The Jesus Incident

Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom 1979 Buy from Amazon.com

The Jesus Incident is a collaboration between Bill Ransom and Frank Herbert, continuing on from Herbert’s novel Destination: Void. Ship was an experiment into creating Artificial Intelligence, through extreme conditions, but it went too far. Now the question has become: at what point does intelligence cross over into divinity?

Ship demands that humans learn how to WorShip, yet they have so far failed. Now Ship has brought humans to a world that it has named Pandora, extremely dangerous, with a world-spanning life-form, the kelp. Raja Flattery is a Chaplain/Psychologist (CP), one of the original clones who participated in the experiment that created Ship. He is revived from hybernation and told that Ship has replayed the Universe many times, taking humans from many realities, but that if they do not solve the question of how to WorShip, he will give up and destroy the universe as a lost cause. Raja Flattery is given the new name of Thomas, and is sent to Pandora to examine the kelp, where the answer may lie.

Morgan Oakes is also a Chaplain/Psychologist of Ship, trained to lead and manipulate, and while he does not believe in the Godhood of Ship, but recognises Ships as a threat. He hopes to live on Pandora, where he believes he will be safe from Ship, and in control of the people. Yet he is frightened of the dangers and waits until he can have the same luxuries on planet as in his sybaritic cubby on Ship. Morgan orders his assistant Lewis to experiment and so he creates mutants from combining clone DNA with Pandoran material in experiments to try and find a type that will help them thrive, believing he can create a haven for himself on Pandora. But his experimental clones have their own ideas, and they are closer to Pandora than he is.

Food and resources are very short on Pandora, and the labs used by Lewis consume vast amounts of food and energy. The people who live on the planet are under extreme stress. They stay inside a compound which is mostly safe, but they regularly take guard duty on the outside, facing Pandora’s many threats, and often dying. They are hungry, and they live knowing that any day they may die.

This is a story about the interactions between people. The characters drive the story with their motivations, abilities, and failings. Some, such as Morgan Oakes, desire power, and use information available to get it. Yet they may be vulnerable to the same thing they use. Raja Thomas is desperate to save the human race, yet he cannot see his own failings and preconceptions are the same impediment that hinders them all.

The environment has created a culture strange to the people used to Shiplife, and the pressures of life on such a hostile and extreme planet result in strong and somewhat eccentric characters. As with much of Herbert’s work, there is a great deal of analysis of human behaviour and interaction, and a great deal of philosophy. The frontier environment creates a complex scenario with rich and independent characters. They are not driven by the plot, they are driven by events. Overall I’d say this is a book of equal interest and complexity as Herbert’s more famous Dune Series, and well worth reading for those fans of his work.

Notes:

The creators of Sid Meyer’s Alpha Centauri credit this novel with the inspiration for much of the environment and native fauna used in the game.

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