Upgrade by Blake Crouch

This book addresses some pertinent aspects of the world in which we live today.  Blake Crouch raises issues about this invented and altered world in which we live today, such as popular “symbio” products, "designer ultra pets”, “spider silk clothes”, and other such unexpected things. However, the most amazing and disconcerting aspect of Crouch’s ideas is the new life form, a “tiny pink gorilla” that the Russian oligarchs particularly like.  Sex dolls are suggested as popular, wrapped as they are in human muscle and skin. This narrative is set in a time in which many countries have been suffering from food shortages and other aspects of life that have been difficult.   

 

In a fascinating and intensely modern novel, Crouch plunges us into a world in which things are changing, and we are learning about what is not specifically good for humans, especially in terms of certain changes.  Some of these are not particularly good in terms of making the world better.  Crouch raises further unsettling issues, such as Africa’s dealing with "food insecure” problems, while he writes of America as having “rolling food shortages" and “supply chain dystopia”. Crouch writes of a world in which meat is so highly priced that many people cannot afford to buy it anymore. This text set in an imaginary time when America is depicted as undergoing such unsettling aspects as “jobs lost to automation”, and the time of “the great starvation”, such that the USA is depicted as having been in a parlous state. Many people had been suffering, and there had been unusual developments in Glacier National Park - where there were no glaciers anymore because of the weather conditions.

 

Logan Ramsey works for the Gene Protection Agency, and he looks for evidence of Soren’s DNA on the pages of his book, as plasmids on a page can hold, we are told,  a “near infinitesmal amount of genetic information", which can be accessed.  He realises that his genome has been hacked, as he grasps the fact that he has been chosen for an “upgrade”.  Pertinently, Ramsey’s mother has been working in the area of gene “editing”, and he is questioned about this too. He is told to cooperate or he will be punished. His own fear is that his influenza has the potential to infect his body cells and cause his DNA to be rewritten or at last re-edited.  As the effects of the gene intervention occur, we read about the horrendous nature of "eyes rolling, arms curled and unable to uncurl, bubbles coming out of the mouth”, body cells feeling like they are “screaming”, and pain felt all over the body. His first upgrade leaves him insecure and uncertain about the world, particularly finding other humans “a mystery.”  Ultimately, Logan is depicted in this novel as the one person in the world who has the potential to outwit the issues faced by the world. 

 

At one point, we read that a human can divide consciousness, such that a human being could type on four keyboards simultaneously, by dividing consciousness into four states. This riveting narrative raises ideas that are absolutely extraordinary, and only a brilliant brain could create such a world, and such a narrative. Crouch has constructed a novel that is richly descriptive, gripping, and absolutely challenging the intellect, describing human responses to all of the issues that the world faces, particularly illness, anger and poverty.  It is most appropriate for adolescent and adult reading.