Immigrant communities and the future Local in the dystopic On Such A Full Sea

From The Week of January 6th, 2014

Customs and traditions, laws and codes, shape our cultures, giving them their definition, their structure and their uniqueness. And yet, to us the culture simply is, the ever-present framework in which we have the experiences that make up our lives. It is as familiar to us as our friends, and so its trials and tribulations are taken as what must be, the tapestry of our individual existences. It's only when we absorb the strangeness of other cultures, either ones with which we share a world, or the ones that fell before our times, that we come to understand that what we assume to be normative, customary, is not so because it is the right way. Rather, it is simply the way it is done, for us and no one else. This is a powerful truth. For it grants us perspective not only on the human capacity to acclimatize, but it teaches us that nothing is as it must be, that everything is subject to change, to evolution, to improvement. This, if little else, is a point delightfully made in Chang-Rae Lee's dystopian novel.

In a near-future world blighted by widespread, environmental upheaval, life for the many has become difficult and often brutal. In the region formally known as the United States, society has devolved into three distinct groups which are characterized by varying degrees of autonomy and economic power. The Facilities are coastal communities, agrarian settlements that have grown up in the hollowed-out cores of former seaboard metropoli. They are nourished by trade with the Charters, a collection of seemingly powerful and healthy enclaves made prosperous by their isolation from the rest of the world. Occupying the wild, untamed lands between these two kinds of communities are the Open Counties, a seemingly lawless region of broken land in which the unfortunates of the world eke out a meager existence and to which tourists from more stable lands visit out of anthropological curiosity.

A resident of a Facility which has grown out of old Baltimore, Fan is a Tank Girl, a laborer tasked with ensuring the livelihood of the Facility's stock of essential sealife. She seems largely content with her existence until, one day, her boyfriend disappears into the Open Counties, to where and what end no one knows. Fearing for him, Fan decides to follow in his footsteps, forsaking the relative safety of her familiar little world and entering into the great, dangerous beyond. Repeatedly beset by powers much more ruthless and potent than she, Fan must continually scrabble for a foothold in this strange place, little knowing if the winds of fate will carry her to or from the boy she loves.

A fascinating treatise on the nature of expectations and human malleability, On Such A Full Sea is, nonetheless, a failure as a work of entertainment. Mr. Lee, an author and professor of literature, has fashioned a darkly captivating world full of half-glimpsed political machines and well-thought-out immigrant communities which have adapted to the violent tides of history by coalescing into their own, largely self-sufficient units. In this, they convey one of the work's most powerful ideas, that power is fundamentally local, that the global superstructure we've managed to erect over the last century is fragile, and that any significant disruption to the world order will plunge us back into a world where community is everything and where banishment from the collective is a punishment worse than death. In the hands of a skilled author, this is a notion brought vividly to life in this richly imagined future.

However, in almost every other way, On Such A Full Sea is an irritating bore. Its most frustrating element by far is its composition. Written in a kind of observational prose, the narration is from the perspective of an omnipotent first person, a collective we that hovers over Fan and her quest while remaining removed enough to provide the reader with details of the world that Fan may not know. This style certainly helps Mr. Lee make broader points about class and culture, and it absolutely lends the work a literary polish rarely seen in genre fiction, but it also precludes us from feeling any emotion from, much less for, the actors on its elegantly wrought stage. On Such A Full Sea is the literary equivalent of buying the worst ticket to a 50,000-seat house. We are left to watch from the nosebleeds while tiny ants down below execute their intricate skills, every nuance of detail and emotion occluded by distance. Worse in this case because while purchasing the ticket is a conscious act, a voluntary imposition, here, it is imposed on us for negligible gain. Mr. Lee could've illustrated his broader points without reducing Fan from a living, breathing person into a tiny puppet, propelled by the winds of plot and fate.

It pains me to be so critical of such a rare work. For infrequent is the genre novel with aspirations of being more than a pulpy adventure. On Such A Full Sea is as much sociological study as it is an adventure novel, and anything that bucks the norm should be welcomed. But enjoyment here is made all-but-impossible by the work's tone which suppresses the value of the individual to such a degree that caring about anyone is difficult at best. A fascinating failure... (2/5 Stars)

the risks and rewards of machine intelligence in On The Steel Breeze

From The Week of October 28th, 2013

For all but the last hundred years of human history, which now spans more than ten millennia, we have been the masters of our destinies. The social constructs into which we've been born have certainly constrained us, influenced us, coerced us, but nonetheless our labors were our own, our survival due in whole to our own talents, our own capacities. But now, with the rise of the technological age, all of that has changed. Where once we fashioned our own tools, measured our own medicines and manufactured our own weapons, these tasks and skills have been increasingly given over to machines which hold advantages over us in speed, efficiency and tirelessness. In fact, the disparities between man and machine when it comes to production are so wide that it would be nothing sort of self-sabotage to not surrender these traditional functions to them. And yet, they are not us; they will never be us. And so, when we do inevitably become completely reliant upon them for our societies, what will our futures hold? Alastair Reynolds deliciously speculates in his engaging novel of the future.

It is the 24th century and humanity has climbed off an environmentally ravaged Earth to live amongst the stars. Moons and habitats throughout the solar system have been colonized while Earth cools, populations free to experiment with technologies, with governments, even with immortality. Despite the obvious divisions this would cause, human civilization has been harmonized and pacified by the Mechanism, a pervasive network of machines, both neural and nano, that ensure that individual humans live nonviolently with their fellows. Cooperation and discovery have become the hallmarks of society which has largely abandoned the destructive sins of slavery and discord.

Quietly, however, matters have begun to change. With the discovery of an inhabitable, extraterrestrial world which has clearly been touched by aliens, humanity has been moved to journey to this distant place aboard Holo Ships, city-sized conveyances that can accelerate to significant fractions of the speed of light. Ahead of these voyagers have been sent Providers, great machines that will land on this alien world and build cities for the adventurers to live in when they reach their new home, but the intelligence designed to govern these Providers has become temperamental and difficult, growing beyond its design specks to become something new, a mind unto itself, a force to be reckoned with. And it is willing to do what it takes to ensure its survival, placing it on a collision course with humanity.

