Lady of Mazes [Hardcover]

Karl Schroeder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 23, 2005

Karl Schroeder is one of the new stars of hard SF. His novels, Ventus and Permanence, have established him as a new force in the field. Now he extends his reach into Larry Niven territory, returning to the same distant future in which Ventus was set, but employing a broader canvas, to tell the story of Teven Coronal, a ringworld with a huge multiplicity of human civilizations. Brilliant but troubled Livia Kodaly is Teven's only hope against invaders both human and superhuman who would destroy its fragile ecologies and human diversity. Filled with action, ideas, and intellectual energy, Lady of Mazes is the hard SF novel of the year.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in the same future universe as Ventus (2000), Canadian author Schroeder's challenging hard SF novel explores the vast potential of artificial intelligence for transforming human culture. On the remote ring world of Teven Coronal, Livia Kodaly and her family inhabit the beautiful Westerhaven manifold, surrounded by a richness of high tech and virtual conveniences. Due to a childhood tragedy, Livia enjoys different consensual realities. The mysterious Book 3340 breaks down the barriers between manifolds, destroying her world, so that she must travel, with a few accomplices, out of Teven Coronal into the Archipelago, where she encounters several models for a perfect human society and examines her own. Her task is to choose among them, but ultimately to ensure that choices are possible by sacrificing herself to prevent the total subjugation of humanity. The interrelationship between technology and philosophy that informs her choice gives depth and breadth to a book that many will want to reread to get all the nuances.
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From Booklist

In Ventus (2000) and Permanence (2002), Schroeder exhibited a flair for high-tech world building that yet had the feel of fantasy. In this book, he visits Teven Coronal, one ring in an immense chain of human- and posthuman-populated ringworlds circling a sun. Like most citizens of Teven Coronal, Livia Kodaly knows little of her true surroundings or the scope of human civilization beyond. Everyone on Teven Coronal lives within a series of virtual-reality landscapes known as manifolds, which overlay their true environment. While taking a break from her usual routine of social gatherings and political maneuvering, Livia, with a close friend, discovers a heretofore-impossible rift between manifolds. All too quickly the Teven Coronal virtual-reality paradise begins to crumble around them. Chaos ensues, and Livia and her closest friends must flee to other ringworlds and an uncertain future. Schroeder continues to improve his unique blend of hard sf and vivid, dreamlike prose and bids fair to become a major genre voice. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (June 23, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765312190
• ISBN-13: 978-0765312198
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #745,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born September 4, 1962 in Brandon Manitoba. My family are Mennonites, part of a community which has lived in southern Manitoba for over one hundred years. I am the second science fiction writer to come out of this small community -- the first was A.E. van Vogt!

I moved to Toronto in 1986 to pursue my writing career. I married Janice Beitel in April 2001 and our daughter Paige was born in May 2003.

I divide my time between writing fiction and consulting--chiefly in the area of Foresight Studies and technology.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Head-snappingly cool SF about living in intersecting VR, April 4, 2006

By 

Richard R. Horton (Webster Groves, MO United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lady of Mazes (Hardcover)

Karl Schroeder's new novel is the real thing -- head-snappingly cool SF, with big and clever ideas, almost believable transcendence, and a way to map human scale stories into a world where "post-human" powers exist. It's set in the fairly far future, in a Solar System populated by humans living in space habitats, by post-humans -- humans who have gained "god-like" computational powers, and possibly by aliens. Ultimately the story concerns people trying to live human scale lives, yet also lives with meaning -- and various solutions are suggested. This is ambitious stuff. Schroeder -- one of the most reliably ambitious young writers we have -- doesn't quite pull off everything he tries, but he makes a brave stab at it.

The protagonist is Livia Kodaly, a diplomat living in a human society, or "manifold", called Westerhaven. A "manifold" is a set of technological and social values adopted by a community, and enforced by implants and virtual reality. Thus in one manifold people live in what seems to be roughly a traditional Native American tribe; while in another flying machines and guns might be allowed, but not spaceships. And so on. As it happens, these manifolds coexist on a single space habitat, Teven Coronal -- something like one of Iain M. Banks's "orbitals", or a mini-Ringworld. VR mediates people's interactions so that people from different manifolds can be in the same place and not see each other. In some manifolds, like Westerhaven, people have "societies", groups of friends who can always be present (if usually as simulations, with conversations stored for the "original" to experience later if necessary).

