Playing God

The multi-planetary corporation Bioverse hires biotechnologist Lynn Nussbaumer to save the world--namely, the planet All-Cradle, home of the Dedelphi. A genetically engineered bio-weapon has mutated out of control and threatens the entire Dedelphi race with extinction; in desperation, the violently tribal Dedelphi have signed their first planet-wide cease-fire and sought off-world help. But Dr. Nussbaumer's only chance of success requires evacuating and re-creating the whole planet--a plan that breaks the fragile truce among the millennia-old Dedelphi enemies and also divides their human allies, risking the quick destruction of all, in a fast- paced, intricate, masterfully plotted narrative of intrigue and betrayal. --Cynthia Ward

Product Description
The Dedelphi, fierce inhabitants of a violent world at war for centuries, have unleashed a biological weapon that has poisoned their planet. Now they must hire manager Lynn Nussbaumer and her company, Bioverse, Inc., to clean the infection out of their ecosystem. But some groups within the Dedelphi's fiercely tribal society want to use the humans and their advanced technology to exterminate their enemies. Lynn tries to complete her job and stay neutral, but soon both she and her Dedelphi friends are trapped in a showdown between warring factions and must confront a devastating betrayal.Sarah Zettel is a remarkably gifted young author poised for major success. Reclamation (Aspect, 1996) won the Locus Award for Best First Novel and was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award for best science fiction novel published in original mass market paperback. Her second novel, Fool's War (Aspect, 4/97), was named a Notable Book of 1997 by The New York Times.The author has received critical acclaim in The New York Times Book Review, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Los Angeles Times, among others.

The Dedelphi are a mess. They're a quick-tempered, tribalistic, genetically inbred species who have a murderously narrow definition of "stranger." On top of that, they're violently allergic to humans - not sneezes and itching allergic, but anaphylactic shock allergic. And in one of the many wars on their planet, someone let loose a genetically engineered plague that instead of just killing off the targetting tribe, escaped to the wild, interbred with its natural equivalent, mutated like fruit flies in a nuclear reactor, and began killing indiscriminately.

Into this ongoing disaster steps Lynn Nussbaumer, universe-class bioremediator, who accepts a challenging assignment from Bioverse Incorporated. Bioverse has gotten all of the major Dedelphi tribes to agree to a temporary peace (an accomplishment in itself) and to move off their planet into spaceships while humans clean up the place and eliminate the plague once and for all. Nussbaumer's job is to make it all work.

To say it's a challenge is a massive understatement: many of the Dedelphi are quick to assume that it's all a plot, that the humans are in league with those walking vermin, (fill in the blank with their worst enemies), to use the program to eliminate their own tribe. Other Dedelphi see it as a golden opportunity to eliminate their enemies. And all this is on top of the incredible logistical challenge of getting an entire sentient species off of their planet for a couple of years. At times one wonders why Nussbaumer doesn't just throw up her hands and leave.

Saying much more about the plot would give it away. Let me just say that Nussbaumer not only has her hands full, but she also gains wisdom from the experience. Also, once you reach about page 300 (when the action really takes off), don't expect to be able to put the book down till you're done.

I'd also like to praise Zettel's gift for detail. She has a marvelous imagination for the little touches that convince you that "we're not in Kansas any more." Much of the book is written from the viewpoint of the alien Dedelphi, and they are alien indeed: driven to fight at almost a genetic level, and all of the intelligent ones are female. (Apparently, the females' brains fall out--almost literally--when they reach a certain age, and they become male. Since Sarah is happily married, I'm assuming this does not reflect her opinion of men in general.) Anyhow, her characters, alien and human, are very convincing.

All in all, this is an exciting, gripping read and one of the best hard sf novels I've read in quite a while.


First I've read by Zettel, but it won't the last   May 3, 2000
Daniel H. Bigelow (Cathlamet, WA USA)
Although slow-starting, Playing God resolves into a hard-charging actioner by the end. What I liked most about it was the way the action sequences sprung from, and led to, complications. No battle plan, as they say, survives first contact with the enemy, and Zettel has taken this adage to heart. She creates scenes in which first one of the novel's many factions, then another, takes an unexpected and intelligent action that alters the course of the plot in ways that none of the other factions could have predicted. Rather than having the plot run as though by clockwork progression from one scene to the next, Zettel has the plot grow organically from the thicket of conflicting personalities and cultures in the book.

This is a less predictable, more interesting way of writing than one usually finds, and also a more difficult one. This intricate plotting is the best feature of Playing God. Other good features include a fascinating and fully realized alien species and a sprightly writing style.

There are a few drawbacks to this book. The first quarter of the book is pedestrian, the humans are not characterized in great detail, and the inevitable drawback to the complicated, organic style of plotting Zettel uses is the impossibility of neatly tying up all loose ends. Still, I think the good substantially outweighs the bad. I liked Playing God, and I'll be reading more of Zettel's work.


A weak "Left Hand" - What a disappointment   March 9, 2000
5 out of 8 found this review helpful

A somewhat interesting premise doesn't carry this book. The plot is thin and the characters are superficial. Sci Fi is beyond the point where simply having female protagonists and a female based society, whether human or alien, supports the story, and I thought the story and writing needed lots of help. The conflicts are hackneyed (corporation vs acedemics etc) and not original. I bought this b/c I liked her earlier works, and this is nothing like them.


Nice background but not much plot   November 12, 1999
Wayne (California)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

The ideas in this book are interesting (but the whole gender-changing thing was done much better in Left Hand of Darkness), but that is all this book really has. I had to force myself to read the first 60%, knowing it would pick up and start to get interesting (her other books are like this too), and it did eventually switch into higher gear, but the twists and turns after that didn't make much sense, and the big dramatic idea that the main character has for ending the conflict left me asking, "what was that again? "

On the postitive side, the character development of the aliens was really nice. I felt myself feeling a mixture of sympathy and frustration at the way they acted and could imagine being in the human's position and being torn between on one hand wanting to "play god" and impose my ideas of how these stupid barbarians should behave, and on the other just let them kill each other if they couldn't find a better way to survive.


What Happens to a Writer When You Succeed   July 9, 1999
Dianna Deeley (San Francisco,, CA USA)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

This novel had at least five places it could have stopped. What's more, this novel wanders all over the place. Ok, Zettle went from unknown to famous. The publisher said, "You can have a hardbound if you give us so many pages." Then, god help us, we were saddled with this.

Someone commented on the really pointless descriptions of clothing and so on. It's worse than that. The first person to actually believe anyone would be stupid enough to allow the takeover of one of the space stations gets a medal. The supposed moral dilemmas annoyed me by their shallowness. The "plague" annoyed me worse. We are shown a human society that is extremely advanced, technologically, and it can't solve the plague in five minutes? Zettel's hand-waving on that one irritated me beyond measure. The text was also sloppily proofed -- I actually extracted my red pencil and started ticking and fixing the errors. I can't believe a published author would allow the multiple cases of the wrong "its" to get through, or that a publisher would send it to press in that state, but they did.

The biggest problem is, I actually liked both Reclamation and Fool's War. This novel should have been half the length it was, and better thought out.

Yeah, I'm ticked. I paid hardback price for this, and I should have waited. I will never buy another book by Zettel in hardback.