The successor to Blue Remembered Earth, On The Steel Breeze is a work of singular creativity from one of science fiction's most innovative minds. Mr. Reynolds, who rose to prominence with Revelation Space, is an imaginative thinker who, throughout his published career, has rejected the notion that the laws of physics are too stultifying for fiction. Instead, he has embraced them and their limitations, providing for the layman some sense of the phenomenal spans of space and time that are unavoidable obstacles for any civilization with ambitions of being interstellar. In the past, this interest in the technicalities has sometimes lapsed into the obsessive, coming at the expense of qualitative storytelling. Not so here, where his characters, both human and artificial, run the gamut from desperate to ambitious while always remaining convincing and entertaining.

Notwithstanding its delightful creativity, On The Steel Breeze has the heart of a very old novel, asking an age-old question. How will man and machine coexist? Here, humanity has relied upon the Mechanism for so long that it has become unthinkable for it to be corrupted in any way, a truth that breeds the very complacency that allows it to be abused by an intelligence grown far too clever and powerful for any individual human to match. And yet, both the mechanism and the intelligence threatening it provide immeasurable benefits to humanity, organizing it, pacifying it, enabling it, in ways both wonderful and fantastic. Is the risk of the technology wriggling out of our control worth its many, glorious rewards? The answer to this question will be disputed for decades to come, and likely long after we have become far too dependent upon our machines to return to a simpler, more self-sufficient time.

Mr. Reynolds' view of this question is admirably pragmatic. He acknowledges both sides of the argument, the usefulness and the fear of losing command and control, all without siding with any particular faction. This allows his work to adopt an open mind about one of, if not the most, formative and pressing questions of the century to come.

Despite its engaging mysteries and fascinating actors, On The Steel Breeze is far from a perfect work. While Mr. Reynolds' choice to honor the laws of physics is respectable, this adherence boxes the author into a narrative corner he never escapes. On Earth, more than a full century expires while the work's core drama is unfolding in interstellar space, all without the author giving any sense of changing governments, social mores, even the forces of dogma. Providing such detail would have certainly prolonged an already sizeable tome, but its omission leaves the reader feeling as though nothing else in human civilization is taking place between moments of explosive action on the holo ships and the alien world they are destined for. The whims, the pursuits and the ideologies of an entire civilization are abandoned to service the plot which is primarily why we are here. But this lost color leaves the work feeling oddly disjointed, like a movie with no sound, or music with no message. It's an absence that is distractingly apparent.

Notwithstanding its flaws, Mr. Reynolds is worth reading for his creativity alone. Any sin of literature is forgivable when we can watch a skilled mind at play amongst the stars. (4/5 Stars)

A satisfying, imaginative piece of futurism in the engrossing Blue Remembered Earth

From the Week of June 24th, 2013

What are the costs of success? Our world, as of this writing, is awash in political strife, sectarian violence and organized criminality, all of which stain our civilization. But for all the damage these chaotic elements cause, they are at least reminders that we are, in a key sense, free to act as we choose. What if, in the near future, as seems possible, technology advances to the point where we could prevent crime, re-enforce the democratic process, and allow us to heal our world of the pollution and the corruption we've imposed upon it? Our civilization would be, by every measure, better off, but at what cost? These values would have to be imposed upon everyone. And though most would agree to them, would that uniformity not rob us of a fundamental ability to choose to be foolish? These sticky questions are brilliantly tackled by Alastair Reynolds' mesmerizing first volume of a promising trilogy.

The year is 2162 and Earth is at peace. Humanity has weathered the anthropogenic storms and endured the nihilism of sectarian and resource conflicts to create a newer, better world, one shaped by an admirable dedication to non-violent progress. Genetic engineering, nanotechnology and virtual reality are commonplace, deployed as mechanisms for aiding in both the enjoyment and the interconnectivity of humanity. This utopian society, which is lead by Africa, with India and China as somewhat secondary powers, is managed by the Mechanism, an omnipresent surveillance system that prevents violent actions through painful and debilitating stimulus applied to the human brain via their nanotechnological augmentations.

Having spread to both colonies in the solar system and to cities under Earth's seas, humanity appears to have reached the zenith of its progress. Technological advancement has slowed from the frenetic pace of the previous century, leading some to wonder if the Mechanism-imposed peace has retarded the chaotic creativity of earlier decades. However, this view is undermined when two members of the Akinya family, a powerful African outfit that have earned incalculable riches by creating some of the key technologies that have enabled the cultivation of the solar system's many resources, stumble upon secrets left behind by their clan's recently deceased matriarch. Geoffrey, a biologist, and Sunday, an techno-artist, together and individually, begin to investigate their grandmother's past in hopes of unearthing the mysteries that characterized her long, legendary existence. In doing so, they initiate a series of events that might well irrevocably change human civilization.

The rich product of one of science fiction's brightest minds, Blue Remembered Earth is a tour de force. Mr. Reynolds, an astronomer turned author, has not only spun out a well-paced, dramatic tale, he has deviated from 50 years of western tropes and divined, in their stead, a complex future world that oozes authenticity. No one writing from the early years of the 21st century can do more than guess at what life will be like in the 22nd, but Mr. Reynolds' refreshing brand of futurism immerses the reader in such inviting, mesmerizing layers of verisimilitude that this hard truth is happily discarded for an world that won't soon be forgotten.

Mr. Reynolds is by no means the first to conceive of a future world that takes for granted technologies that are currently only in the embryonic stage of development. No, the genius here lies in the manner in which he imagines their unspooling over the next 150 years, leading eventually to a probable future that has advanced well beyond the crude interfaces of screen and keyboard so ubiquitous today, embracing, in their stead, biotechnologies that interact directly with our minds. These electrifying technologies not only play a substantial role in the unfolding of the narrative; they are explored by an author interested as much in their philosophical outcomes as their tangible ones.

