“Borne” Is An Insanely Solid Work Of Weird Fiction

Weird fiction as a genre can go so many ways. It can be just plain weird, in a way you aren’t really sure what you just read, but are glad you have read something different. It can be weird in a reflective way, in a way that it lets you look at something in real life in a different way. Then it can make you feel for something so weird, you are surprised you felt emotions for it. “Borne” by Jeff VanderMeer falls into the third category. It’s a very, very solid piece of weird fiction, and I was surprised how good it was, possibly going up to number one in my end of the year wrap up of the best things I read this year.

“Borne” is about a woman named Rachel, who makes her living as a scavenger, in a dystopian city which is overlooked by a giant bear named Mord. The giant bear was by mistake created by a biotech company, now has taken over and is a constant threat to the people who live in the city. This is one of those dystopian futures, with scant details, which is more acceptable in weird science fiction then traditional science fiction. Traditional science fiction with a dystopian theme would have pages and pages of information concerning world building, giving us details, names, dates, and backstories. Weird fiction, because it’s well, weird, can skip over all that. We don’t know the name of the company. We don’t exactly know the time line of the novel’s world either. Rachel, as the narrator, dives into her back story, but most if it is a happy childhood we know will end at some point due to the world turning into a dystopian one at some point. She lives with her boyfriend, named Wick, and on her journey, finds a shape shifting furry technological mess she names Borne.

Throughout the novel, she starts to care deeply for Borne, despite Wick wanting to destroy him. She starts to consider herself a single mother. She becomes emotionally attached, and ironically, Borne is lovable in his simplicity. I found myself feeling some deeper emotions for these characters than I have for some of the more traditional and human characters I have read recently. Jeff VanderMeer also writes a believable female voice in Rachel, so bravo for that, because a lot of male writers stink at writing women, much more in their own narrative voices. I felt a lot of compassion for everyone in this novel. Despite a lot of vagueness on purpose, I didn’t find this novel overly hard to follow, either. Sometimes it’s hard to follow weird fiction as a story, but this novel didn’t have that problem.

“Borne” is brilliant, bizarre and mesmerizing. It’s well worth the read.  Jeff VanderMeer is a very, very solid writer and this is a very, very solid piece of weird fiction.