The Divide Book

Never able to find in my public library this Robert Charles Wilson (big fan!!)title first published 1989, I was glad to see the affordable 2016 Kindle edition on Amazon. Less a true sci-fi novel than a morality tale in the manner of Robert Louis Stevenson's STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE, Wilson's THE DIVIDE explores the question of what truly makes someone "human." The divide, in this case, is between the provably superior individual and the rest of humanity - and also the split within a scientifically enhanced individual's own psyche between his otherness and his unconscious yearning to experience a "normal" existence and to sample the benefits of love.

Augmented by biochemically tampered-with neocortical tissue (importantly, this is not gene manipulation), John Shaw has immeasurable intellectual abilities and other gifts. His powers make him into an alien who also is human, just as another character in the novel is a monster who only appears human. Both "Jekyll" and "Hyde" were shaped in utero by advanced biochemistry combined with irresponsible parenting. John is infected with "a cold, radiant confidence in his own supremacy" (p25). His actions, he feels, are "as irrelevant to ethical considerations as the shearing of a sheep" (p70). Nevertheless, as his own biology begins to fail, he reaches out to a young woman who offers him the best image of himself. For the purposes of drama, John also has an alter ego named Benjamin and a murderously violent, psychotic enemy named Roch. Ultimately, THE DIVIDE's theme seems to be: "When it comes down to it, what matters is what you do… not what you are" (p241).