For all its brilliant futurism, however, this first entry in the Poseidon's Children trilogy suffers from one significant systemic flaw. One of Mr. Reynolds' imagined technologies allows individuals to project their consciousnesses into automatons, ranging from robots to lifelike androids, designed to allow humans to interact over long distances. But though this technology is deployed to great effect by the plot, the author fails to explain why, when these disposable bodies are readily available, and fully capable of extending a human's reach well out into space without having to leave the safety of Earth, humans do not simply stay on Terra Firma and allow their mechanical proxies to endure the dangers of both space travel and Blue Remember Earth's plot. Perhaps the humans of Mr. Reynolds' future simply have too strong a desire to explore for themselves, to feel the ground of other worlds crunching beneath their booted feet, but when set against the overwhelming advantages of avoiding the deterioration of the human body in reduced gravity, and given that proxies could obviously possess attributes humans cannot, this seems like a flimsy excuse. Should we develop this proxy technology, I imagine most humans will explore the solar system with their minds, not their bodies.

Beyond the science here, Blue Remembered Earth's plot holds up well. From the rapidly evolving landscapes of Mars to the bohemian refuges of the dark side of Earth's moon, we're introduced to vistas and characters into whom Mr. Reynolds has breathed life. There are missteps, certainly. The author's puppetmaster's strings are allowed to show far too often, with actors just happening to arrive at precisely the right moment to receive clues to a mystery only they are destined to solve, but these are forgivable sins when the goal is so rewarding.

A wonderful, captivating beginning to a trilogy of immense promise... (4/5 Stars)

Words of wisdom and prophecy from a magnificent mind in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

From The Week of March 18, 2013

True genius is a rare and precious thing. For its scarcity stands out like a diamond amongst the rough, allowing its light, in the form of its opinions, its theories, and its understanding, to be taken seriously by a world that largely believes in authority and that holds a deep admiration for exceptional people. Yes, there is certainly great wisdom in the thoughts and beliefs of ordinary folks, but these notions have no platform, no popular basis from which to spread through the culture. This is not a problem for geniuses who, in their celebration, are given a soapbox from which to speak to the world of what they hold dear. Though just such a soapbox was used sparingly and with humility by Mr. Feynman, it was also used powerfully and effectively by one of the 20th century's most extraordinary minds, a truth revealed repeatedly in this collection of his essays.

The son of a uniform salesman who passed on a life-long curiosity for the world and its many, mysterious systems, Richard Feynman was a key physicist in his discipline's formative century. One of the many minds to follow on from the golden generation of Einstein and Bohr, Heisenberg and Wheeler, he left school to work on the Manhattan Project -- holding the distinction of being one of the few scientists to witness the first Trinity test with the unguarded eye -- before going on to win the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965 for his contributions to the advancement of Quantum Electrodynamics. Between these remarkable milestones, he made singular contributions to a dozen aspects of theoretical physics. Today, however, he is remembered best for envisioning and conceptualizing nanotechnology, imagining a world where computers, both quantum and conventional, would facilitate an immeasurable leap forward in human society.

A legendary talker, notable for his unusual deployment of English, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out collects a series of speeches and interviews Mr. Feynman gave over the span of his career. From Japan to Italy, from anecdote to commencement address, he expounds upon not only the moments and insights that brought him renown, but the life experience's that reveal him to be a man of brilliance and humility. From the hilarious absurdities of government censorship during the Manhattan Project to the passionate exhortation for nanotechnology, Mr. Feynman manifests, here, as an exceptional, ordinary man, a profoundly human creature with an otherworldly understanding of the universe.

For all of Mr. Feynman's physics, though, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is most evocative when it speaks to the great man's philosophy. Holding up doubt as the key virtue of the scientific mind, he laments the thoughtlessness of religious believers who accept as truth something they haven't tested. Nor do they wish to test it. Theirs is literally a senseless belief, one that manifests from a mind unschooled in the scientific method. In this vein, Mr. Feynman exhorts his fellow man to doubt everything. For it is only through testing those doubts that one can find truth. Nothing, no theory, no notion, no matter how farfetched, should be dismissed out of hand. For to dismiss anything without testing its veracity is to be no better than those who believe thoughtlessly in dogma. It is to trust what one feels, not what one knows to be true.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is not without its darker moments. Mr. Feynman's anecdotes, playful though they may be, expose the powerful skein of sexism that ran through academia for all but the final few years of the 20th century. He manages, even here, to be charming. Even so, he is representative of the paternalism of his time, a white man in a world that, by and large, only recognized and appreciated the contributions of white men. This is a sin that should not be forgotten, a sense of personal entitlement that not only runs counter to the core philosophies detailed here, but that destructively ignored the talents of millions of women and and individuals from other ethnicities that could have made exceptional contributions to the advancement of science.

This is mesmerizing work, not only for its pleasing voice but for what it teaches us about science, philosophy and the Good Life Outstanding in spite of its occasional missteps. (4/5 Stars)

Exogene: The Subterrene War 2 by T. C. McCarthy

From The Week of November 5, 2012

The malleability of the mind is an essential aspect of human evolution. It allows for us to be individuals, to learn, to prioritize, and to specialize in the disciplines and pursuits that we care most about. But for all its virtues, this same malleability that catalyzes so much personal growth also leaves us wide open to the manipulations of others. Known euphemistically as brainwashing, this systematic conditioning is the cruellest weapon in the toolbox of dictators and cult leaders, generals and gurus, allowing them to commandeer our freewill in the name of a righteous cause, their righteous cause. It permits them to mercilessly hollow-out their followers, filling in that emptiness with codes and commands that will ensure fealty. Rarely has its consequences been so vividly demonstrated than in this, the second instalment in Mr. McCarthy's war-torn depiction of the future.

