Gene Mapper

Just finished this book last night. Definitely a great story, fantastic concept and well written.The first person was awkward at times, this is also not my preferred style of writing for fantasy and sci-fi, it's difficult for the author to explain the futuristic technology and any social differences without seriously detracting from the story being told. That didn't happen in this story, but that did mean up until about half way through the book I was still guessing and fuzzy on what some of the [...]

Great Japanese hard bio-Sci-Fi (although with somewhat weak dialogs and characters).In 2030s, after blight eradicated all cultivated rice in Asia, triggering world famine, agriculture depends solely on GM crops. But people are still suspicious of new technology, and when a new strain of bestselling rice starts to show unexpected behavior a team of biologists must race against the clock before it becomes a media catastrophe. I never encountered Japanese science fiction before and "Gene Mapper" is [...]

3.5. Really I would have given this a 4 except the writing towards the end seemed both confusing and the final scene with the 'bad guys' was a bit slap stick. Maybe it was the translation?I enjoyed the story and found the science interesting. although I know nothing about coding or augmented reality platforms I could follow the ideas fairly well. I would read this author again.

I'd give this book a really high rating for the concepts it introduces, but a low rating on it holding my interest. This book reminds me a lot of old-school cyberpunk. Our gene mapper main character is responsible for getting a genetically engineered field of rice to reflect the logo and certifications of the company that engineered it through changes in the plant pigmentation. This is a company that has enough money to burn that it wants its rice field to be its own visual advertisement. Howeve [...]

It was very interesting but never got bogged down in the technical stuff. It had a good pace but didn't feel mad-capped. The end was optimistic, maybe a bit unrealistic, but a nice change from all of the apocalyptic stuff so many authors are putting out these days. Not that it was some pie-in-the sky, we fixed the world just like that, ending. It wasn't like that, it was just about how they handled the one thing that was relevant to their investigation and how it turned out. I found the Japanese [...]

3.5 stars.Japanese detective story wrapped in a science veneer. I liked the way the science issues were explored. There were some translation issues and I think it would have been better to read in the original Japanese.

Japanese Michael Crichton. A bit technological but races along at a great clip.

A cracking techno-thriller from Japan. A "style-sheet" designer for a synthetic rice is scapegoated when the latest, and high profile, crop starts to spontaneously change to the wrong colour. The author has a bold vision of the future which I found only slightly implausible; just let it go for a snappy read.Perhaps some of the characterisation was lost in translation and in the wonder of technology - another story or two in this universe with these characters could help flesh them out.(view spoi [...]

Hard SF, with a cyberpunk vibe but an interesting in genomics rather than the hackers of the 1980s we associated with William Gibson. So if you used to like that kind of book you'll enjoy this. Smart is the best way to define it. Also, a quick read.

Taiyo Fujii's "Gene Mapper" is an interesting book with some problems. I'm not sure if the issues I have with the book are translation issues or perhaps cultural differences between the US and Japan. But, most of them are not the usual "bad writing" things I see in other books. Anyway, again, the book is interesting. But:- The author tends to have his characters focus on extraneous things instead of the important things. There are an awful lot of points where I was scratching my head, thinking " [...]

I started to read this and was inundated with technobabble about some strain of rice. Then we get people calling a woman doing her job a bitch as well as saying that Google somehow caused the internet to die out completely and it's replaced with TruNet. We get sentences that invoke images of abuse that involve "spanking" Mother, which is some kind of computer system or something?They also go on at length about 32-bit dates causing the end of the world VS 64-bit dates and 128-bit dates. My head s [...]

A very enjoyable sci-fi that wasn't like anything I'd read before. There were some very interesting concepts in it, though I think some of the science went straight over my head, as I honestly couldn't tell you how realistic or outlandish they were. I had a few issues understanding the story, but I think that was just a result of the things that get lost in translation. I'd definitely be interested in reading a follow up to see what developments come from how the book ended.

La verdad la premisa me pareció bastante original e interesante y aunque en algunas partes se puso un poco técnico no cayó totalmente en info dump. Desafortunadamente los personajes no están muy bien desarrollados y creo que hay un problema de traducción que da la sensación de acantonamiento a veces.Me gustaría leer otros libros de realidad aumentada. Si saben de algo, no duden en recomendarmelo.

Science fictions at its peak. Transporting us into the future, while throwing the dystopia off the cliff.Taiyo Fujii paint the future with words, and capture the essence of locations as the book plays out. He places faith in our species making the right moves, as new technology emerges from darkness.237. Pages gone in a Blizz, this book was a beautiful read. Thanks to Jim Hubbert for the translation, and keeping the "tone".

I really enjoyed this novel! The jargon took a bit to get used to, but the world that was created was intriguing, and plausible, and scary. The concepts of gene mapping, and engineered, "distilled" crops, were super cool, and I liked the fast pace of this novel as well. Can't wait to read more from this author. 3.5/5 stars

A warning, but also a little hope for the human species. More later.

I relished the geekiness of this near future depiction. I found the mystery solving action fell rather flat at the end, though.

Had a Snow Crash-of-biopunk-lite feel to it. Please let there be more of this.

