There is a lot to this 175-page novella, with enough ideas for a book twice its length. It starts out with a science-fiction, post-climate-change edgeThere is a lot to this 175-page novella, with enough ideas for a book twice its length. It starts out with a science-fiction, post-climate-change edge: our setting is in Nigeria, near the drowned capital city of Lagos several decades after catastrophic sea level rise. Our three protaganists, Yekini, Tuoyo, and Ngozi, live in the Pinnacle, the last surviving tower in a five-tower complex called the Fingers, constructed on an artificial island out at sea. These are, or were, five self-sustaining towers capable of holding thousands of people. But in the decades since the sea overran Lagos, the other four towers have either collapsed or fallen into disuse (which would make me real nervous about living in the Pinnacle, since it's the tallest) and the population of the Pinnacle has divided into Lowers, Midders and Uppers, along rigid class lines--with the Lowers living in the bottom thirty-three stories below sea level.
There have been other changes to the world as well: this story has a tight focus on Nigeria and the Fingers, so we never find out, for instance, the effects of climate change on the rest of the world. But the Second Deluge, as it's called, has seemingly awakened some things. Old gods, perhaps? Or humans showing rapid evolutionary changes? In any event, there are other creatures out there called Yemoja's Children, the introduction of whom starts the bleeding of this book into science fantasy, horror and mythology. It's never stated if the Children are humans genetically engineered to have gills and webbed hands and feet to live in the new reality, or some mythological creatures returning to our reality--and in the end, it doesn't matter. Because this is a story of myths come to life, of dreams made flesh, and how either (or both) are used to bring down the oligarchs, the Haves, in the Pinnacle that are killing the Have-Nots. This plot point is quite literal, as the story opens with one of the Children gaining access to a Lower airlock and coming into the tower, and the First Citizen at the very top orders that level flooded, killing countless people, to flush it out.
This story (as mentioned in the Acknowledgments) owes a lot to Snowpiercer, and J. G. Ballard's High-Rise, but it is its own, distinctly African thing. It covers a short amount of time, only about a day all told, but across that roughly twelve-hour period our three protagonists' lives are completely upended and the iron grip of the Pinnacle's ruling class is broken. Or at least I hope that's what happened: the ending is not ambiguous as such, but rather the story simply comes to a halt at that last important turning point. This is kind of an unusual ending, but that's not to say it's bad; it's very emotionally resonant, as it circles around to the beginning and the dream of our main protagonist Yekini that opens the story: the Pinnacle, an ark, and a basket. You really have to read the complete story to get the full effect, but I will say it's masterfully done, and the reader closes the back cover with a good feeling, even if all the plot answers are not there.
This is an excellent little story, just as long as it needs to be, and gives the reader a great deal to think about afterewards. I hadn't read anything by this author before, but he is definitely on my radar now....more
I've read (and own) a great many of Adrian Tchaikovsky's books, and this one is a bit different than his usual large-scale, stuffed-with-ideas space oI've read (and own) a great many of Adrian Tchaikovsky's books, and this one is a bit different than his usual large-scale, stuffed-with-ideas space opera. This is his version of a "robopocalypse," complete with plenty of wry British humor (a great deal of it rather on the black side) and a much smaller and more personal sense of stakes that nevertheless winds up feeling just as important as the fate of a world.
This is the story of Charles, later Uncharles, a high-class robot valet who just wants to find a human to serve. Unfortunately, in this near-future slow apocalypse, there are very few humans to be found, due to some sort of environmental or societal collapse. The reasons for this are vague at first, and are revealed, in a rather more sinister fashion, as the story progresses. The inciting event on Charles' journey is what happens in the opening chapter: his master is murdered, and it seems like Charles performed the deed...though he has no idea how, or why, he could have done such a thing. Nevertheless, while shaving his master one morning, he moved the straight razor a little too far to the left and slit his master's throat.
After his master's death, Charles is cast out from his manor, and this begins an epic road trip across a vastly altered Earth. It includes stops ranging from an underground human enclave run by a tyrant to a battlefield with the remnants of robot armies caught up in a never-ending war, to an encounter with an AI "God." (The all-too-brief chapters dealing with the robot army are the funniest and most absurd of the book, as one of the armies is commanded by a "King Ubot" who has built itself up to be a giant mecha, complete with its own internal ecosystem made up of many other smaller robots grafted into its body. Unfortunately, it stuffs one too many smaller robots into its frame and ends up exploding all over the battlefield.)
Through it all, Charles is our viewpoint character, a bit like Martha Wells' Murderbot (but far more British) in that he is riddled with anxiety and uncertainty, denying he is anything more than an unassuming "service model" and yet exhibiting the most humanity of just about any character in the book. (Even more than the seconday protagonist, who Charles names "the Wonk," who he thinks is a severely malfunctioning robot and doesn't realize is an actual surviving human until nearly the end of the book.) The Wonk tries her best to convince Charles he is a thinking person with free will, which he valiantly resists until he realizes his "God" was the one who betrayed humanity. At the book's end, the Wonk, Charles, and other robot and human survivors are beginning to rebuild civilization, and even though Charles insists he is "only a valet" it is clear he is a vital part of the emerging new world order.