It is the 22nd century and Earth has been sucked dry. Exhausted by hundreds of years of accelerated extraction, its resources have been pulled from the ground to shape cars and cities, weapons and civilizations that were never efficiently recycled. They didn't have to be. There was always more mines to dig, more ore to find, more materials from which to craft. But now that this extractive free ride is at an end, the world's many powerful nations, believing that they have no other choice, are forced to go to war with those few invaluable pockets that remain, turning the surface radioactive in order to preserve the treasures that lie beneath.

In the pursuit of this endless war, the various factions have turned to genetic engineering to augment their war machines. Human casualties are politically unpopular, not to mention costly. If these priceless units can be armored with battalions of tank-grown soldiers, who can be ordered to fill out the front lines of combat, the human cost can be reduced without the unwanted necessity of halting operations. In the United States, males were the first to be grown, but their aggression proved uncontrollable, compelling military geneticists to turn to more pliant females into which they poured a toxic blend of theology and patriotism to create the perfectly obedient and yet perfectly deadly supersoldier. From the wintery front lines of Russia to the warm freedom of Thailand, this is their story.

Exogene is a march through Hell. Swapping out Germline's established characters for a new roster of American genetics, it is a relentlessly savage demonstration of the death cult, that most destructive skein of brainwashing. Through the eyes of Katherine, a combat veteran approaching the end of her young shelf-life, and Megan, her lover and unit leader, we come to understand the terrifying and degrading plight of cannon-fodder, watching all semblance of morality and human decency give way to political and military necessity. Indoctrinated into a life they never chose, the Gees are living beings reduced to serving a single, nihilistic purpose, to kill in the name of a god invented to control them.

This is the work's primary virtue. For in holding up this albeit extreme example of slave labor, Mr. McCarthy reminds us of our species' dubious history when it comes to expediency. Be they the soldiers hurled into war or the subhumans forced to toil in factories and plantations, generations of humanity have found ways of excusing away their immorality. Why? Because they stood to profit from it. They stood to reap rewards that were too desirable to turn down, even if they came at the cost of that most universal right of any living creature, personal freedom. It's a lesson worth teaching. For we stand now at the threshold of unimaginable science ranging from artificial intelligence to genetically modified humans, advances which will allow us to once again selfishly capitalize on the work of creatures it's convenient to not consider human.

It was a bold decision to switch away from the war-correspondent ethos of Germline to the themes detailed above. It ensures that Mr. McCarthy's series stays fresh and confrontational. And yet, for all of Exogene's value, there is a relentlessness about the violence and the depravity here that numbs the spirit. This may well have been Mr. McCarthy's aim; for anyone would be numbed if forced to suffer the degradations herein. And yet, the novel's power lies in the extent to which it is a gauntleted punch to the face, in which case numbness is not a benefit. I felt myself wanting a reprieve, a moment to catch my breath, to rest, but none was forthcoming.

As raw as it is demonstrative... Potent science fiction... (4/5 Stars)

Metatropolis by John Scalzi Et Al

From The Week of July 23, 2012Though there remains much argument over the extent of the resource crisis and the degree to which it will impact our lives, there can be no doubt that human civilization is not resource neutral. Not only do we rarely recycle the raw materials we dig out of the ground and refine into useful products, we lack the requisite knowledge to reduce many of those finished products back to their constituent elements for re-use. If we lived on a planet of infinite resources, or had some feasible means of extracting them from elsewhere and bringing them to Earth, this would not be a problem. But such a utopia is precisely that, a fantasy with which reality does not truck. We do live on a planet with finite resources and we don't know how to replenish them from elsewhere. Thus, eventually, we will run out of stuff.

What will happen to our civilization when we fall off the resource cliff? When a lack of supply drives the prices into the stratosphere, how will the billions of demanding humans respond? Will they riot, feverishly snatching what little remains and hording that surplus as currency? Or will they approach the problem rationally by shifting to a resource-neutral economy that will stabilize prices and create a lasting blueprint for prosperity on a planet sucked dry? These are the questions that Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, Jay Lake, John Scalzi and Karl Schroeder grapple with in this collection of short stories on the nature of the cities of the near future. They fascinate and terrify.

Thirty years from now, the world is unrecognizable by those of us alive today. Where we live and thrive in sprawling cities, where we enjoy unmetered water and cheap electricity, where we think nothing of driving gasoline-power cars and shrug at the news of oil spills, those who descend from us will either dismiss such legends as fantasies, loose talk around warm fires, or they will rage, knowing that our profligacy has contributed to their current state. For in the years between now and then, a series of crises, from the political to the economic, from the climate to the materialistic, will ravage civilization, angering populations, weakening governments, and gnawing away at the social ties that bind us all. Wars will spark up from these many, potent frictions, and the fallout from such conflicts will be the death knell for the nation state, replacing it with chaos, at first. But slowly, gradually, communities will reform, organizing around different principles, different necessities.

In this changed world, the hungry and the hopeless strive for the basics of food and shelter. In Detroit, they bounce for bars and turk for lawyers, courier messages and fight for the future of their children, all while laboring in the heart of a burnt out city. In New St. Louis, they work for co-opts and fill out militias, all in the hopes of creating and maintaining a totally self-sufficient city capable of growing its own food and engineering its own products. In Cascadia, that mountainous corridor between Vancouver and Seattle, they cook and they clean, philosophize and stand guard, trying to imagine and ignite a new society that, even if it takes generations to actualize, will re-shape the world into something better. The world over, new frontiers are being explored from the digital to the oceanic, the new bobbing up to try to fill the vacuum left by the old. And yet, many powerful remnants of the old world remain, military units and corporate boards both of which are more than willing to ruthlessly strongarm this new world into conforming to their vision of the future.

A collaboration between five of science fiction's talented voices, Metatropolis is an engrossing, if fatalistic, glimpse of an increasingly probable future. Having begun from the premise that life cannot continue as it has, the reckoning they envision is devastating, leaving behind only the bones of the world we know and replacing it with a grimmer, sleeker version that, though it packs a mean bite, augurs some promise for the future. After all, humans, when not pressed by necessity, are highly resistant to change and to the voices that warn of its coming. But when necessity does come, and the choices are evolve or die, the explosive powers of change are unleashed and trained upon re-imagining a stagnated world. The result, as envisioned by these authors, is as mysterious as it is sheened in hope.