This setup is pretty cool -- reminiscent in some ways of John C. Wright's Golden Age trilogy. But it turns out not to be the point of the book. For Westerhaven and its fellow manifolds are under attack by a mysterious entity called 3347, which seems determined to undermine the "tech locks" that maintain the identity of each manifold. Livia and her close friend Aaron Varese, along with a newly met man from another manifold, Raven, escape in a flying house. And soon we are introduced to the main stream (perhaps) of human society, a cluster of habitats from which Westerhaven has been isolated.

Here people also live lives mediated by VR, so that they might seem to be in almost any environment -- a cartoon world, an old city street, a Scottish manor, etc. -- while in "reality" (whatever that might mean) they are living in artificial space habitats broadly similar to Teven Coronal. Social life in these habitats is controlled by various means -- AIs called collectively the "Government," and composed of independent AI "votes," for one example. Or, for another crucial example, groups of people living according to the Good Book -- a set of rules for social interaction.

Best perhaps to let Schroeder tell his story from here. Livia and her friends continue to search for help in saving their home Coronal. But they are also seduced by the prospect of life in the "wider" world, as it were, with its less limited horizons. And there is also the lurking presence of post-humans, and of the mysterious "anecliptics," the beings who have among other things shielded Teven Coronal from interaction with the rest of the Solar System. Some people are looking for ways to become "gods" themselves.

Ultimately Lady of Mazes asks: "What does human life mean?" or "How can life be meaningful if 'reality' is an infinitely malleable construct, and nothing basic ever changes?" Or similar questions. Livia, not surprisingly, has a central role to play. At times the story bumps into a common problem of wild far future stories -- how can we believe or understand the technological wonders that seem to drip by fiat from the author's pen? But in the end I felt the book mostly worked. And the closing passage (before a slightly anticlimactic epilogue) is truly lovely.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Far-future adventure, November 19, 2005

By 

Elisabeth Carey (Lawrence, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lady of Mazes (Hardcover)

Lady of Mazes is very loosely connected to Schroeder's earlier novel, Ventus, but the story is completely independent. Not having read the earlier book will not affect this one.

Livia Kodaly lives in a space-based habitat, in a culture that to some degree neighbors and to some degree overlaps in physical territory with other cultures that are separated from each other by software horizons that prevent members of one culture from using or even perceiving the technology and artifacts appropriate to other cultures. Livia herself is part of a small group that can perceive and interact with other culture, and who act as cultural ambassadors and take on the task of deciding when declining cultures have been sufficiently abandoned that their resources can be reallocated to thriving existing or new cultures. This is a contentious enough task that Livia's life is hardly stress-free even before Qiingi, a man from a more nature-oriented neighboring/overlapping culture tells her that the Ancestors-the people Livia's culture calls the Founders-have returned and are behaving very strangely. In short order the horizons separating the many cultures of the habitat are under full-scale attack and falling rapidly, while Livia, Qiingi, and Aaron, an old friend of Livia's, are fleeing for their lives, knowing nothing about their enemy except that it's apparently called 3340, and it hates the horizons that let the cultures maintain themselves intact.

Up to this point, they at least know what the rules are supposed to be. Once they make a truly insane escape from the habitat and their unlikely vehicle gets picked up, things get much stranger. Livia, her friends, and the people they meet in what, from their perspective, might as well be Wonderland, all have to completely rewrite the way they think the world works, and why. The question of who or what among the contending parties might be the bad guy, if there is one, becomes amazingly, and amazingly satisfyingly, confused. After the first third of the book, there's really nothing that can be said about it that wouldn't simultaneously be both a spoiler, and completely misleading.

Highly recommended.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine and imaginative, July 15, 2005

By 

Margaret Dybala "too many books, too little time" (Pearland, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lady of Mazes (Hardcover)

This is a very well written piece of science fiction that combines hard science fiction (Niven) with more imaginative work (Dick). I am astounded to find that I am the first to write a review. This is a very good book. The premise is that people live in various artificial communities/satellites, and also in various artificial mental constructs. What happens when these constructs are challenged? Very, very unusual and fine story. I highly recommend it if you enjoy this genre.