Borne is a 2017 New Weird Science Fiction novel by Jeff VanderMeer.
The book is set in an unnamed City, overrun with biological creations by "The Company" and ruled by a massive bear known as Mord. Survivors, such as the point-of-view character Rachel and her boyfriend, eke out a living in the city ruins. One day, while scavenging, Rachel finds a strange aquatic lifeform in Mord's fur. After securing it from the bear, Rachel calls this new discovery "Borne". Borne undergoes a transformation, developing a personality as he continues to grow, and soon Rachel finds herself acting as a mother figure to the strange creature as they try to survive in a world that has long gone mad.
Set in the same universe as The Situation, a short story comic written before Borne by VanderMeer. It follows Rachel's boyfriend Wick from back while he still worked for the Company. There is also another novel set in the same universe, titled The Strange Bird: A Borne Story.
Later gained an indirect sequel, titled Dead Astronauts.
Not to be confused with The Bourne Series.
Tropes:
- Artificial Human: Wick is one, being part of a series of cloned Biotech engineers apparently meant to replace company workers. As far as the story progresses, he's the only one that was ever activated. The rest were killed in their crates.
- Bad Boss: Being a Mord cultist only makes it slightly less likely that he will crush, disembowel, or eat you. He treats his proxies with more respect, but has no issue using them as Cannon Fodder should the need arise.
- Bears Are Bad News: Mord is an utterly massive bear that effectively rules the City. And somehow, he can fly.
- The Mord proxies—golden-brown bears—are effective and vicious maulers. Rachel witnesses some Mord proxies massacre a bunch of mutant children, and they move so fast she was only able to register that there were five Mord proxies doing the slaughtering and no other details. After the death of Mord, the proxies become much less aggressive, and Rachel is hopeful that humans can coexist in peace with them.
- Big Bad: Mord. A living bio superweapon, the undisputed top of the food chain in the lawless dog-eat-dog world of The City. He considers the protagonists beneath his attention for the majority of the story, and so he acts through his proxies (sentient and physically enhanced bears) to enforce his will.
- Bioweapon Beast: Mord was created to be an enforcer of the companies will, though he ended up being far too strong to control.
- Bio Punk: The City still has many of the Company's biotech creations running amok, such as memory beetles and drug slugs.
- Bittersweet Ending: Borne dies in a heroic sacrifice, and the Magician is killed before she can take over the City. Mord is dead as well, and the connection between the Company and the City is severed. However, Wick is left partially disabled from the events of the story, with Rachel serving as his caretaker. As for the City itself, it’s partially healed and communities have formed again, but a true return to peace and stability is still a work in progress as of the Distant Epilogue
- Body Horror: Some thieving kids in the employ of the Magician have insect-like mutations on their heads.
- Bread and Circuses: The Company distributing Alcohol Minnows is understood in hindsight to have been an attempt to make the population more docile and aggreeable.
- Corporate Conspiracy: The Company had conspired to completely destabilize the city and make them dependent on biotech for quite a while, and though it can be argued they succeeded, there's very little left of the Company to enjoy any of the benefits. And the Company is merely a branch of whatever is on the other side of the silver portal, who were the real architects of the City's downfall. It is never made clear if anyone is still alive on the other side of that portal.
- Dragon Ascendant: Mord was intended to be an enforcer of the Company, but by the time of the story the remaining Company employees are forced to worship him to keep him appeased.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Pretty much the moment Rachel realizes the Magician doesn’t have the same kind of automated defenses Wick does, she caves the Magician’s skull in with a rock, extremely suddenly.
- Early-Bird Cameo: This book is the first appearance of the “Dead Astronauts”, three skeletons wearing biohazard isolation suits. While it seems like a throwaway bit of world building, these three are actually the protagonists who appear in the third book, which was fittingly named “Dead Astronauts”.
- Evil Versus Oblivion: The conflict between The Magician and Mord. The Magician is a ruthless, Machiavellian sociopath but the only one who can remotely stand up to Mord. Mord is an increasingly unstable and fickle god under whose rule the city is all but guaranteed to starve to death if he doesn’t crush them all first. Borne ends up being the third option, and together he and Rachel eliminate any power player (including Borne himself, via Heroic Sacrifice) who could singlehandedly control the city
- Fantastic Drug: Alchohol Minnows, which not only cause you to get drunk, but also dig up the most pleasant alcohol related memories you have and replicate the feelings. The end result is a substance that is more quintessentially alcohol than actual alcohol.
- Memory Beetles, which let you forget as much or as little as you want. Rachel used them to erase the traumatizing memory of her parents deaths.
- Future Imperfect: Tales of the Company and what the city was like before everything went to hell are already turning into myths by the time the story takes place. By the time of the epilogue, even the events of the story itself have begun taking on mythological tones.
- Genetic Abomination: There's Mord, a flying bear like creature, who creates proxies of himself and is outright compared to a God thanks to his complete control of gravity. Borne himself comes off as one, especially once he is banished from the balcony cliffs and becomes a roaming killer. He and his aborted siblings were apparently created to scour the entire city clean and then return all the genetic material back across the silver portal. If Rachel had not taught him compassion, he may have done just that.
- Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Mord is a superweapon, more than capable of leveling the entire city if he didn't enjoy sadistically keeping it under his heel. The titular Borne is also a superweapon, almost capable of matching Mord in straight combat, and more than capable of absorbing and destroying him.
- Hero of Another Story: Wick is the point-of-view character of The Situation, a prequel comic written by VanderMeer that shows his time working for the Company while Mord was still a fellow human manager.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Borne, realizing he was built to absorb things, not fight equals like Mord was, ends his fight with the later by absorbing him and then self destructing
- Kill and Replace: Bornes actual specialty, being able to disguise himself as anything he has killed.
- Killer Rabbit: In the area right outside of the Company HQ, near the spawning pools, is what appears to be a duck with a broken wing incongruously surviving in such a brutal world. The bestiary included with the book states that it is not in fact a duck, but anyone who approached to tell what it actually was was killed instantly by whatever it really was, leaving no witnesses and no records.
- Living MacGuffin: Borne becomes a point of contention between Rachel and Wick, with the latter wanting to examine Borne further and the former refusing every time he brings it up.
- Reluctant Monster: Borne. He does not want to kill and absorb things, but it's literally what he was designed to do.
- Scavenger World: Survival in the City is primarily done by salvaging biotech from the Company, and anything else of value one can get their hands on. Wick manages to survive as a drug dealer, but he also has Rachel scavenging for him.
- Take a Third Option: The City initially looks like it will fall into the hands of either Mord, or the Magician. Instead Borne kills Mord, then himself, and Rachel kills the Magician. This lets the City decide for itself what it wants to be.
- Was Once a Man: Mord was once human, turned into a super weapon to subjugate the city. By the time of the story, he's subjugated the company too.
- World Half Full: The state of The world after Borne sacrifices himself. It’s not a utopia, but mankind will survive, in a new harmony with nature. Some parts of the city are still too dangerous to enter, others have restored electricity and are living in peace. Mankind will have to learn to live alongside its Biotech creations, as they are here to stay, but many of them have become much friendlier without Mord's influence. Communities re-appear and flourish as survival is now far easier.
- World-Healing Wave: The result of the fight between Borne and Mord. It restores the city to a live able state, still dangerous but trending towards peace, and with the worst of the dangers and pollutants gone.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Magician kidnaps children and turns them into mentally unstable, hyper violent insect hybrids who thrive off causing pain.
