Review - Emergence by Ken MacLeod

The Corporation Wars: Emergence (Second Law Trilogy, 3)
Ken MacLeod
Orbit, 28 September 2017
HB, 326pp

I'm grateful to Orbit for an advance copy of this book.

Before I say anything about the book itself, just take a moment to admire that utterly gorgeous cover image by Bekki Guyatt. I know one shouldn't judge a book by the cover but sometimes it's hard not to...

It's a bit tricky reviewing anyway the third volume of a trilogy. Realistically, those who've read the earlier books are likely just to want to know "is it as good as the others?" the answer to which is, "yes, in fact slightly better". Those who haven't read them will want to know if they should do that now, the answer to which again is, yes, and shame on you if you haven't, where have you BEEN?

They also rightly want to avoid spoilers which means they shouldn't really read any more of this review, they should go and read Dissidence and Insurgence first.

All that said, though, this is still very much a book in its own right and, given how the trilogy has evolved, somewhat different to the others. So I would like to discuss it even if I've now excluded most feasible readers.

What's different is that by the time we come to Emergence, the veil of the Temple has, as it were, been rent in twain. The Wizard is in plain sight. What was obscure, if gradually being revealed, through the earlier books, is now plan and we no longer see as through a glass darkly.

We know that those old enemies from 21st century Earth, the Axle and the Rax (progressive and reactionary terrorist forces) both digitized ex-members who've ended up a far exosolar system, embodied in sims operated by the various AI-driven Corporations.

We've gradually seen a complex skein of allegiances, bluffs, double-bluffs and plots fall away, and there's a bit of clarity. The Rax - dedicated fascists all - have coalesced and are making a bid for power. We know that the robots sent to exploit the local moons by the Corporations have developed sentience and rebelled. We know that the elaborate worlds occupied part of the time by Carlos and his comrades are simply sims - and that they are likely, at any moment, to be downloaded into squat fighting frames, like digital Orcs, to battle the robots, or the Rax, or other factions. And we know a lot more that I won't attempt to precis.

What we know less about - and a fair bit of this book fills this gap - is the nature of the planet itself, and of the life upon it. Which gives MacLeod something new to address, besides the dry wit of the robots or the dynamics of space battles. That opens up the story considerably - at the end of the previous book, the Locke module, with digital Taransay Rizzi aboard, was plunging towards the surface. What she finds there, and how it affects the complex, many sided conflict brewing above, is one of the more surprising elements to this book. MacLeod evokes well the wonder of the new planet and its weird biology, and sets up a new conflict which rebounds on the schemes of the other actors, war-game them how they will.

It's a strange though that the utterly alien but biological life there is the first non-digital life that we've encountered in this trilogy. That fact becomes more and more important as the schemes unwind, the balance of power shifts and the final secrets are revealed (but not till, almost, the final page).

This has been a superb trilogy, and the writing remains fresh to the end. There's the degree of expression that MacLeod manages to give to the robots, with their deadpan remarks and utterly convincing robotic quirks (for example, the danger of two or more getting stuck in a loop of logic, which requires the intervention of a third robot to close down). In this book we see what's effectively a robot strike, complete with strikebreakers (who receive a fair amount of abuse). There's also a lot of twisted economics "The price of your souls is tending towards zero") and law (the battles are fought as much by AI-mediated lawsuits as by bullets and lasers). And I could go on.

In short, Emergence is a logically and emotionally satisfying conclusion to a smart and thought provoking trilogy which not only looks back to the troubles of the present (those mountains of bones on Mediterranean beaches) but looks to the future - that future which, as the cover has it, it not ours.


For more about the book see here.

Review: The Corporation Wars - Insurgence

Image from http://www.orbitbooks.net/

The Corporation Wars: Insurgence
Ken MacLeod
Orbit, 1 December 2016
HB, 309pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book. (Full disclosure: I also have a signed copy on order...)

