BOOKS: Shelter, Susan Palwick (2007)

Fifty years in the future, compassion -- "excessive altruism," to be precise -- has become a crime, and Roberta Danton finds herself on probation for just such an offense, at risk of having her memories and personality wiped for further violations. Roberta's life has long been entangled with that of Meredith Walford, ever since they were both hospitalized as children. They are both among the relatively small number of survivors of a virus that killed (among many others) Roberta's parents.

When a violent storm hits San Francisco, Roberta and Meredith are forced to take shelter in the same house, that of Meredith's ex-husband. Also taking shelter in the house is Henry, a homeless man with his own ties to Roberta and Meredith. As the storm rages outside, Roberta and Meredith are forced to come to terms with their shared history; each knows only pieces of the story, and we put the pieces together as each tells her side of things.

There are other characters, not all of them exactly human. Meredith's father, Preston, was also killed by the virus, but as a fabulously wealthy tycoon, he is among the first people to have his personality and memory "translated" -- downloaded to a computer, from which he continues to talk to his family, and to anyone else who will listen. An artificial intelligence named Fred, designed as an expert in early childhood education, seems to have developed more personality and volition than AI's are supposed to be capable of, as does the AI that controls the house in which everyone is riding out the storm.

"Not exactly human," I said of these characters, but that is perhaps open to debate; Palwick certainly invites us to ask whether these mechanical intelligences are or are not human, but also raises the much more fundamental question of what it means to be human in the first place. Can one be human without one's memories? Is it possible (as this society has declared) that people can be too compassionate? Too forgiving?

If you're not a science fiction fan, then you may be scared away by the SF trappings of the novel; you shouldn't be. Shelter is a beautifully written novel about the importance of memory and the tragedies that can happen when people act on incomplete information. The characters are rich and complex; even the minor characters have more depth than the protagonists of many a lesser novel. With every piece that falls into place, the story grows in richness and emotional force.

Palwick's The Necessary Beggar was my favorite novel of 2006 (published in 2005, but I didn't get to it for a while), and Shelter will surely be on my top-ten list this year.