Title:

The Human Son

Author:

Adrian J. Walker

Category:

Fantasy / Science Fiction

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

February 5, 2025

he idea behind The Human Son is a lot more intriguing than the actual execution of the story. The premise is that in the near future, with catastrophic climate change threatening the Earth, scientists construct super intelligent, rational human-like beings called the Erta. They are like advance AI with bodies. 11,111 Erta are made and tasked with saving the Earth. Unfortunately, the Erta conclude that the best hope for the planet is to eliminate all of humanity. A super virus is created, rendering all humans sterile, and in a couple of generations all the remaining humans have died out. The Erta then set about restoring the Earth to its pristine state.

Ima is one of the best Erta. For the last 500 years, she has been soaring through the atmosphere in her titanium balloon, fixing things. (Somehow Ima removes pollution and excess carbon dioxide, though how this is accomplished is not mentioned). With her primary task complete, Ima is given a new assignment: Ima must raise a human boy who has been gestated in the birth chambers. The boy is to be an experiment to see if humans should be allowed to exist again.

One thing that bothered me about this story is that the parameters for the human boy to be judged a success or failure are never defined. What would constitute a successful human life that would merit the reintroduction of our species? It seems from the moment of his birth that the Erta have already opted to move forward with transcendence, there is no chance of "success". And why would the Erta only bring back one human? What if he perished too young? Any good researcher would know that there ought to be several hundred test subjects, just to be sure that an accurate evaluation of the test can be drawn, rather than making conclusions based upon a single subject who might be an outlier.

What I disliked the most about this book is that the choice to eliminate humanity seems like such a bad decision by the genius Erta. Why not build 1000 skyscrapers, each one square kilometer at the base and standing 1 km tall. Fill these 1000 skyscrapers with schools, vertical farms, and residences. The Erta are smart enough to provide fusion power. Force humans to live sustainably, and the rest of the Earth can be restored. A human population of a few hundred million to a couple billion could exist on the planet with only marginal impact to the environment if we truly adopted sustainability. Perhaps locate the human colonies underground. Or in space colonies (the Erta eject all the plastic waste of humanity into a giant ball that orbits the moon, so the Erta certainly have the power of space flight.)

If the Erta are supposed to be so smart, why are they dumb? When the human baby cries at night, he keeps the entire village of Erta awake? Why don't they use earplugs, rather than suggesting that the baby be killed?

The Erta are so paranoid about leaving any imprint on the planet that the Office of Necessities turns down a request for a screw or a cup? Surely it is a massive waste of time to debate whether such a tiny object has any effect on the planet's future.

Ima states at one point that she has lived through an ice age. But she is only 500 years old. There is no possible time for an ice age to advance and retreat.

Why are the Erta so freaked out by a hurricane? It doesn't mean everything has gone awry with their restoration - hurricanes are natural occurrences. It is their power and intensity that is wrong now.

Ima tells Reed that creatures evolve to get better. But that's not correct. Creatures evolve to adapt to a changing environment, each creature evolves for best survival in its current environment, but one creature isn't better than another.

I didn't understand why the Ertlings at Reed's school needed lessons at all. Why don't they just instantly absorb information at birth, just like their parents did? Even if the Ertling did need to be taught, the rate at which they would learn would be many times faster than Reed's ability to understand.

I felt that the novel spent WAY too long on the time when Reed is an infant. The reader doesn't need so many chapters about pooping and crying and making a fuss. Yes, we appreciate that Ima must put a lot of effort into raising Reed, but I think that section could have been pared back significantly.