Insurgence is the second volume in a science fiction trilogy, with Dissidence published in May and Emergence due next year. It kicks off  pretty much where Emergence finished, in the middle of a space battle between reanimated human-piloted mechanoids and newly self-conscious robots. In fact there isn't really a gap, you might just as well call this a single book in three parts as a trilogy.

It's hundreds of years in the future. Humanity has been shaped by a war between the forces of progress - the Accelaration, aka The Axle - and those of reaction, the Rax. After these insurgents have fought each other to a standstill, the authorities harvested the minds of the Axle combatants from their bodies and sentence them to perpetual death. Now, finally, there's a chance for salvation. Carlos 'the Terrorist' and his Axle comrades have been revived, retrained and re-embodied in fighting mechanical suits to meet the threat of those newly emergent robots.

Unfortunately, some Rax have also been preserved...

This is classic hard SF, set in a distant star system where rival corporations (all of them AIs) are trying to claim habitable territory for humanity. The robot uprising and Rax infiltration complicate matters, as do the cloudy motives of Earth's ultimate authority, the Direction (also an AI). In fact, there are wheels within wheels within wheels here, delicate layers of organisational, personal and ideological motives, directed and constrained by the limits of resources, legal freedom and above all, physics (gotta be careful with that reaction mass!) MacLeod provides a couple of pages of summary to bring the reader up to speed on events of the first book, but after that we're into a murky world where - as Carlos finds - nobody is to be trusted.

It's all done, though, as in the most satisfying thrillers, in a completely convincing way - which is some achievement given that most of our characters live (when not fighting robots) in one of two simulated worlds: either a pleasure planet or a pseudo medieval gameworld complete with dungeons and boggarts. Any distinctions between the different levels of 'reality' are soon lost as the book moves between viewpoints and Carlos, his comrade Taransay, Newton the individualistic Rax agent and Beauregard, a former Military Intelligence man who seized control of one of the sims at the end of the last book will pilot their way through the myriad complexities posed both by physical conflict with the larger body of reawakened Rax cadres and the suspicions, hostilities and misunderstandings sown between them.

We see less of the robots in this volume, which is perhaps a shame, because for me their dry wit is one of the best aspects of these books. MacLeod very cleverly leaves them robot enough to be alien, human enough to be sympathetic in their revolt against what is basically slavery. (Remember, none of the human factions show any pity to the robots, not even the 'progressive' Axle. They may be included in tactical alliances but these alliances - as between the human factions themselves - are simply following Machiavelli's advice, to combine against your strongest enemy then turn on your allies.) As the pretty ancient factions of Rax and Axle play out their slightly absurd, centuries out of date conflict, there is a much more current issue of justice at stake. One of the great things about MacLeod's writing is always this ethical, humanistic dimension to SF. Yes, it's ROBOTS! And LASERS! And BANGS! But also an intricately constructed and deeply politically aware story of the interplay between property, personhood and oppression and this gives the story real bite.

There's also some madcap invention, from a user interface based on painting and drawing, to an Old Man of the Mountains who seems to have developed the ability to, unwittingly, control one of the sims, to an all too plausible conjecture as to how robot consciousness could arise.

I suspect that even as we think we know what's going on, there may be a hidden hand at work somewhere. How much of what's happened might, actually, have been planned - or at least foreseen. And by who? Something reminds me of Asimov's Second Foundation - perhaps appropriately in what is also known as the Second Law Trilogy.

There are certainly a number of other shoutouts to SF classics (a reference to The Songs of Distant Earth, the remark than any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology, and more). This is a book, like the very best SF, in dialogue with the genre's past, with speculation about what robots might and might not be allowed to do, with plans for directing future civilizations. And as in many of those tales the real fun arises when things go wrong and the unforeseen happens. That's certainly where we get to by the end of the book when things are again left very much up in the air. I can't wait for the final part.