For all its intrigue and its consistency of vision, it must be stressed that this is but one possible outcome. The authors don't appear to give much credence to the equally plausible notion that the advancement of technology will outstrip the depletion of resources, creating machines capable of solving the resource problem for us. In such a case, civilization will still have to adapt, but with far less turmoil. This notion is eschewed for the darker, more cynical view, that humans are foolish when not compelled by circumstance to change. This is understandable -- this is fiction after all --, but it is perhaps less than honest. For there is, playing out all around us, a race against time, to see whether or not technology can reach a critical threshold before the humans propelling it burn themselves out. Should that threshold be reached, we will find these problems negligible when viewed in the context of what we can do with our new machines.

Interesting work, but its negativity is strongly suggestive of paranoia and pessimism more than reality. (3/5 Stars)

The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi

From The Week of July 02, 2012

What criteria must we meet in order to be considered human? Must we be creatures of flesh and blood, bone and organ, intelligence and wit? Must we adhere to the path laid down for us by evolution, or can we still be considered part of the species if we use science to accelerate our genetic development? For us, such questions remain in the realm of the arbitrary, providing more nourishment to philosophers than to the people. And yet we may soon reach the point at which science has sufficiently advanced to eliminate death and disease, hunger and heartbreak. Will it still be trivial when we intersect with this future and are forced to weigh how much of what makes us human we are willing to sacrifice in order to attain our place among the stars? What will come of us when our society is overtaken by these technologies? Will there be any going back? Mr. Rajaniemi ruminates in his challenging and exciting novel.

The third millennium is halfway over and humanity is utterly unrecognizable as the species that so long ago feared for its survival on the plains of Africa. Having undergone a quantum revolution that has opened the door to unimaginable technologies, humans have digitized their minds, uploading their souls to unspeakably powerful systems as a means of achieving both enlightenment and immortality. When they have need of flesh and blood, they have merely to create a body from various forms of intelligent matter, swelling themselves with awesome augmentations that span the spectrum from the incredible to the exotic. But though this expansion of known science has pushed humanity through the resource bottleneck that for so long hampered the species, it has not eliminated the need for power which continues to fuel the tides of war.

Fought out between individualists and collectivists, between posthumans who wanted to maintain the sanctity of their own minds and posthumans who continue to seek a single, organized metaconsciousness that will collaborate in the exploration and the conquest of the known galaxy, the protocol War devastated the solar system and, worse, failed to yield up a clear victor in this battle of technologies and ideologies. The result, then, is a glacial peace that could turn into a hot war at any moment if the soboronost have their way. For driven by their mission to curate every human mind in the solar system, these collectivists will stop at nothing to wipe out the last measure of individualist resistance which has coalesced on Mars in glorious, floating cities that are constantly on the move, avoiding Soboronost threats.

Into this toxic stew is dropped Jean le Flambeur, a legendary thief who, unexpectedly, is liberated from his long stay in a horrific virtual reality prison in which he's forced to play the same treacherous game on an infinite, punitive loop. Sprung by an agent of one of the seven Soboronost Founders who requires Flambeur's unique skillset to steal something of vital importance to her, he must first retrieve memories he's hidden even from himself before he can be of any use to the vicious and manipulative Founder. Minded by Mieli, the Founder's winged agent and a warrior with individualist sympathies, Flambeur returns to the scene of one of his many crimes, the free cities on Mars where reassembling his past will mean reintroducing himself to the people he harmed and abandoned 20 years ago. Will Flambeur betray them once more, or will revenge prompt them to turn the tables on their old friend and give him some of his own treacherous medicine?

The Quantum Thief is exceptional science fiction. Harnessing the cynicism and the wit of Iain Banks and the hard science of Alastair Reynolds, Mr. Rajaniemi has established, with but one book, a place for himself among the greats of the genre. For in all of its imaginative force, this first entry in a proposed trilogy is as fantastically plotted as it is concisely told. From the philosophy of humanism to the quantum technologies of the far future, the author hardly even needs a plot, so vivid is his world of demons and power plays, angels and dominance.

Mr. Rajaniemi's tale is energized by two sizeable gambles, both of which pay off in spectacular fashion. Firstly, he bets on the intelligence of his readers to suss out for themselves the intricacies of tech and plot that underpin the novel. In this, he follows in the hallowed footsteps of giants like William Gibson who refused to break character to explain even the most trivial elements of their glittering mindspaces, requiring the reader to mentally and emotionally engage on a level far more profound than the relatively shallow playgrounds in which most fiction cavorts. Secondly, at no time does he allow us to rest from an assault of ideas and concepts that are hurled at at us with ballistic force. Mr. Rajaniemi not only demands that his readers come to grips with the death of humanity as a biological species, he envisions a future Internet based on publicly accessible memories that, should it come into being, will forever transform communication and socialization far past the point of recognition. Under other circumstances, this intellectual denseness might be bothersome, but in the author's skillful hands such revelations merely add to the complexity of the world, opening up new vistas to be considered and pulled apart.

There is, unquestionably, a steep learning curve for The Quantum Thief. But while the reader is adjusting to a world of exotic matter and stolen minds, MMORPG guilds and terrifying war machines, he's being subjected to a steady supply of wit and charm that pull him down into the story until, slowly, inevitably, it clicks into place. A truly remarkable first effort and, even without the science and the factional fighting, a memorable mystery. One of my favorite reads this year... (5/5 Stars)

Powering The Future by Robert B. Laughlin

From The Week of October 24, 2011

While there are some of us who, for reasons of dogma, of self-interest, or of simple cynicism, remain skeptical about anthropogenic climate change, this much we can all agree on. The Earth's supply of fossil fuels is finite. Regardless of whether or not, in the meantime, the climate collapses under the burden of excess CO2, the resources we rely upon to power all of our societies will eventually be exhausted. When that day comes, what will we fall back on to keep the lights of civilization burning? What will stand in for the oil, the coal, and the natural gas that have enabled humanity to transform itself from a species that admired the stars to one that ventures to them? Powering The Future does its best to provide a pragmatic answer to this difficult question.

