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2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award (nominee)
2018 John W. Campbell Memorial Award (nominee)
2018 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (nominee)
Named one of the best books of 2017 by The Los Angeles Times,The Boston Globe, PopSugar, Financial Times, Chicago Review of Books, Huffington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Thrillist, Book Riot, National Post (Canada), Kirkus and Publishers Weekly
From the author of the Southern Reach Trilogy comes Jeff VanderMeer's Borne, a story about two humans and two creatures.
‘Am I a person?’ Borne asked me.
‘Yes, you are a person,’ I told him. ‘But like a person, you can be a weapon, too.’
In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company—a biotech firm now derelict—and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech.
One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump—plant or animal?—but exudes a strange charisma. Borne reminds Rachel of the marine life from the island nation of her birth, now lost to rising seas. There is an attachment she resents: in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet, against her instincts—and definitely against Wick’s wishes—Rachel keeps Borne. She cannot help herself. Borne, learning to speak, learning about the world, is fun to be with, and in a world so broken that innocence is a precious thing. For Borne makes Rachel see beauty in the desolation around her. She begins to feel a protectiveness she can ill afford.
‘He was born, but I had borne him.’
But as Borne grows, he begins to threaten the balance of power in the city and to put the security of her sanctuary with Wick at risk. For the Company, it seems, may not be truly dead, and new enemies are creeping in. What Borne will lay bare to Rachel as he changes is how precarious her existence has been, and how dependent on subterfuge and secrets. In the aftermath, nothing may ever be the same.
Genre: Science Fiction
From the author of the Southern Reach Trilogy comes Jeff VanderMeer's Borne, a story about two humans and two creatures.
‘Am I a person?’ Borne asked me.
‘Yes, you are a person,’ I told him. ‘But like a person, you can be a weapon, too.’
In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company—a biotech firm now derelict—and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech.
One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump—plant or animal?—but exudes a strange charisma. Borne reminds Rachel of the marine life from the island nation of her birth, now lost to rising seas. There is an attachment she resents: in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet, against her instincts—and definitely against Wick’s wishes—Rachel keeps Borne. She cannot help herself. Borne, learning to speak, learning about the world, is fun to be with, and in a world so broken that innocence is a precious thing. For Borne makes Rachel see beauty in the desolation around her. She begins to feel a protectiveness she can ill afford.
‘He was born, but I had borne him.’
But as Borne grows, he begins to threaten the balance of power in the city and to put the security of her sanctuary with Wick at risk. For the Company, it seems, may not be truly dead, and new enemies are creeping in. What Borne will lay bare to Rachel as he changes is how precarious her existence has been, and how dependent on subterfuge and secrets. In the aftermath, nothing may ever be the same.
Genre: Science Fiction
Praise for this book
"From being a very successful SF writer, VanderMeer will become mainstream – and Borne is full of signs that he is already thinking ahead of that easy transition, and perhaps subverting it." - Toby Litt
"As Borne grows and evolves, so develops a weird family dynamic in a novel that is as much of a fascinating hybrid as its title character, both an enthralling fantasy adventure and a bleak eco-dystopic admonition." - James Lovegrove
"Jeff VanderMeer’s deeply strange and brilliant new novel extends the meditation on the central question of non-human sentience in his earlier work … No one writes a post-apocalyptic landscape like VanderMeer, so detailed and strange in all its lineaments and topography." - Neel Mukherjee
"Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy was an ever-creeping map of the apocalypse; with Borne he continues his investigation into the malevolent grace of the world, and it's a thorough marvel." - Colson Whitehead
"As Borne grows and evolves, so develops a weird family dynamic in a novel that is as much of a fascinating hybrid as its title character, both an enthralling fantasy adventure and a bleak eco-dystopic admonition." - James Lovegrove
"Jeff VanderMeer’s deeply strange and brilliant new novel extends the meditation on the central question of non-human sentience in his earlier work … No one writes a post-apocalyptic landscape like VanderMeer, so detailed and strange in all its lineaments and topography." - Neel Mukherjee
"Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy was an ever-creeping map of the apocalypse; with Borne he continues his investigation into the malevolent grace of the world, and it's a thorough marvel." - Colson Whitehead
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