“Pure thought is music,” writes Laurie Sheck in Cyborg Fever (13). Using this quote as a model, the novel is a siren song — an alluring, ceaseless stream of discoveries and narratives that interrogate humanity and its relationships with science, AI, and biological enhancement. Sheck’s third work of fiction, Cyborg Fever details the journey of an orphaned boy named Erwin, locked in a fever dream that removes him from reality and allows him to slip through space-time constraints. In this state, he learns about how humans impact and are impacted by science, from Jorge Luis Borge’s fictional prodigy Funes and a friendly bionic human, the Cyborg.
The novel is divided into three parts, each capturing a different stage of Erwin’s fever dream. The first part, Entropy, is largely concerned with detailing the lives, perspectives, and discoveries of prominent scientists — information gained from Funes’ computer screen, which he sits and smokes in front of in a small room, unaware of Erwin’s watching. As Erwin learns, so do we: how antiparticles and particles destroy each other, how black holes are born from a compression of mass and gravitational collapse, how Nikola Tesla loved feeding and tending to pigeons. Sheck seamlessly weaves the inner lives of the scientists into their findings, demonstrating the import of both. We see how the scientists’ curiosity about the universe they inhabit and their consideration for life are crucial in furthering their progress; their humanity is essential. Through taking in this information, Erwin is inspired: “I must ask myself what and is. I must learn so much more about and” (Sheck 98). This fervor for life and learning is transferred to the reader, who cannot help but ponder the universe and its workings, as well as the developments we make to understand it — and ourselves — better.
The novel’s second part, The Cyborg, flings Erwin from Funes to the Cyborg. He fled the experimental lab where he was created and approaches Erwin in his fever dream after watching him in the orphanage, recognizing a suffering and sameness in the child. Whereas the previous part regarded scientific advancements with a certain awe and respect, here we are made to understand the cruelty and recklessness that can accompany development. The Cyborg is a failed attempt at a feelingless warrior. Deadpool, who visits the Cyborg as the Cyborg visits Erwin, was unsuccessfully altered at the Weapon X compound to become a biological weapon. The way he speaks of Weapon X is chilling in its relevance and extremity: “No method or outcome was too perverse or violent. They were willing to try anything” (Sheck 238). Deadpool also relays the real story of Laika, the Soviet dog sent on a death mission to space. In fitting these narratives together, Sheck encourages us to examine empathy’s place in scientific advancement — to consider how much risk we have taken and are willing to take, how comfortable we are in compromising our humanity in the pursuit of change.
In the novel’s third part, Information, Erwin gradually loses the Cyborg’s companionship as the Cyborg dissolves into data. Throughout the novel, Erwin, adrift in his fever dream, struggles with feelings of isolation: “From the earliest days I could remember, my loneliness was a raw, worm-shaped wound inside my heart” (Sheck 255). Erwin’s remoteness is extreme — he moves through space and time, displaced from the world he once lived in. Still, Sheck renders it in a way that makes it easy for readers to sympathize with, as loneliness on some level is a universal experience. Amidst the enormity of space and the influx of information, Erwin finds solace in the connections he forges with others he comes across in his fever dream, however impermanent. No matter how much science and technology evolve — no matter how greatly it alters our reality, even our minds and bodies — connections between living things remain the most important. Sheck drives this point home in the novel’s final sentence, where Erwin is left alone in the wake of the Cyborg’s disappearance: “And still I thought of Funes’ ruined legs, and of the Cyborg’s scar, the black box behind his ear, his gentle eyes—” (373). Despite all Erwin has experienced and learned in his fever, it is the bonds he has formed that he returns to. The reader is urged to consider the value of meaningful ties to others in creating a worthwhile existence.
Sheck’s Cyborg Fever launches readers into the far reaches of space and time to make us better understand our situation on Earth. Although the novel is full of facts, hard science, and even pages-long lists of data, its meditations on purpose, loneliness, and the necessity of connection access an unparalleled human intimacy. Additionally, the novel’s concerns with scientific development — though timeless — carry a special relevance now, as we confront the pervasion of AI and an increasingly digital world. Upon exiting the universe Sheck creates within the confines of this novel, readers can see it reflected in the one around us. Cyborg Fever presses us to stay curious and connected to others — there is no truer way to make meaning.