From wind power to photovoltaics, from the dangers of the Plutonium Economy to the truths about electricity, Mr. Laughlin, a Nobel Laureate in physics and a professor of physics at Stanford University, examines each of the available, and theoretical, sources of alternative energy in an attempt to divine which of them will underpin future civilizations. In his investigation, he interrogates each energy source in the hopes of uncovering a few basic realities: its cost, its practicality and the extent to which it is renewable. Though Mr. Laughlin does not completely dismiss any of the candidates for the mantle of holy grail for humanity's energy needs, he concludes that none demonstrate the power to surpass, for efficiency and effectiveness, the fossil fuels we are so swiftly depleting. These deficiencies provoke Mr. Laughlin to give the reader a crash course on the science of hydrocarbons and what makes them so potent.

While Mr. Laughlin dispassionately explains the flaws of each of our available alternatives,he does hold out hope that some will surmount their challenges to fill in the gaps left behind by a post-hydrocarbon world. Of particular promise is, the prospect of transforming Earth's deserts into enormous, and powerful solar farms which would, at least during the daylight hours, provide colossal amounts of electricity to North America, Africa, Asia and Australia. However, without a practical way of storing the excess power during the daytime, this solution is utterly useless when the sun sets and there is no more power being generated. This crippling drawback turns Mr. Laughlin to so-called Breeder Reactors, nuclear power plants which are optimized to produce, as a waste product, enriched plutonium which can then be put back into the reactor as fuel. Unfortunately, such plutonium could be put to another purpose as well; nuclear bombs.

Powering The Future is as exciting as it is cynical. The extent to which Mr. Laughlin clearly and rationally lays out the pros and cons of each potential power source leaves the engaged reader dreaming about a future in which our needs are facilitated by any number of renewable alternatives that do not, as a consequence of our use, destroy Earth's environment. But for pouring some scientifically chilled water on the most outlandish options, the author does nothing to dissuade us from this optimistic notion.

However, Mr. Laughlin leaves little doubt of his own cynicism regarding human nature. Repeatedly, he spells out his belief that humans will ultimately choose the energy option that is cheapest for them regardless of the consequences to the environment, or to their fellows. This is not a ridiculous notion; after all, in many respects, the history of capitalism could be summed up as a competition to sell the most things at the cheapest cost. However, Mr. Laughlin bases his argument here on the vigor with which his father searched for the cheapest available gas. Yes, this is simply an illustration of his belief, but he makes no other attempt to corroborate his claim. It is clear, from the millions who have bought electric cars, to the hundreds of millions who recycle, that people, the world over, strive to consume responsibly. In assuming that every human will act as his father did, or as he does, Mr. Laughlin fails to account for any of the influences that animate those who are not like him.

This is a fast-paced, clearly articulated, and highly informative look into the question of alternative energy, an issue which will, short of some unforeseen, utopian development, dominate the decades to come. But while Mr. Laughlin is commendably without bias in his treatment of the various sources he scrutinizes here, the extent to which he rests his prediction for the future on a single assumption of human nature left me doubting his conclusion. Nonetheless, well worth the read. (3/5 Stars)

The Physics Of The Impossible by Michio Kaku

From The Week of May 22, 2011

To an extent, the whole of human civilization is based on the daring of individuals to defy the impossible. After all, every time something is invented, the inconceivable is forced to retreat another inch in our slow, arduous journey to understanding. But of course, there are different kinds of impossibilities. It would be absurd to think that any of us non mountaineers could whimsically climb Everest. And yet, with the right equipment, the proper training and the best guides, it's possible to imagine success. Let's call these practical impossibilities. If these are problems with solutions, Michio Kaku's impossibilities. Michio Kaku's impossibilities make such feats seem like walks in the park, fantastic feats of science and engineering, the manifestation of which will require technologies to be built from schools of thought that haven't even been considered yet. And yet, before the wheel was invented, it would have been impossible to imagine the wagon. And in this spirit, Mr. Kaku takes on the impossible and, in the effort, travels through the realm of cutting-edge science.

From phasers and forcefields to time travel and invisibility, Mr. Kaku, a professor of physics and co-creator of String Theory, gathers up most of the tropes imagined and distorted by science fiction and makes a genuine attempt to rank them for plausibility based on our knowledge of the universe and its myriad laws. Though none of these technologies will likely be invented any time soon, much less in the ways imagined by dramatists, they are all being researched in one form or another, to varying degrees of success. The invention which seems closest to actualization appears to be invisibility which has been demonstrated in the lab. Scientists can either choose to bend the light around an object, preventing the human eye from receiving enough data to visualize it, or by covering the object in a fabric that projects an image of its surroundings, thereby cloaking the object in plain sight. Conversely, the most far fetched trope covered here is arguably teleportation which while achievable on an atomic level, is highly resistant to being scaled up to handling larger, useful objects.

While much of Physics of The Impossible feels like a lifeline thrown by Mr. Kaku to Star Trek geeks tired of being made fun of for their outlandish beliefs, there's a surprising amount of interesting science here. Mr. Kaku uses the discussion of these technologies to inform his readers about the physical theories underpinning them. And so, while there's plenty of indulgent dreaming here, there's also a wealth of minable knowledge that can be extracted by the diligent consumer. The tone is typically optimistic and benign, but this shouldn't be mistaken for vacuousness. (3/5 Stars)

The Physics Of The Future by Michio Kaku

From The Week of May 01, 2011

I have always been fascinated by the question of what our world will look like in the decades to come. Will the outlandish promises of optimistic, world-changing science fiction come to pass, or will our species' penchant for self-destruction wed technological advancement with personal indulgence to create a world saturated by empty, purposeless vice? Though both of these outcomes seem, to me, equally possible, Professor Kaku, a highly decorated physicist, and a co-founder of String Theory, makes, here, a strong case that, by the year 2100, our world will have revolutionized itself into a jewel of technological and intellectual capacity the likes of which we can barely fathom.

