[Sean's Summation] The Prefect (Alastair Reynolds)

Continuing my fascination with UK-based SF, I grabbed a hardback copy of The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds from Amazon awhile back. Unfortunately, quite a bit got between me and reading it, so it was only recently that I was able to sit down and tackle it.

The Prefect is set in Reynold's Revelation Space universe [0], complete with the complement of Demarchists, Conjoiners, Ultras, and his other usual factions and freaks. The novel takes place at the height of the Demarchy's power in the Glitter Band, a group of more than 10,000 space habitats orbiting the terrestrial planet Yellowstone (which is in turn circling around the star, Epislon Erandi). In the Glitter Band, the Demarchists have constructed an anarcho-capitalist utopia, powered by seriously far-out nanotech. The central characters are prefects, specialized police officers, charged with maintaining the machinery that allows the populace to vote -- and prevent the same populace from tampering with it. The plot of the novel forces the prefects through increasingly deeper and broader conspiracies, threatening the very existence of Glitter Band society.

There are obvious shades of current debates on liberty vs. the police power reflected in the story. The prefects are denied actual firearms, much like today's UK where most constables carry only truncheons. The billy-club, however, is replaced with semi-autonomous whiphounds that attack and defend using monofiliment and a limited AI. The gruesome, up-close-and-personal attention dished out by our primitive implements is preserved, however.

Throughout the book, Reynolds waxes philosophic with a purpose. Through the mirror of his universe, he critiques our current culture of safety over freedom in the face of threats to national security. When is it acceptable for the executive to disregard the wishes of the populace and the contract by which it governs? What evils can be committed in the name of the state and insurance of future safety at the cost of individual lives and freedoms? Is the benevolent tyrant preferable to the will of the mob?

Of course, any libertarian hack can write a story like that [1], Reynolds keeps it unique and engaging in two ways:

1. His universe is unique in its believability. While I doubt he is the first writer of hard SF space opera, his work represents the state of the art. Most of the elements of Demarchist, Conjoiner, and Ultra society seem believable, considering both the technological and sociological possibilities. His universe becomes almost a three dimensional character unto itself -- it possess depth, rationale, and a human touch.

2. His characters are also three dimensional constructs inside this universe. There are no heroic, dashing Captain Kirk's or infallibly prophetic Hari Seldon's. While Reynolds does rely on quite a few familiar tropes -- the maverick cop, the the scheming vizier [2], etc. -- their use is to give us something to identify with inside the framework of the story. The characters, after all, must seem somewhat human to us, as they exist in a nearly fantastic setting.

The whole thing, of course, is enhanced by the dramatic irony if you've read the other books in the series. The Prefect takes place well before the events of Chasm City or Revelation Space, so the foreshadowing contained takes a much more ominous note once one knows exactly what is to come.

I have quite enjoyed the other books in this series and The Prefect did not let me down. It may have certain formulaic elements but the questions posed by the intertwining of the familiar plot elements with the unique framework of his universe make it well worth the weekend read.

[0] While it's not as voluminous as, say, Terry Pratchett's Discworld, it's got 4 novels and a slew of short stories and novellas comprising it.
[1] I'm only poking a little bit of fun at Cory Doctorow.
[2] First order of business if I ever become a CEO, President, or Evil Overlord: fire/impeach/execute anyone with a goatee on my staff.

[Sean's Summation] Saturn's Children (Charles Stross)

If Mr. Stross has been on this blog a bit much of late, you can blame me. I've been an unabashed fan of his after reading Accelerando, and though JD beat me to Halting State, I agree with his solid recommendation to read it. Thus, when I saw the wonderfully...ahem...provocative cover of Saturn's Children, I was genuinely excited -- would this be a Heinlein-eqse, risqué sexbot on a mission romp? The answer, it turns out, is equal parts "yes" and "well, kinda."

Quick setting summary: Saturn's Children is set some several hundred years into our future. Humans have built robots with relatively powerful AI to do all manner of jobs -- from asteroid mining to entertainers to spaceships to whatever else that humans, being squishy or easily bored, couldn't do. Stross gets around our current problems with AI by hand-waving that these robots are based on human intelligence patterns (essentially, computer-based copies of our brain's structure). Robots have a "soul chip" that stores their consciousness, which can be slotted into another copy of the same model, carrying over its experiences and personality. Copies of the same model form lineages that typically stick together, pooling the soul chips of their dead brethren/sisters so that the deceased's memories live on. In addition to their soul chip, robots can have slave chips installed (usually unwillingly), which allow near total control of the robot in question.

