Queen City Jazz

Of course, we like to imagine that we won’t change; but nothing is going to stop the environment around us changing, and that is inevitably going to have an effect upon us. That is the theme of Kathleen Ann Goonan’s Nanotech Quartet, beginning with Queen City Jazz. Nanotechnology has changed everything. The countryside has been devastated by nan plagues, while cities have been transformed in extraordinary ways that are beautiful and threatening at the same time. In Cincinnati, where the novel is set, the skyscrapers have been transformed into nan flowers, with huge bees carrying information between them. You cannot live in that world and not be changed. Why it’s on the list: One of the simplest approaches to posthumanity is just adopting to an ever-changing environment; and by situating her heroine within a radically transformed environment, Goonan offers a radically different way of functioning as a human.