From energy production to magnetism, from artificial intelligence to nanotechnology, professor Kaku walks the reader through cutting edge advancements in each of his chosen fields before, with admirable clarity, laying out the progress, in theoretical and practical knowledge, we can expect from each. He manages this by breaking them down into three sections, the near future (present day to 2030), the middle future (2030 to 2070), and the far future (2070 to 2100). Though it's impossible to know if his predictions will come true, he's clearly picked the brains of the top minds in each field, informing his own conclusions with their expertise to generate a plausible framework for what's to come.

Physics of The Future is an unapologetically positive view of the future. It stubbornly refuses to take the frailties of human nature into account as it logically and optimistically charts out what's ahead for our species and our world. It may be that professor Kaku's oversights will cause his predictions to be wildly off the mark, but what if he's right? What if, in 50 years, we'll have harnessed the powers of magnetism to reduce transportation times by factors of ten? What if we can utilize nanotechnology to instantly order up the fabrication of everything from textiles to computers? What if we can put into orbit super-efficient solar panels that can capture and send down to earth all the power our civilization can use? What isn't possible in a world enlightened by such liberating marvels?

If you like to dream of a better future, this is a must-read. But if you're a cynic like I am, there's plenty of fascinating science here to maintain your attention. Idealistic? Absolutely. Exciting and inspiring? Unquestionably. (4/5 Stars)

Infinite Reality by Jim Blascovich And Jeremy Bailenson

From The Week of April 24, 2011

If we make it to the year 2100 without blowing ourselves to pieces, we'll look back on the first two decades of the 21st century as the formative period for one of the most life-altering revolutions in human interaction. Virtual reality... It's been the holy grail for scientists, theorists and authors of science fiction. And though we're not there yet, Infinite Reality describes where we've been and imagines where we're going with a clarity and an enthusiasm that makes the mainstreaming of this technology seem right around the corner.

Mr. Blascovich and Mr. Bailenson, researchers of virtual technology and the human mind for UCSB and Stanford respectively, divide their chronicle of all things virtual into three major sections: the history, the science underpinning it, and where it's headed in the near future. Discussion of the field's history is dominated by various experiments designed to test out how to play with the human brain's perception of the external world. The sscientific component preoccupies itself with ruminations on both the technical difficulties in rendering a three-dimensional, virtual world and how it will interface with the proscriptions of the brain. Finally, and most engagingly, the authors point to games like Second Life as examples of the baby steps towards virtual reality before imagining how true VR will change everything from how we meet friends and romantic partners to how we school our kids. It is a world that promises to leave very little of what we know, of what's familiar, untouched.

Infinite Reality is a provocative piece of predictive non-fiction which is strongest when it focuses on what's to come, picturing the ways in which it will transform our world. The historical and scientific components of the work both suffer in comparison. Virtual reality simply isn't an old enough field to have much of a history and the technical challenges of building absorbing worlds and convincing the brain they are real have yet to be ironed out. It's one thing to run controlled experiments in a lab; it's entirely another to scale this technology up for commercialized use. Nonetheless, the authors are convincing when they suggest that this revolution isn't far off which, for traditionalists, must be a scary thought indeed. (3/5 Stars)

Aerotropolis by Greg Lindsay And John D. Kasarda

From The Week of April 10, 2011

In a world with rapidly dwindling resources and a swiftly expanding population, surely there will be no field more vital to the 21st century than urban planning. From the basics of power generation to the intricacies of accessibility, on the ground and in the air, future cities will live and die on their sustainability and their interconnectedness. Though the authors overstate their case, Mr. Kasarda's academic theories on the cities to come and Mr. Lindsay's investigations into the early implementation of said ideas amalgamate into a piece of fascinating, predictive non-fiction.

Mr. Kasarda's core contention is that the cities of both the now and the future must be built around a popular and efficient airport. An incredible amount of goods, from clothes, to electronics, to DVDs, take a ride in an airplane as a part of their journey from manufacturer to retailer. The ready flow of these goods through urban airports will attract related businesses which, in turn, transform these airports into economic hubs capable of fueling the popularity and prestige of their cities. Mr. Lindsay is tasked with logging all the airmiles, flying around the world to discover if this is a viable theory. In the process, he takes us on a tour of the history of commercial air travel, from the birth and decline of LAX and O'Hare to the UPS and Fedex inspired surges in Louisville and Memphis. But while this is instructive, it's the new aerotropoli in China that captivate, billions upon billions of dollars poured into the urbanization of whole swaths of China, establishing cities from scratch, cities that follow the airport-centric model promoted by Kasarda.

Aerotropolis makes a solid case for air travel being the hub around which the city functions. Additionally, their argument, that developing Asia has a leg up over the West because it can build its aerotropoli from scratch, is certainly compelling. But the authors fail to address what seem to me key flaws in the aerotropoli model. First of all, what if the dominance mode of the future transportation of goods is not the airplane? What if we don't come up with an alternative jet fuel and are stuck with the ever-rising costs of existing oil? It is well within the realm of possibility that air travel simply becomes an unaffordable way to distribute goods. Secondly, while Mr. Lindsay does a wonderful and thorough job of explaining how airports like LAX and O'Hare have lost out to other airports in other cities thanks to environmentalism and politics, it is far from clear that just building an aerotropolis will attract the secondary businesses that have grown up in Louisville and Memphis. Businesses flock to those cities because UPS and Fedex have put down roots there. Building an aerotropolis from scratch in, say, Idaho, won't derive the same benefit. This suggests to me that Kasarda may have missed the mark somewhat. Airports are necessary to draw businesses like UPS and Fedex which wouldn't exist without air travel, but it's those businesses that draw the other businesses with them, not the airports. The behemoths move the meter, create the buzz, not the airports.

