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Fractions: The First Half of The Fall Revolution

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Written towards the end of, and shortly after, the Cold War, Ken MacLeod's "Fractions", is the first half of a four novel series, "The Fall Revolution", exploring humanity's potential political futures. His first novel, "The Star Fraction", is a brilliant near future exploration as to how mankind copes with a fragmented nation state, 21st Century Great Britain, consisting of Marxist societies co-existing uneasily with others, especially with the overarching libertarian ethos of the US/UN world government. Set several decades after a brief World War III which was fought to integrate all of Europe into one state, MacLeod offers an optimistic appraisal of anarchistic rule, as seen through the eyes of his misfit protagonists, most of whom members of an urban terrorist band resisting the rule of the restored British monarchy and its US/UN overlords.

Centuries and many light years later, in MacLeod's second novel, "The Stone Canal", humans and androids share a world - New Mars, still in the midst of terraforming - and struggle to establish equality for both groups, when a mysterious human clone appears, recognizable as the British leader who triggered the Fall Revolution. MacLeod skillfully weaves back and forth between the lives of the original leader in the early 21st Century and his New Mars clone, drawing uneasy social and political parallels between both societies.

There are no real heroes in either half of "Fractions". MacLeod admits that his protagonists are flawed figures, rising occasionally to do memorable, perhaps even heroic, deeds. As characters they seem far more realized than the cyberspace cowboys and other social misfits inhabiting the near future landscape of William Gibson's "Cyberspace Trilogy". While MacLeod is not nearly as graceful a stylist as Gibson, he does a most impressive job as a storyteller, telling two emotionally riveting tales that may be more meaningful as scenarios of potential human futures than as fiction. "Fractions" is an excellent, if long, introduction to this young British science fiction writer's work; a superlative blend of political science fiction and post-cyberpunk technological thriller.

Ken MacLeod is a peerless purveyor of speculative fiction with a bite. An intellectual, fiercely partisan, aggressively funny, British writer, MacLeod gets in your face with his politics -- but makes it palatable by writing about characters you really care about. On top of that, he manages with the Fall Revolution series to create a satisfying puzzle whose pieces all fall together in his final novels of the series (collected as "Divisions"). For the fullest effect, read "Fractions" and "Divisions" together to appreciate how MacLeod spans light years of space and geologic eras of time while stitching together a satisfying yarn about super-long-lived characters linked - and divided - by friendship, love, ideology, and enmity. Oh yeah, and by nanotechnology, steam-punk cybernetics, the Singularity, and rip-roaring space opera.

"Fractions" combines the first two novels of the Fall Revolution series, "The Space Fraction" and "The Stone Canal." MacLeod focuses on a different character in each of his novels, while having the same core personalities appear either in the foreground or background of each of the other. In "The Star Fraction," we are introduced to a war-torn Britain that has been shattered by competing ideologies -- oh, yeah, and by some almost accidental nuclear blasts. We follow some armed-to-the-hilt mercenaries, psychedelic memory researchers, space enthusiasts, and left leaning revolutionaries as England tries to shrug off the latest Restoration. Despite deep discomfort with the notion of artificial intelligence, the protagonists end up unleashing the Black Plan of the Fourth International.

In "The Stone Canal," one of the fringe characters from "The Star Fraction" takes center stage. Using a slightly disorienting device of bouncing between late 20th Century/early 21st Century Britain and a world called New Ares centuries and light-years away, MacLeod tells a tale of love, jealousy, ideology, and the nature of consciousness. We encounter space entrepreneurs, robots, androids (and gynoids!), super-evolved humans, and wormholes, but MacLeod keeps the story grounded by following some compelling, but deeply flawed characters whose struggles span centuries and light years, and even frustrate death itself.

These novels showcase some of the best speculative fiction of the Nineties by an author who really delivers the goods.

I read the two original books that are in this compilation years ago, and now just enjoyed reading them again.

The Stone Canal contains one of my favorite science-fiction sequences of all time. It takes the ghost in the machine literally. Spoiler alert: waking up inside the construction robot and hacking the pleasure AI is just classic.

The Star Fraction. By 2040, the Kingdom of Great Britain lays in ruins divided into independent states due to the policies of the leftist Labour Party. Some of these new entities are no bigger than a few city streets and run by gang-lords while others like the Army of the New Republic control a vast area. Marxist gun for hire physical security expert Moh Kohn, computer scientist Janis Taine, terrorist Catherine Duvalier and teenage atheist Jordan Brown meet when Moh is assigned to protect Janis and her lab from the fundamentalist Stasis who control technology and have ruled that her work needs to be destroyed. After several Stasis assaults, the foursome decide they must take out an evil artificial intelligence if they are to survive.

The Stone Canal. Political rivals Jonathan Wilde and Dave Reid both love Annette, but the former marries her. Over time Jonathan drifts to the extreme left while Dave turns towards the anarchist's credo. Their competition grows more heated with Annette still in play. Wilde wakes up near a canal where Jay-Dub the robot informs him he is a clone with the original Wilde's memories downloaded into the replica. Reid runs the Martian colony, but the Wilde clone remembers his rival being there when he was assassinated. Worse Reid has a clone of Annette. Round two is commencing.

This is a reprint of the "The First Half of The Fall Revolution" with the second part to come soon. The tales retain their fresh creativity though both were published in the mid 1990s. Each is fast-paced with the worlds, a futuristic dismal earth and a Mars colony after a loss in WW III, seem genuine even with clones and AI machines. The additional fun for Ken Macleod fans is to see the leap in skill from his first to second novel as each is entertaining but THE STONE CANAL is much tighter despite containing two major subplots.

Harriet Klausner

Until 2008, I had not heard of Ken Macleod. I happened upon a hardbound copy of The Execution Channel and I was hooked on his relevant characters and credible plots, no matter how fantastic his premise. I rushed to pick up his latest works to follow his succession but found the new TOR paperback edition of Fractions: The First Half of the Fall Revolution to be the most recent published work I could find. It turned out, not surprisingly, a new American edition of two of his earlier works The Star Fraction and The Stone Canal. One need only read them to understand their conspicuous absence from American Mid-west mainstream book sellers (whether by capitalistic apathy or overt neglect we'll never know.) I had missed out on a truly invigorating new science fiction writer for quite some time. Macleod is a smart and inventive writer with a flair for the political pariah. Like many Americans I always gave more weight to Solzhenitsyn than Engles, however he writes us sympathetic heroes no matter your preference, mind the gap.

Although these are independent novels they seem to be less, alternate futures of the human race but rather distinctive vantage points of a surprisingly coherent, and optimistic British view of the Horizon very much in the tradition of Constable or Turner. Refreshingly dismissive of the US hegemony, we are witness to a future lovingly Anglo-Euro centric `new world order'. I am often trapped by contemporary terrestrial sci-fi into the `clairvoyant/prophet/savant' debate over future of tech and trade but I comfortably got lost in Macleod's knowable universe. I am anxious to pick up the second half of the revolution and finish the quartet.