A nice dystopian story. Once again humanity has made itself into multiple classes of elite and workers and poor. No one is happy and society is starting to break down. Along comes the trigger that blows all of the nicely set up structures and sends everything out of control. In this case its a baby who will be fully human and beyond the elite's control. In the end all the players come together triggering a distaster amoung the elites that results in them having to relise and rethink thier status and needs of the rest of humanity. A very good read, I enjoyed.

Set in the far future in a time when Optimen lived for tens of thousand of years, The Eyes of Heisenberg is kind of like 1984 on Steroids. In this society, the rulers only allow certain people to procreate, and when they do so, genetic engineers manipulate the embryo seeking to make these superhumans, who can virtually live forever. The concept is okay, but I thought by and large the execution is poor. For one thing, I think to fully understand the story, you need an advanced degree in biochemistry. Secondly, it was never fully explained why things were happening. Why the embryos are engineered, what was so important about the embryo belonging to the Durants, which is the focus of the story, that makes all hell break loose. The other thing that really annoyed me was how Herbert jumps from one scene to another skipping all sorts of scenes in between that are necessary to set up the scene. It almost seemed like I was reading an abridgement. So although the concept was interesting, and there was good character development in the story, I found the novel more exasperating than anything else.
Carl Alves - author of Blood Street

Absolutely stunning old-school genetics sci-fi

Meh. Frank Herbert is a phenomenal writer, but this book was underwhelming. Great premise and build up but the ending was lame.

I hope his dune books are not like this one because this one was not interesting at all.

There’s good and bad to this book, but for the most part it was just a little bit of a letdown. I think the problem is that when reading sci-fi, I tend to enjoy myself if the technology is fascinating, the ideas are profound or the characters are relatable. Here, I didn’t get any of that.

Still, Herbert is a decent enough writer, and I did at least find that the writing was pretty approachable. And I guess the actual ideas were cool, even if they weren’t explored as thoroughly as I was hoping.

It’s all about gene editing and is set in a world in which all babies can be specifically grown to avoid problems such as thyroid illnesses. There’s also a section of society that’s immortal, and Herbert looks at the baggage that comes with that.

I liked some of the ideas behind this book, for starters because genetic manipulation is definitely in our future, and I'm fascinated with the idea of engineering "perfect" humans. Most of all, I loved the god-like humans who, without death looming over them, have become intolerably bored and out of touch with life itself. Awesome.

That said, though I really enjoyed Dune, I just couldn't get into the writing style of this book, and I didn't really click with any of the characters. I also felt like there was so much more that could have been done.

I liked this, but I didn't love it. It had Herbert's usually characters plotting against each other, but the plots weren't as complex as is his usual.

He did have some interesting SF ideas, though I don't want to ruin it by giving away too much. The main SF concept is genetic engineering, though given the publication date of the book not exactly scientifically accurate.

I'm usually happy with the characters in Herbert's novels. No exception here. It was short, so not many characters, though. Not much character change, but they were believable-not made of paper like too many old school SF writers.

4.5/5
The Eyes of Heisenberg is a novel packed with classic sci-fi
and a massive vocabulary, distinctive of Frank Herbert. At
only 176 pages, I knew it would be short, but I didn't think it
would be this sweet.
I'll admit, it started a bit slow, and it with lots of big science
words. After this, it explodes into conflict and an awesome
mid-cent-future that's bound to satisfy most sci-fi lovers.

Started off a very interesting story. Tailed off into a bit of a rushed, all.is well now ending

Not terrible. A short book with a good message on immortality.

"There's a caprice in our universe. [Heisenberg] taught us that. There's always something we can't interpret or understand... or measure." The principle of indeterminacy in the words of gene surgeon Potter, who appears in the first pages of the book.

The plot is set in a distant future, where natural selection has been overruled by the capacity of humans themselves to alter genes and to determine their offspring. The world is ruled by the Optimen, a caste of immortals who genetically determine the population of the world, splitting it in an artificially selected and bred caste of "breeders" and those who are sterile. Breeding is made possible only thanks to the gene surgeons, who adjust and define the genetic characteristics and the future of each embryo.
Frank Herbert describes a world where the use of technology has upset the biological stability of the reproductive system, where the birth of each individual - and the evolution of the species - is carefully scheduled following the logic of the Optimen.
But one day, that "something", an interference (which isn't defined by Herbert, but is called "the rhythm of life" or God, depending on the character), a reflection of Heisenberg's uncertainty, asserts itself and originates a new completely viable embryo, that could make the whole Optimen system crumble and would make the gene shaping process useless.

Herbert explores the perils of a world where reproduction is dominated by artificial selection and eugenetics, reprising many of the themes also present in his masterpiece Dune. The quite short and enjoyable novel concludes with a revolution of the social order (through natural child-bearing) which ends in a state of full indeterminacy: "Heisenberg would've liked this pattern. The movers themselves had been moved - and changed - by moving."