Blood Music's cast of important characters is small. Vergil Ulam launches the plot with his quest. He is thirtytwo years old and at the beginning of the novel overweight, bespectacled, troubled with health problems. He is a misfit at the Genetron lab and in society. He had been frustrated all his life, very gifted but never "good at gauging the consequences of his actions." Moreover, he is a flawed character ethically, having falsified university credentials to obtain his job. Yet he feels no guilt, believing that "the world was his personal puzzle," and "any riddlings and unravelings he could perform . . . were simply part of his nature." Vergil is somewhat the stock, "pure" scientist.

Minor characters offer perspective, illumine themes of alienation and power politics. Gerald T. Harrison, the Genetron boss who judges Vergil "very ambitious" but too wayward, cares less for research than he does for management. He...