Goodreads Bookshelf
Book Review: Invasive Procedures
I picked up Invasive Procedures by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston because it was available through one of my libraries as a downloadable audiobook precisely when I needed such a thing for a long car ride. Card is known for his sci-fi and fantasy, and though this novel has some advanced science bordering on the fantastical in it, the genre here is probably more nearly “thriller.” It’s sometime in the near-future and a sort of cult called The Healers has arisen. They’re known as clean-living do-gooders who help the poor and homeless, but their founder is a brilliant geneticist intent on perfecting humanity and setting himself up as its prophet-leader.
This self-styled prophet, George Galen, comes to the attention of the U.S. government when one of his facilities is found and an extremely deadly virus strikes the police officer who found it. This brings in our protagonist, Frank, an army virologist, first to create a counter-virus and then to help root out the source of this engineered virus.
It turns out that this virus, with modifications made for particular people, is being used to insert genes into people’s DNA to replace defective genes and heal diseases. Sounds good, but right from the start we’ve seen the Healers abduct several homeless people (and one not-so-homeless person) against their will, so we’re not surprised that there’s something sinister going on here as well.
That gives you the flavor of the novel. The prose here is pared down, as is the introspection and examination of others that typically infuses Card’s work. It cooks along at a pretty good pace, though like thrillers (more so than fantasy or sci fi, especially Card at his best) it’s more plot-driven than anything else, a read more enjoyable than profound. It barely even feels like an Orson Scott Card novel, but it wasn't a terrible way to pass a long drive. Just don't expect much out of it.
Given Card’s very public Mormonism, it’s hard not to see the Healers with their clean-living and their latter-day prophet as some kind of riff on Mormonism (or, at least, Mormonism as it might be perceived by an outsider). Ultimately, the Healers are the bad guys of the story, which makes any similarities all the more interesting. Perhaps he's playing with the public perception, or perhaps this aspect of the novel owes more to Aaron Johnston. Doing a little (okay, a very little) research (that is, I read the Amazon.com product description), I see that Card wrote a short story that was this novel in infant form (before it was turned into a screenplay by Aaron Johnston and then back into prose), and my sense is that Card was a little more skeptical, a little less rigid, 30 years ago.