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"Helen Collins' novel is not only a fascinating and enjoyable adventure romp, with enough chases to keep the reader's attention glued to the page and a wonderful finale to boot, it is also a sterling example of the always welcome 'deviant colony' story format... Furthermore, it's also a book with a powerful message, backed by equally powerful ideas, one that combines the themes of
The Handmaid's Tale with a well-researched, frighteningly original approach to genetics. If instead of choosing to tell her tale in the SF format, Collins had selected a more mainstream mode, undoubtedly she would have had a bestseller a la Michael Crichton on her hands.
Mutagenesis is science fiction at its best. Highly recommended.
- Hean-Marc Lofficier, STARLOG '93
Helen Collins's first novel, Mutagenesis, follows a mission to reclaim badly needed genetic plant material from a lost colony planet. The colony is supposed to be dead, the expedition finds humans under its too-hot sun, farmers living under limited technology on a planet with little metal, who are distressed to see crewwomen in authority.
Mattie Manan does not consent to be locked in the ship for the sake of political expediency. She makes a break for it and hides among a group of local women. She assumes they have been kept deliberately naïve by a misogynistic culture that calls young men 'fathers', old women 'daughters', but finds the guiding hand keeping women meek is more sinister than that. As childlike as her friends seem to be, they may own some of the last remnants of feminine genius on the planet. More clues can be found in 'loso', genetically engineered domestic helpers.
There is plenty of adventure and scientific puzzle, but particularly interesting is Collins' use of language. The story points up how language shapes people's thinking, notably by alternating chapters from Mattie's and a local woman's points of view. Mattie's colleagues... fail to detect the crisis she does, because their professional jargon focuses on other things.
Overall, the novel's language has an unusual feel: intuitive, playful, lumpy, engaging. It makes the people eccentric and real. Collins's is a welcome new voice.
- Martha Soukup, Strange Doings, Washington Post, 2/28/93
"Helen Collins' " Mutagenesis" is a big, old-fashioned sense-of-wonder interplanetary exploration/biological puzzle novel
with feminist overtones. The author's first novel pits plucky microbiologist Dr. Mattine Manan from Earth against the mystifying inhabitants of the former Earth colony of Anu.
Five hundred years after Anu was abandoned as Earth sank into savagery, a spaceship from Earth carrying Mattie Manan and her colleagues comes calling. Mattie soon finds herself on a quest for knowledge, alone, across and often terrifying planet as she tries to understand how the strange males of Anu came to be the way they are, and whether the childlike, seemingly inhuman women of Anu remain human after 500 years of biological experimentation designed not merely to hold them down, but also to rob them of their humanity."
- William Marden, Hartford Courant '93
"Interested in sexual politics, genetics and fast paced science fiction?
If you are, MutaGenesis, by Helen Collins is the boook for you."
- Arthur Zaczkiewicz, Vignette '93
Collins said, "science fiction is really about the present... it is a different way to view the important social issues of today"... One such theme in "Mutagenesis" is the power of language. Refering to the Loso, a non-human, mute species in the novel, Collins said, "Language alone gives one power... a way to take power away from people is to take language way from people.
- In an interview in the New London Day '93
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