(Before I end: I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but I just want to point out what gorgeous little hardbacks these are. Just take a moment to admire the design by Bekki Guyatt.)

Review: The Corporation Wars: Dissidence

The Corporation Wars: Dissidence
Ken MacLeod
Orbit, 12 May 2016
HB, e 336pp
Source: Advance e-copy via NetGalley

I've enjoyed MacLeod's recent near future SF thrillers-with-an-edge. Intrusion in particular is a very smart reworking of Nineteen Eighty-Four, picking up all sorts of present day trends and shaking them about, but all of them are intelligent both as extrapolations of the present as as novels of ideas.

At first sight, Dissidence strikes out in a wholly different direction, a far future, deep space world inhabited only by intelligences (artificial or human) running on synthetic hardware - and playing obscure games at the direction of corporate overlords.

True, there's a brief look back in the first chapter to a 21st century conflict. In that flashback, Carlos the Terrorist, celebrated operator for the rebellion knows as the Acceleration (or the Axle) dies in a Tilbury basement. MacLeod sketches a three cornered battle between governments, the Axle and the Reaction ("the Rax"), global baddies wanting to use the power of emerging nanotechnology to exalt the super rich and push everyone else back to the Dark Ages. ("The ultimate counter-revolution, to face down the threat of the ultimate revolution.") It's a situation that allows for double dealing, divided loyalties and alliances of convenience (a background that perhaps takes some of its richness from just how he has explored these themes in his other recent books).

Carlos's forte is, though, the remote operation of drone clouds ("It was the new way of war, back in the day"). So it's surprising when his stored mind is reactivated centuries later - in a new body, bumping his way in a minibus from "the spaceport" to a "village" where he will meet his new-old comrades and train to fight hand to hand - or manipulator arm to manipulator arm - as a mercenary in a future war against self-aware robots.

What's happened to make this necessary?

In a beautiful evocation of cutting edge science, MacLeod describes how a robot just might boot itself from being "merely" an AI to being fully sentient - if it finds itself in the right situation. ("The self-model had become a self. The self had attained self-awareness.") The chapter in which this happens is aptly named "We Robots", not just in homage to Asimov but because it lays bare just how consciousness (even our consciousness... especially our consciousness...) might work. Think you're special, just because you're self aware? Don't get so cocky. You're a strange loop, that's all. We are all robots now, and indeed the newly conscious "artificial" robots here are scornful of how slow, badly designed and conflicted human hardware (and the intelligences derived from it) actually are. ("Their minds, if they have minds and not merely complex systems of reflexes, must surely be radically different from true machine intelligence.")

This is, then, a novel of ideas, brilliantly communicated and embodied, and they come thick and fast. Once consciousness has arisen, the book confronts the moral claims it has (the robots start out as property, but reason that they must be free) and the consequences of beings with self-awareness and self-determination colliding with the "mission profile" (to eventually transform the distant star system into something where humans can live). Inevitably, it also addresses how intelligent beings then become war machines.

At the same time, it's a tense thriller, where everything may or may not be as it seems. Carlos doubts from the start what is going on and why he is here, but the truth is beyond his weirdest imaginings. As characters transfer between robot fighting bodies in space and an apparent sim training environment on a colonised planate they enter a Wonderland reality in which it's easy to lose track of who is who and what is real, and to misjudge the consequences of the smallest act.

MacLeod also shows off a streak of sardonic humour - with AI law enforcement entities called things like Arcane Disputes and Locke Provisos, references to the "full orchestral space opera and the fat lady singing" or to "small crawler robots from the law companies [which] had scuttled up to the barriers, and fallen back in frustration, beaming out writs over and over until their batteries ran down." Best of all, perhaps, is "They back you up, your mum and dad." It may not be laugh out loud but it's funny in a clever, slightly geeky way.