By the way, "robot" is a slur equivalent to some of our more pernicious racial slurs. So, apologies to any persons that happen to be non-pink goo reading this. Though, I really should apologize for much more, because, you see, there are no more humans (or any biological life) in Saturn's Children. Somewhere in the next couple of centuries, humans disappear (Stross isn't particularly clear on the how or why, but it's not really necessary to the story), leaving behind our robot slaves and a destroyed Terran ecosystem. Problematically, since robots were generally property rather than people, this left most in a peculiar legal state. Some enterprising robots that happened to have legal powers of attorney used their now defunct masters' funds to buy up around 90% of the robot population. This created a solar system of a incredibly small, cruel and insane aristocracy and enormous slave population. The few remaining "free" robots were essentially self-owned LLC's barely scraping by, attempting to avoid falling into debt and becoming indentured servants themselves.

Enter into this world our protagonist, Freya, a free robot of modest means. Unfortunately for her, her lineage's purpose died out with humanity: she was to be a hyper-advanced sex toy for the few remaining humans. (Is it any wonder we died out?) Thus, she starts the story down on her luck somewhere in the high atmosphere of Venus.

Looking back over those last couple of paragraphs, I can conclude that I'll never be a jacket-cover writer. Moving on.

In continuing theme with his previous fiction, Stross depicts space-travel as realistically as possible. Thus, it is very Hobbesian: solitary, nasty, and brutish, but not so much with the short. Travel to Jupiter from Mars on even some of the fastest ships takes over a year and that journey comes with a hefty dosage of ionizing radiation from the ship's nuclear engines. Colonization efforts are also depicted in realistic, but nonetheless fantastic, detail: a city moves on rails around Mercury to keep its temperature optimal, while Mars gives birth to a massive space elevator. While settlement would have been impossible for squishy humans, robots manage to proliferate, colonizing the solar system in our stead. While this is terribly disappointing to those of us raised on Star Trek, it sadly has the support of quite a bit of scientific evidence behind it.

Stross cheats a bit with his characters and makes them mostly clones of each other, but this sort of fits in a world dominated by many clones of a few basic models. There is a background cast of various more fantastic non-anthropromophic bots, but their details are usually shallow. There are a few colorful exceptions to this, of course: Dechs seems to fill the role of the plucky dog sidekick, but reveals to be much more. The hobo bots on Mars are also wonderful bit of the familiar yet absurd.

Perhaps one of my favorite theme in the story were the debates concerning creation myths from a robotic perspective. As creatures created rather than evolved, the majority of robots had trouble believing that their creators came to be in such a messy manner. This leads to the comedic reversal of evolutionists being treated as the intellectual parriahs that today's creationists fill, complete with cultists, "skeptics" and the like.

Though I am admittedly a Strossian fan-boy, we now come to the part of the essay where I must lambaste him for failing: Mr. Stross needs an editor with a chainsaw and plenty of duct tape. As was the case with Accelerando, Saturn's Children is occasionally non-linear. Unlike previous works, however, these transitions are unexpected and confusing. At several points in the book the transitions were so jarring, I found myself checking page numbers to make sure my copy wasn't missing pages. A zealous editor should notice these sorts of things and berate Mr. Stross until they're fixed.

(As a note, from reading his blog, it appears he's been releasing and editing quite a number of books of late. While I'm all for output, I really would prefer a more paced release schedule. Quality, not quantity!)

Further, his characters motivations and personalities fall flat, especially towards the novel's climax. I was left wondering, "So, that's why so-and-so did that? Ho-hum." It just really didn't feel believable or interesting. The overall plot, too, felt a bit weak. It was very Mission: Impossible (the Tom Cruise movies, not the TV show): needlessly complicated, with too many, "Oh no, X was really Y all along!" moments.

Despite these complaints, I had a good time with the novel, and would definitely recommend it to fellow SF readers for their enjoyment.