Interesting, important and compelling, but it feels oversold. (3/5 Stars)

Love And Sex With Robots by David Levy

From The Week of January 16, 2011

Numerous experts in countless scientific fields have, from time to time, turned their able minds to the question of what's next; I've even reviewed some of these literary efforts. However, I've never come across a book of predictive non-fiction that drew so many inferences, thrilling as they may be, from such inconsequential data.

There's a great deal of excitement surrounding the future of robotics. As computational power continues to grow, and as we improve our ability to teach machines how to operate in a human environment, it is likely that we will rely upon robots to aid us in more and more of our daily endeavors. They already clean our homes. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that, in 20 years, they will graduate to defending them, to monitoring our kids, to caregiving for our elderly. Such advances, though, require that they be programmed with a basic understanding of human socialization in order for us to interact with them on an emotional level. They must also have the requisite physical coordination so that they can move within and interact with their environment. While Mr. Levy speaks to these fundamentals, he is, to say the least, bullish that they are hurdles that will be overcome in the near future. Assuming these advancements will be achieved, Mr. Levy turns his interest to the intimate connections we will make with these robots, arguing that, as their bodies become more human, we will want to initiate relationships with them. And given that we will have the ability to tailor their personalities and their desires to perfectly suit our own, they will quickly become the ideal receptacles for our passions, our peccadillos and our private pains.

Mr. Levy draws from a number of sources to make his argument that love and sex with robots will be commonplace in the next 50 years. We already indulge in games like Second Life in which our partners are virtualized; We already purchase sex toys which can stimulate us in ways humans, physiologically, cannot match; and it's been repeatedly demonstrated that humans form bonds of friendship and intimacy with all sorts of non-human things, from animates like dogs to inanimates like cars. If this is all true, why not robots too? Because love and friendship are quite apart from sex. If Mr. Levy's robot lover of the future was just an improvement upon the existing blow-up doll, then perhaps we might just treat it like a sex toy. But Mr. Levy argues here that the robot lover of the future will have a personality tailored to suit the needs of its owner, making it the perfect partner. This isn't a dildo; this is a spouse. And simply put, no one wants a toy for a spouse. Intimate human relationships are built on mutual vulnerability, but while we can be vulnerable to a robot, a robot can't be vulnerable with us.

Mr. Levy does a thorough job educating the reader on the latest in cutting-edge robotics. In the process, he invites us to wonder what the future will be like when such inventive technologies are widely available. But he presumes far too much when he attempts to extrapolate from the current trends an end-game portrait of human-robot relations. Interesting premise, shaky conclusion. (3/5 Stars)

The Next Fifty Years by John Brockman

From The Week of October 03, 2010

Unless someone has secretly built a time machine by which they can experience the future, no living person can possibly have a clear picture of what life will be like in 50 years. Futurists have made valiant attempts, and I'm sure corporations have launched investigations into the question as a means of anticipating business trends, but in a world evolving this quickly, in a world populated by more experts in more fields than ever before, life in 2050 is simply too vast, shaped by too many variables, for any one person to grasp. Okay, so, screw it. Let's all go home, right? Not so fast. Maybe one mind isn't up to the challenge, but what about many minds, each with specialized expertise?

While the accuracy of their predictions won't be known for some time, the experts assembled here, from environmentalists, to health care professionals, to technologists, do not let uncertainty stop them from opining, in a series of fascinating and entertaining essays, on the future of human life. Will we have robot companions? What diseases will we have eliminated? Will we considerably extend our lifespans? What sort of physics will have been uncovered? All these queries and more are attacked by some of the sharpest scientific minds we have and their answers will at times surprise and terrify. The world they collectively describe may not be a world you wish to live in, but it is a world we will have adjusted to, a world of our own creation. If nothing else is certain, we can know this much. It will be a world that will look nothing like the world of now.

The highlights here are numerous, but my favorite essay is by Judith Rich Harris who composes her entry in the form of a letter from 2050 to us in the present. It's a surprisingly effective device which is filled in with a convincing narrative. Lowlights include essays on philosophy and psychology which, while interesting, come across as far too abstract to edify, but then this has always been the curse of such mental sciences. They must necessarily deal in a world of theories and models which cannot be put to mathematical tests. A good balance between the technical and the superficial and, as such, is a wonderful, edifying read. Bring on 2050! (3/5 Stars)

Magnificent Desolation by Buzz Aldrin

From The Week of December 27, 2009, 2010

Mr. Aldrin is, here, fascinatingly and charmingly open about his extraordinarily eccentric and dysfunctional life. This is a man who has literally and figuratively reached the pinnacle of what life has to offer any human. And yet, as Mr. Aldrin explains in this admirable memoir, it was the act of achieving so much, so early, that made what came after so difficult for him. Where does one go after, at the age of 29, being only the second human to ever step foot onto the moon? For Aldrin, it was alcoholism, depression, and, it would seem, a succession of women and business schemes, many of which collapsed in the face of his frequent binges. For all the difficulties Mr. Aldrin has suffered, for all the despair and loneliness and displacement that has plagued him, he has fought through, to live on, to grow, to love, and to develop new ideas for colonizing the solar system, ideas, he argues, that should be given much more heed by NASA than they are.

There is no shortage of self-important people writing self-important memoirs and, in some small way, Mr. Aldrin is a contributer to this unpleasant flood. But on the whole, Magnificent Desolation is a wonderful book for one reason, his candor concerning his own missteps which, at times, is almost painfully harsh. It's precisely this critical self-assessment that keeps us, and probably those around Mr. Aldrin, from writing him off. It's a brave thing to make yourself this naked to the world, all your warts and faults. Anyone willing to be so honest in the name of helping others who might be experiencing similar difficulties deserves our respect. (4/5 Stars)