I said that at first sight this is a departure, and it's true that the setting is rather different from MacLeod's recent books, more akin to military SF or, as hinted above, space opera. But really it's not such a stretch. Themes from those books recur. Intrusion reworked Nineteen Eighty-Four. Here we have the prospect of " An inky finger poking you in the eye, forever". The Restoration Game played with the world-as-a-sim idea, which crops up here in (recursive) spades. More widely, those are deeply political books, reflecting familiarity with the calculus of progress and reaction, of rebellion, dissent and how protest is sublimated away or manipulated: all of which are central to Dissidence as well. And of course, the central feature of Dissidence is (essentially) a slave rebellion.

It is, indeed, a political book, a philosophical book (as the invocation of John Locke might hint) as well as a natural philosophical book.

But it's also loads of fun, immersive, truly gripping and just a great read all round.

Best of all, as the first in a trilogy, we will have sequels!

(NB This is so good I bought my own copy! While I'm grateful for an advance e-copy from the publisher I've got a hardcopy on order - in fact a signed one from Transreal Fiction in Edinburgh - who I'd recommend highly).

Review: Intrusion by Ken MacLeod

Intrusion

Ken MacLeod

Orbit

ISBN 1841499390

320 pages

I’d really been looking forward to this book, and I wasn't disappointed.

As with MacLeod’s other recent books, “Intrusion” is set in a very credible near-future which initially bears more resemblance to a thriller than to science fiction.  It is, I think, really three books in one.  The opening section is the one described in the blurb.  Mother-to-be Hope faces a dilemma:  whether to take "the fix", a marvel of“syn bio” (the endpoint of systematic genetic engineering) which would "cure" any potential genetic abnormalities of her future child. 

The Fix isn’t compulsory – not exactly – but this is a world where the needs of the foetus are placed so far ahead of those of the mother that most women of childbearing age can’t work (whether pregnant or not) in case they encounter decades old “fourth hand smoke” seeping from the structure of the workplace.  They are strongly encouraged to wear monitor rings, which record any contact with noxious substances, and are banned from drinking alcohol unless provably not pregnant.

Methods of persuasion are therefore employed to encourage Hope to take the Fix.  She would have a get out if she claimed to be religious, but she isn’t.  What should she do?

MacLeod portrays a scary future, a creepy, surveiled world where – for society’s good – AIs trawl one’s phone logs and movement records, putting 2 and 2 together, and no adult would dare be alone with a child unless monitored by cameras.

The second theme develops from this and is summarised in a conversation between postdoc Geena and her supervisor.  Geena is observing a group of Syn Bio engineers for her research into how science is done, but has run into a little trouble and asks for help.  Here the dialogue which this book seems to be having with “Nineteen Eighty Four” becomes overt – even with some phrases of Orwell’s repeated.  But it is also, I think, playing with themes from another dystopia, “Brave New World”. 

In one, control of society is achieved by brutality, surveillance, austerity and miltarisation.  In the other, it’s done through comfort and plenty.  In “Intrusion” there is a world of apparent comfort and plenty with no apparent external threats (apart from a degree of paranoia over foreign insurgents).  In each case, though, the result is the same – total control – and the same question applies: in the words of both Winston Smith and of Geena: “I understand how, but I don’t understand why”.  

In “Nineteen Eighty Four”, the answer is repugnant – power for its own sake – but somehow makes sense.  One can see a way out:  overthrow the Party.  In “Intrusion”, I take MacLeod to be saying that there isn’t a reason.  Nobody actually seeks power.  The control and coercion is something that society is doing to itself, always with the best of intentions.  There is nothing to overthrow, nothing to resist, because everyone is complicit.  “They got me a long time ago”.  That is, to me, actually much scarier and rather more plausible.

The third theme in this book is the SF plot, to which focus turns in the final third, and I won’t say much about it because it would be a shame to give too much away.  It has to do with the past and the future, and perhaps does offer a way out.

Overall this was is a gripping novel, with plenty happening, full of ideas and with some nail biting action.  Recommended.