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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Grand and involving,
By
This review is from: Metaplanetary: A Novel of Interplanetary Civil War (Hardcover)
_Metaplanetary_ is a grand, involving, novel set in 3013 C. E., in a fully colonized solar system which is about to burst into a vicious civil war. It is chock full of neat, if perhaps not always fully plausible (indeed at times quite wacky), SFnal ideas. It managed to excite my somewhat jaded sense of wonder, and it made me care deeply about quite a few characters, and it advances some interesting and worthwhile moral themes. Its main flaw is that it doesn't end so much as stop -- it's part of a two book series (the sequel will be called _Superluminal_), and it really does not stand alone. (This is not indicated on the published book, for which the publisher should be criticized.) Another, lesser, flaw, perhaps, is that the villain is really evil -- no moral ambiguity there. The solar system in 3000 or so is divided into basically two sections. The inner system, called the Met, consists of the inner four planets, and a gloriously weird system of tubes connecting them, which makes the whole thing look like a spider web, sort of. Many people seem to live in the tubes, or in nodes of the system, called bolsas. Mercury, with all that energy available, is the dominant planet. Earth has been largely returned to nature. The outer planetary systems have all been colonized, with varying degrees of success. Triton, Neptune's big moon, is one of the most successful colonies. In addition, a number of artificially intelligent ships live permanently in space, particularly the Oort clouds, and they have traveled as far as Alpha Centauri. (These are called cloudships.) The Met doesn't reach to the outer system because the asteroid belt is impractical to cross with the tubes (perhaps due simply to authorial fiat). Besides the Met, the other key SFnal notion of the book is "grist". Basically, grist is very "smart" nanotech. Most if not all humans have an integrated bunch of grist attached, called a pellicle, which hosts a version of their personality in AI form, called a convert. There are also "free converts", AI's based on scans of human brains but which don't have a biological body. Humans can interact with both free converts and with the "attached" converts of other humans in Virtual space, and all of the system, pretty much, is instantaneously connected by a grist network called the merci. And some humans are what are called LAP's -- Large Array of Personas: they are in essence a network of clones and converts that can be physically and virtually in many places at once. For the most part, the solar system is in something of a Golden Age. The physical needs of people seem to be well supplied. A critical political issue is the rights of "free converts". Some do not consider them "Human" -- they are just computer programs, in this view, without real free will, without, if you will, "souls". But others, especially in the outer system, regard them as clearly human. The novel is told from a variety of points of view: a couple of cloudships; a free convert named Danis Graytor; Danis' human husband Kelly; their daughter Aubry (who has a human body but is considered a "half free convert"); an artificial woman named Jill with a body made of grist and a brained based on a ferret's; Colonel Roger Sherman, the military leader of Triton's forces; Sherman's son Lee; Director Ames, the leader of the Met government; General San Filieu, an aging Catalan woman under Ames influence who leads the Met attack on Triton; and more. This gives us a good look at the variety of ways people live in this future, and at what it is like to be a free convert, or a cloudship, or a human with a pellicle and convert attachment, or a LAP. This also helps keep the action moving, important in a fairly long book. The action of the novel is exciting and fascinating. We see atrocities, such as some clever means of torturing AIs, and a brutal attack on Triton with some scary uses of space tech; and we see heroism in the resistance to these atrocities. We see convincing depictions of sex between humans and AIs, and of alternate means of travel in a physically linked solar system, and of AI entertainment. We get useful glimpses of the history of this future: the young life of Director Ames, the development of the cloudships, the invention of grist and the merci. It's a fairly long book, but never boring. The main characters are fully rounded. I found the villains interesting, but it must be admitted that they are depicted with rather a broad brush of evil. Daniel gives his different characters and narrators different voices. His prose is generally sound, occasionally lapsing into cliche, but at other times very nice. His scope is vast, and his theme is one of the great SF themes: "What is a human?" He illustrates this nicely with his array of characters of vastly different "shape" or composition; and he metaphorically illustrates even more nicely the associated conflict of viewpoints between individualists and collectivists: hinting by the end at a truly scary collectivist vision. The scary parts of the book are convincing and often quite original, and very scary: and the heroism is moving and believable. I really liked this book.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely Cool!,
By
This review is from: Metaplanetary: A Novel of Interplanetary Civil War (Mass Market Paperback)
I have read a lot of good science fiction lately (see my recent reviews) and this is another fine example. It would make a great movie if done true to this work. The premise of this novel is 'what constitutes a human being' and it is present throughout this book. A civil war erupts in the solar system, and much of this war concerns itself about whether or not intelligent algorithms, that is, conscious computers and/or programs, should be allowed full human rights, or are they just property. And what constitutes human status in the first place, do they have to look like us, and think like us, can they be faster, better, and more rational, than original humans? This novel is set one thousand years into the future with a despot attempting to rule the solar system and impose his will on all. Tony Daniel illustrates how we come to rely on our technology, and take it for granted, and are at a loss when we lose it. He has a multitude of interesting characters here, all with superb character development, in a complex well written plot, very imaginative in the 'hard' science fiction tradition, and it was hilarious at times. Nanotechnology, which is called grist in this novel, allows many things to become possible, and would seem to be near magic to us here in the early 21st century. My only criticism for this book is that Daniel has these characters living 1000 years from now in a world where immortality is not quite here yet, give me a break, nanotech should give immortality to us well before then, I do not take a star off my review for this, my opinion. And there is a sequel coming to this novel, called "Superluminal", I look forward to it.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mind-bending futurism in a gripping tale,
By
This review is from: Metaplanetary: A Novel of Interplanetary Civil War (Hardcover)
I knew I was in for a treat with this book after my dad, who has consumed two or three sci-fi novels a week for the past 30 years, handed it to me and said, "You know, just when you think you've read it all, someone comes out with something like this with stuff you've never even dreamed of." Sure enough, Daniel has spun an incredible tale stuffed with mind-bending technology and ideas. It is surely one of the best sci-fi books I've read lately.While some SF authors often base a story around one central idea, this work has enough conceits to fill the dressing room at the Victoria Secret fashion show. He gives us the ubiquitous nanobots known as "grist", and "pellicles", nano-based prosthetics that can acquire their own legal status and civil rights. There is a bizarre if not entirely believeable interplanetary subway system of interlocking organic tubes. And there are the massive thinking spacecraft that have become the bodies holding the minds of their centuries-old human pilots. Daniel also gives us a good old-fashioned epic tale to chew on, with an ambitious dictator pitted against believers in individual liberty. I sense Daniel has a lot to say on this issue and I hope it is fleshed out in the upcoming sequel, "Superluminal". One other thing I liked was Daniel's attention to finance and economics through one of the main characters, who is the far future equivalent of a high-powered Wall Street trader, though he deals in things like meson futures rather than the familiar commodities of today. This is a refreshing change from many other sci-fi tales, which tend to paint future economies as mercantilist empires or hyperdemonic capitalism with evil corporations crushing the little guys. Daniel's skill isn't limited to dreaming up fantastic settings and technology. He is adept at painting his characters in rich colors, and in using them to raise interesting questions of ethics and identity. He manages to elicit empathy for even the oddest of the bunch, such as the financial wheeler-dealer's wife, who is a disembodied AI with no physical features or expressions to describe. Yet Daniel succeeds in making us anxious for her fate as she is ensnared in a move to strip AIs of their civil rights and press them into virtual concentration camps. Metaplanetary is a worthy investment of time and money, and I have high hopes the sequel will prove just as enjoyable, intriguing and thoughtful.
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