Budz, Mark 1960-

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BUDZ, Mark 1960-

PERSONAL:

Born 1960; married Marina Fitch (a writer). Education: University of Colorado, Boulder, B.S., 1982.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Ben Lomond, CA. Agent—Matt Bialer, Sanford J. Greenburger and Associates, Inc., 44 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10003. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Norton Award, 2004, finalist, Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, both for Clade.

WRITINGS:

Clade, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Crache, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2004.

The author's stories have also appeared in publications, including Pulphouse Magazine, Amazing Stories, and Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and in collections including Quick Chills II, WoTF VIII, and Tales from Jabba's Palace.

SIDELIGHTS:

Author Mark Budz "may be poised to become hard SF's next superstar," according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. Budz's first two titles, Clade and Crache garnered critical praise as well as awards. Positing future dystopic worlds, Budz approaches his fiction with characteristic "unusual wordplay," as the same contributor noted, a blend of "Asimov, the drug-addled hangover visions of William Burroughs and the playful spirit of Dr. Seuss."

Trained as an architectural engineer, Budz began writing in 1987, publishing short fiction in Pulphouse Magazine. His first novel, Clade was published in 2003. Set in a post "ecocaust" world, Budz presents an Earth in which all the natural biodiversity has been destroyed. The population has been ravaged with millions dead. Scientist are now working at fever pitch to keep the ice caps from melting further, which would raise ocean levels and cause worldwide flooding. The ozone layer too has been destroyed, with "more holes than Swiss cheese," as reviewer Harriet Klausner put it in an AllSciFi.com review. Corporations have largely rebuilt all of biology with genetic engineering, coding a person's social and economic class into their genes. Now Earth's population is divided up into eco-zones called Clades and inhabitants are prevented from mixing with other Clades by the use of bio-engineered sensors.

Rigo, the book's protagonist, is trying to work his way up the success ladder in the San Jose Clade. A sytech, he is working on genetically engineered flora that will return oxygen into the atmosphere. When he is offered a chance to travel to an asteroid, Tiressias, that is being colonized with the warm-blooded plants he has been creating, he feels he has no choice but to go. Neogentic, his corporate boss, expects no less of him.

Meanwhile, Rigo's girlfriend, Anthea, a social worker who works with abandoned children, becomes closely involved with one of her cases, Ibrahim, a child who does not fit in their Clade. She hides him from the secret police at Rigo's mother's home. Rigo and his girlfriend, through their concern for Ibrahim, learn of a giant conspiracy that keeps the population chained to their Clades, controlling everyone's thoughts and feelings. Rigo must make the choice to try to put an end to this plot and restore "the biodiversity of the past," as Booklist's Regina Schroeder wrote. Schroeder went on to call Budz's debut novel a "fast-paced read animated by an engrossing, nervous energy." Fred Cleaver of the Denver Post had further praise for the work, calling it an "excellent first novel," and further observing that Budz "has created an intelligent future that is highly original while evoking the best elements of the dramatic street stories of William Gibson." Clade won the second annual Norton Award.

Budz's second novel, Crache, further explores the world of Clades, this time featuring Fola Hanami, an ex-missionary, Rexx, a genengineer with second thoughts, and L. Mariachi, a has-been rock star who has become a migrant worker. This unlikely trio teams up to fight a computer virus attacking the "ecotecture" that keeps humanity alive on Earth and on the asteroid Mymerica. This disease spans Clades and infects not only humans but also the online IAs (artificial intelligence beings) that aid humans in cyberspace. Writing in SciFiDimensions.com, Kate Winter felt that Budz "develops the clade world faultlessly." However, Winter also felt that "Budz's story is not as pristine as his world." For Winter, there were some unfinished plot threads and some "flat and unrealistic" characters. But overall, the same contributor found the novel "full of the unexpected, concocted from the brain of someone who really can imagine what it's like to be 'post-everything.'" Entertainment Weekly's Noah Robischon also had a mixed assessment of the book, noting that the author "loves wordplay and has an innate, pop-culture-savvy sense of humor." Robischon also noted, though, that these characteristics "end up being a fine varnish on a fairly wooden story." Schroeder, writing in Booklist, was more positive. In her evaluation, this second novel was "one of gripping intrigue." Likewise, the reviewer for Publishers Weekly wrote that with Clade Budz "drew comparisons to William Gibson; his second proves that such claims were far from hyperbole."