When it comes to east Asian literature, Taiyo Fujii understood exactly how to please this former otaku into having a delightful experience as she also contemplated how the worlds of bio/chem could make life better for all of humanity.This novel is about engineering Super Rice around Ho Chi Minh City, a Super Rice which has enough nutrients that you don't need anything else, and which grows in dirty water. Since rice doesn't have very many nutrients on its own, the idea absolutely thrilled me.Thi [...]

Hayashida is a gene mapper who designed the appearance of a new variety of super rice, SR06, ensuring that the company's logos and certifications show on the field. When SR06 starts mutating, Hayashida's head could be on the chopping block unless he can figure out what's happening. More importantly it could mean widespread public distrust of designed crops - and using high-yield disease-resistant designed crops is the only way to feed the world's population. Suspecting first a collection error a [...]

In the world of Gene Mapper, much of the world's natural crops have fallen to a blight called Red Rust, leading to a rise in genetically engineered foods. Mamoru Hayashida is a gene mapper who works for a company, L&B, developing Super Rice 6, or SR06. Only the field of SR06 that's been planted appears to have some sort of invader, which could spell trouble not only for L&B, or Mamoru's career, but genetically engineered (or in L&B's preferred nomenclature, genetically distilled) pla [...]

Um delicioso thriller biopunk passado num futuro próximo onde a engenharia genética consegue produzir alimentos desenhando de raiz o código genético das plantas transgénicas. Uma inovação que promete acabar de vez com a fome no mundo, mas que pode sofrer um fortíssimo abalo quando uma plantação experimental do mais avançado arroz transgénico é corroída por uma praga desconhecida. Um dos desenhadores do mapa genético do novo arroz é desafiado a investigar, e descobre-se no meio de [...]

Given that I rarely go for hard sci-fi, this book seemed the "hardest of hard" to me - futuristic ideas piling on futuristic ideas, crossing the boundaries between the fields. And all that without a sole mention of rockets or space.Gene Mapper reads well and it rarely allows you to take a breath and just be there for a ride - every sentence, every word comes with a purpose, either to explain a concept or to push the story ahead. I have encountered many of the concepts before and felt, at times, [...]

I bought this book from the author at his table at WorldCon, having heard of it via the review on io9. The promo material says this was originally published indie, and it shows. It breaks virtually every rule of what's supposed to be publishable in science fiction. There is very little action. In the entire first section of the book, the only two plot points are that something is growing on the genetically engineered crops and that means the protagonist is asked to fly to Vietnam. That's it. And [...]

I met Taiyo at the World Science Fiction Convention this summer in Spokane, WA. He served on a few panels and I found him to be a gracious person. Gene Mapper was originally written in Japanese in 2012 and published serially on the Japanese . In 2013, it was picked up by a publisher and released.Gene Mapper is a solid, well-constructed hard science fiction in the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. It is set in a not-to-distant future where the human population is such that growing [...]

The premise of Gene Mapper intrigued me as I studied food politics and horticulture at university, and have grown tired of the polarised debate around genetic modification of crops and food. It's such a divisive, ideology-driven argument where scientific consensus is largely disregarded by very vocal Concerned Citizens. The author was keenly aware of this contentiousness, gently mocking the 2016 understanding of genetic modification (the novel is set in the 2030s where the 12 billion-strong glob [...]

Extremely science-y science-fiction, Fujii's "Gene Mapper" is an intimidatingly determined novel that explores the future of gene-mapping and internet technologies, doing so with all of the terminology and scientific applications that are attached to these fields, and doesn't care at all whether you've the knowledge or not to know what these technical things mean.I'm not a science major, and computer stuff bores me, so---It's a good book, though. Or, at least, another good translation of a Japan [...]

GENE MAPPER feels a bit like a sci-fi sort sorry expanded to novel length; wrote Taiyo Fujii has some interesting ideas about what the world could be like a generation hence and a story that sits comfortably in that space, although it doesn't quite rise to the level of a genuine thriller or cautionary tale. The cast is small and mostly generic, the narrative is focused, and the plot is a puzzle to solve despite the danger it represents.It's still highly readable, though; he illustrates his futur [...]

From my 2015 Hugo award recommendations:Another quick read! Near-future hard SF with biotech and cyberpunk leanings, this book is also noteworthy for featuring a main-cast disabled character who is the opposite of one-dimensional. Sadly the rest of the cast are less memorable, and I’m frankly not sure the book passes the Bechdel test, but I still found it well worth a read. It was originally a runaway self-publishing hit in Japan, by the way.This was a scary book for me because (view spoiler)[ [...]

Neo-Bioinfo - Bioterrorism - Geneediting?Not for just anyone's tongue. Mixed feelings when you actually understand the terminologies. Like "Wtf I want to get some refreshing" and "damn this is good" sort of thing.Probably those who work in this sort of field will find this more enjoyable. Perhaps. But I don't like utopia. I favor dystopia.This is an utopia (progresses to be a dystopia but fails 'miserably') where artificial life form is possible to be built by certain software. THERE ARE EVEN PR [...]