHETIC MONSTER; POSTHUMAN; ANDROID
Critical Summary: Queen of Angels takes place before the start of the Binary Millennium in 2048 AD. In this society, nanotechnology has advanced so greatly that it affects every aspect of human life, allowing people to live much more technologically advanced. Due to these advancements, people voluntarily (unless you are a criminal) undergo therapy in order to ensure they are operating at their highest capacity. In this society, three groups of people exist, the high naturals (those not needing therapy), the therapied, and the un-therapied. Each category of person comes with their own type of lifestyle (associated with class), where high naturals and therapied find themselves extremely privileged, while the un-therapied although there by choice, live much poorer and oppressed lives. Queen of Angels is written from the perspective of four different characters all running parallel to each other but rarely interacting. In a society where crime is almost nonexistent, eight people have been murdered overnight by famous poet Emmanuel Goldsmith. Mary Choy, a therapied “transform” and police officer who has just undergone an operation to become more robot than human, changing her skin color from an olive hue to black, has been assigned to the case. While Mary looks for Goldsmith all over LA and Hispaniola, she deals with the new changes made to her body by Dr. Sumpler, while spending time with her boyfriend and encountering parts of society outside of “the combs” that she has never seen before. Next is Richard Fettle, an un-therapied writer and close friend to Goldsmith who believes it is his duty to express in words his friend’s motivation for such an outrageous crime and struggles with this responsibility for the entirety of the novel, making little progress under the immense pressure. The third storyline is that of Martin Burke, an expert in psychotherapy and discoverer of the “Country of the Mind” where one’s psychological layout can be portrayed virtually. Burke is bribed by a father of one of the victims (Albigoni) with the chance of getting his job back only if he agrees to perform an illegal therapy session on Goldsmith to see what made him do it. Without much thought of potential consequences, Dr. Burke quickly agrees in hopes of reinstating himself as a successful psychotherapist. Although Burke is able to have a one-on-one session with Goldsmith toward the end of the novel, not many answers are provided as to his main motivation for murdering eight young people, one his own grandson. The final storyline follows “Jill” an AI assigned with exploring space who experiments with becoming self-aware while talking to her creator Roger Atkins. Although these characters seem distant, all storylines deal with relating issues of identity, consciousness, justice, and technology.
As a “mad scientist” figure, Burke agrees to what he knows is illegal and risky just so he can feel the thrill of exploring the “Country of the Mind” again. Without much consideration to the risks, or if Goldsmith is even willing to voluntarily do the session, Burke begins making the steps toward making this session a reality. Mary and Fettle’s storylines both greatly deal with the issue of race/politics. Having once been an Asian woman and opting in to “transform” into a black woman android, knowing full well the risks of her families and public’s reaction, Mary’s story line becomes greatly intertwined with the issue of race and identity as well as what it means to be considered “human”. Throughout the exploration of Goldsmith and the people close to him, Mary and Fettle get a unique opportunity to see what made Goldsmith an artist and a monster and which qualities they see within themselves and the people close to them. Jill’s storyline allows the reader to really question what it is about our consciousness that makes us human, and what level of consciousness a potential AI should or shouldn’t have.
Administrative Notes: Alli Merrill, CSUF; Dr. David Sandner, CSUF (editing)