I was surprised by how funny this book is. I hadn't thought the author capable of writing such wry, understated humor that catches the reader off guard, but he pulled it off--I laughed out loud many times while reading this book. At the same time, this book is a clever satire of the whole "robopocapyse" sub-genre, with Charles acting as a sort of anti-Terminator. The author also has some rather pointed critiques of capitalism and "all the other utterly pointless genital-waving that humans who were a bit too much into guns and uniforms had historically been partial to." The book is not Tchaikovsky's usual sort of story, but I quite enjoyed it....more
This book is following the recent trend (somewhat) of "sentient-fungi-zombie-invasion" (see: The Last of Us) but it is also very much its own thing. This book is following the recent trend (somewhat) of "sentient-fungi-zombie-invasion" (see: The Last of Us) but it is also very much its own thing. It has meticulous worldbuilding and excellent depth of characterization, and is just an all-around damn good story.
In the far future, Earth is in the process of being overwhelmed by "the shroud," an invasive, plant-destroying lichen that cannot be killed or eradicated. The five ruling corporate families in this future, known collectively as MERIT, are attempting to build orbiting stations and find habitable planets for the population to escape to. These planets are known as "Cradles," and the story opens with the first of our main viewpoint charcters, the heir to the Mercator dynasty Tarquin, riding the starship the Amaranth to survey one of the newest Earthlike worlds, Sixth Cradle. Several of the previous Cradles have been contaminated by the shroud, and the Mercators are attempting to find both Earth-like worlds and planets that have stores of the mineral relkatite, a MacGuffin of sorts that is used to manufacture warpcore containment and several other things that this universe's technology is built upon.
But Sixth Cradle is already contaminated by the shroud and dying, and as the Amaranth arrives it is fired upon by its sister starship the Einkhorn. Tarquin escapes with the captain and several others in a shuttle that lands on the planet's surface. Among those others is his "exemplar," Lockhart, a dedicated bodyguard to protect him. But Lockhart is not who she seems....she is actually Naira Sharp, a "Conservator" (anarchist/revolutionary/terrorist depending on your point of view) who is convinced that the Mercator family is behind the shroud that is destroying worlds. She has come to destroy this expedition and save Sixth Cradle, but she is too late.
There are several technologies in this world that play an important role in the plot, especially the dual conceits of "neural maps" and "printing"--that is, digitizing one's memories and consciousness, storing it, and downloading it in a newly printed body after the previous one's death or in this case, after arriving at one's interstellar destination. Of course, this brings up all sorts of questions: namely, are the newly printed bodies just shells awaiting a download or actual people? ("Misprints" also play a prominent role in the story.) And when your current printed body dies and your memories and map is "cast back" to its main storage by way of quantum entanglement, is that still you or just a copy of a copy of a copy? (The story seems to be split on this, as Naira Sharp dies towards the end of the book without a chance to download. When she is printed again, she is without the relevant memories and is depicted as a different, separate person. The reason this is not presented as functional immortality is that a neural map can only handle a certain amount of downloads before it "cracks.") There is also the Mercator family's secret to mining and processing relkatite: they use an alien fungus, Mercatus canus, discovered on the crust of Venus that bioleaches and purifies the mineral. (When I read that, I thought, "And nothing can go wrong there....")
Now stranded on the surface of Sixth Cradle, Naira and Tarquin, mortal enemies (at least from Naira's point of view) must work together to solve the mystery of the shroud and what is happening to inhabitable worlds, and how the Mercator family ties in to all of it. What they discover has profound ramifications and threatens the survival of humanity itself.
These characters are drawn very well, but Tarquin Mercator undergoes the best character arc. His entire worldview is upended as he discovers what his father Acaelus has done, both to Naira and to humanity. The plot unfolds with many twists and turns, but because the story as a whole is so well paced (rapid-fire action interspersed with deepening characterization) the book's 483 pages never sag. There is also the beginning of a romance between Tarquin and Naira, but it never overwhelms the SF elements of the story.
I just loved this book. It's fat and twisty and complex, but there's not a wasted scene or moment. It's the first of a trilogy (of course) and I can't wait for the next....more
I'd label this as another "ideas" book, as it is stuffed full of interesting ideas and well-developed characters. What is less successful is its plot,I'd label this as another "ideas" book, as it is stuffed full of interesting ideas and well-developed characters. What is less successful is its plot, which meanders over about sixteen hundred years from the initial terraforming of the planet Sask-E, owned by the corporation who designed its development and its titular "terraformers," to its eventual freeing from said corporation and a possible transition to a publicly owned planet.
There are three novella-length sections that make up this book, each with its own set of protagonists. These novellas--especially the first, subtitled "Ecosystem Maintenance"--are interesting in their own right (the concluding novella, "Serve the Public," features a sentient train!) but their integration into an overarching storyline is less successful. Maybe that is the overarching storyline: that revolution is messy and uneven and takes time (in this case a whole lot of time, in a universe where people live for hundreds of years and look back on their centuries and/or millennia like we remember things we did 20 or 30 years ago). There are really no Big Bads as such. The evil corps are driven back, and the woman who comes closest to being an antagonist, Ronnie Drake from the Verdance Corporation, the original owner of Sask-E, at the end helps to turn the tables on her most hated enemy, Cylindra, from the competing Emerald Corporation--and not so coincidentally, set the planet on the path to being free from corporate ownership altogether.
Maybe the book is a bit messy and uneven as well, but there are so many fascinating facets to its worldbuilding that I could overlook the lack of a strong plot. In the acknowledgments, the author states that they "wrote this book because I wanted to dream up a more hopeful world," and if that was their goal, I believe they succeeded....more
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