Add another book to the list of science fiction books I would recommend to non-science fiction readers. Elizabeth Moon’s The Speed of Dark is a rare book. It did a masterful job of putting my inside the mind of an autistic person as he struggles with a decision whether to take a cure or not. As a smart, thinking adult, Lou Arrendale cannot know how much of himself is tied to his autism, and how much is innate.
The setting is the near future. Some pretty decent advances in biology and medicine have been discovered. Though quite expensive, life extension treatments have been created. Law enforcement can use a chip to inhibit the criminal impulses of those it convicts. And a cure for autism was found, curing newborns of the affliction sometimes before they are even born. But it doesn’t work on adults, so Lou is out of luck. At least until a promising new treatment has been discovered and his pharmaceutical company asks him if he wants to be one of the first test subjects. So Lou has to struggle with the question. Does he risk it?
There are some side plots. Lou is the subject of several hate crime attacks by someone who resents the privileges
Lou receives. And Mr. Crenshaw, the boss’ boss isn’t really giving his autistic group a choice. He wants them to take it so he can be rid of a group that annoys him. In addition, there’s a budding romance between Lou and a woman in his fencing class, Marjory. Lou learns he is quite good at fencing when he competes in a tournament for the first time. All these at first seem like distractions from the main question of whether or not Lou should cure himself. But one by one Moon feeds these situations back into Lou’s decision and then ends each.
I kind of wish Crenshaw were less of a caricature. Having spent a fair number of years in a corporation, I have yet to witness anyone as blatantly ugly as Crenshaw behaves. There were plenty of not-nice people in my years at Expedia. I had people out and out threaten my job. But I never saw anyone as devious and underhanded be quite so nakedly up front about it. And in one other characterization nit, pretty much everyone else given much time in the book is relentlessly likable. Except Emmy, who I liked quite a bit as a character for that reason alone. The characters all have depth. But because they are all so likable, it gives a bit of a saccharine taste to the story.
Moon has poured her heart into this story. She is the parent of a teen-aged (at the time) autist. In interviews, she makes clear that her son is not the likable genius that Lou Arrendale is. But only a person who greatly loves an autist could so clearly chronolog the things that a person should want to consider, and make these considerations in the dilemma intimate.
Title: The speed of dark
Author: Elizabeth Moon
Imprint / publisher: Ballantine / Random House
Format: Paperback
Length: 340 p.
Publication date: March 2004 (originally January 2003)
ISBN-10: 0-345-44754-9
Subject: Autism — Patients — Fiction
LC classification: PS3563.O557 S64 2003
