The Last Human by Zack Jordan
Friday, July 24, 2020 at 10:06AM
TChris in Science Fiction, Zack Jordan

Published by Del Rey on March 24, 2020

The Last Human tries to fit together a story of computer networks that interface with minds and a story of an organization of alien races that gives order to the galaxy. In a typical mind-network interface story, the minds are human, but in this one, only one human is known to exist. In most organization of species stories, humans are a significant part of the organization. In this one, the organization is more of a hierarchy, ranking species from smartest to dimmest. Humans would apparently be in the dim category if there were enough humans to count as part of the hierarchy. But humans have two qualities that set them apart — violence and selfishness.

For reasons that are eventually made clear (although not entirely clear), humans have disappeared from the future that is the novel’s setting. Countless other intelligent species inhabit the galaxy. More than a million of those have joined the Network, an association that allows member races to benefit from shared knowledge, but at the cost of obedience to certain rules. Humans, as we all know, are not good at obedience. Some will follow authoritarians but others reject authority on principle. Even when rules make sense — like wearing maks in a pandemic — a considerable number of humans will do as they please. Even if humans were still around, they would not be suited for the Network because following rules is not their best talent. The Network apparently learned this the hard way, although the details are again unclear.

Sarya the Daughter is a human who, for unconvincing reasons, is raised by Shenya the Widow, a member of a race whose children typically hatch and immediately battle each other to the death. Sarya is unhappy not to have a network implant — she uses an external device for connectivity — a fact that handicaps her almost as much as her Tier 1.8 intelligence. Sarya is also handicapped by being a human (everyone hates humans for reasons that are eventually revealed) although nobody recognizes her as one because nobody has ever seen a human. The only entity on Watertower Station that seems to know Sarya is human, apart from her mother, is a multi-bodied alien with hive intelligence called Observer.

The orbital Watertower Station is home to Shenya, Sarya, and 24,000 other entities from a multitude of species that have joined the Network. The Network invites species to join when they evolve sufficient (Tier 1.8) intelligence. Species with less intelligence are protected without being networked, although they sometimes provide useful services. The Network provides a common language and shared information that protects against disease, war, famine, “and other such inconveniences.”

It the Network a good thing? Order has value, but Observer views the Network as trading freedom for order. During the course of the novel, Sarya waffles between viewing the Network as good and viewing it as evil. Where she will come to rest in the end is the question that drives the plot after it is finally set in motion.

What does it mean to be human? Many believe that to be human is to be free, to make the choices that suit us. Humans believe that’s a good thing, but since humans often make harmful choices, nonhumans might disagree. The human tendency to choose conquest, to take what they want, to care about themselves and dislike anyone or anything different, makes humanity a species that doesn't play well with others. When Sarya journeys to something she perceives as a planet, she experiences being human on a primal level: walking on grass, breathing unrecycled air, seeing the sky instead of a ceiling, eating meat instead of bland but nutritious food bars, getting buzzed on alcohol, listening and dancing to music (which few Network species define as art).

It takes the plot some time to set up. Circumstances eventually take Sarya on a journey of discovery, which initially involves finding the surviving members of the human race and then forces her to decide whether she should kill them all.

How Sarya acquires and wields the vast power at her disposal near the novel’s end (can she really hold the universe in the palm of her hand?) is unclear, at least to me. In fact, I found it difficult to wrap my head around key plot points. I set aside confusion during much of the novel with the expectation that it would all be clarified at the end. Some things were made clear, some weren’t, and I was still mildly confused by the last page.

Maybe the confusion is my fault. With so many crises brewing in the world, I find myself easily distracted unless a book is particularly gripping. I wouldn’t put The Last Human in that category. There are times when the story zips along and times when it meanders, seemingly searching for a way to recover the plot. The novel has the sense of “I’m making this up as I go along.” Sometimes that works, but sometimes it’s helpful to start out with a map. The Last Human makes some detours that left me lost.

Was Zack Jordan trying to write a comedy or a serious story into which some laughs were injected? Again, I’m not sure that an overall vision existed for this book before it came into being. Chapters that present the Network as a user’s manual are clearly meant to be funny (and some of them are), but the story’s tone suddenly changes, without transition, from whimsical and silly to dark and apocalyptic.

This is Jordan’s first novel. His ambition may have exceeded his ability to deliver. Yet the characters of Sarya and Shenya are engaging, the background is interesting, and the book shows promise, even if it doesn’t fully succeed.

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