- Stross, Charles.
Iron Sunrise.
New York: Ace, 2005.
ISBN 978-0-441-01296-1.
-
In Accelerando (July 2011), a
novel assembled from nine previously-published short stories,
the author chronicles the arrival of a technological singularity
on Earth: the almost-instantaneously emerging super-intellect
called the Eschaton which departed the planet toward the stars.
Simultaneously, nine-tenths of Earth's population vanished
overnight, and those left behind, after a period of chaos, found
that with the end of scarcity brought about by “cornucopia
machines” produced in the first phase of the singularity,
they could dispense with anachronisms such as economic systems
and government. After humans achieved faster than light travel,
they began to discover that the Eschaton had relocated 90% of
Earth's population to habitable worlds around various stars and
left them to develop in their own independent directions, guided
only by this message from the Eschaton, inscribed on a monument
on each world.
- I am the Eschaton. I am not your god.
- I am descended from you, and I exist in your future.
- Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone.
Or else.
The wormholes used by the Eschaton to relocate Earth's
population in the great Diaspora, a technology which humans had
yet to understand, not only permitted instantaneous travel
across interstellar distances but also in time: the more distant the
planet from Earth, the longer the settlers deposited there have
had to develop their own cultures and civilisations before being
contacted by faster than light ships. With cornucopia machines
to meet their material needs and allow them to bootstrap their
technology, those that descended into barbarism or incessant
warfare did so mostly due to bad ideas rather than their
environment.
Rachel Mansour, secret agent for the Earth-based United Nations,
operating under the cover of an entertainment officer (or,
if you like, cultural attaché), who we met in the previous
novel in the series,
Singularity Sky (February 2011), and her
companion Martin Springfield, who has a back-channel to the
Eschaton, serve as arms control inspectors—their primary
mission to insure that nothing anybody on Earth or the worlds
who have purchased technology from Earth invites the wrath
of the Eschaton—remember that “Or else.”
A terrible fate has befallen the planet Moscow, a diaspora
“McWorld” accomplished in technological development
and trade, when its star, a
G-type
main sequence star like the
Sun, explodes in a blast releasing a hundredth the energy of
a supernova, destroying all life on planet Moscow within an
instant of the wavefront reaching it, and the entire planet
within an hour.
The problem is, type G stars just don't explode on
their own. Somebody did this, quite likely using
technologies which risk Big E's “or else” on whoever
was responsible (or it concluded was responsible).
What's more, Moscow maintained a slower-than-light
deterrent fleet with relativistic planet-buster weapons
to avenge any attack on their home planet. This fleet,
essentially undetectable en route, has launched against
New Dresden, a planet with which Moscow had a nonviolent
trade dispute. The deterrent fleet can be recalled only by
coded messages from two Moscow system ambassadors who
survived the attack at their postings in other systems, but
can also be sent an irrevocable coercion code, which
cancels the recall and causes any further messages to be
ignored, by three ambassadors. And somebody
seems to be killing off the remaining Moscow ambassadors:
if the number falls below two, the attack will arrive at
New Dresden in thirty-five years and wipe out the planet
and as many of its eight hundred million inhabitants as
have not been evacuated.
Victoria Strowger, who detests her name and goes by
“Wednesday”, has had an invisible friend since
childhood, “Herman”, who speaks to her through her
implants. As she's grown up, she has come to understand that,
in some way, Herman is connected to Big E and, in return for
advice and assistance she values highly, occasionally asks her
for favours. Wednesday and her family were evacuated from one of
Moscow's space stations just before the deadly wavefront from
the exploded star arrived, with Wednesday running a harrowing
last “errand” for Herman before leaving. Later, in
her new home in an asteroid in the Septagon system, she becomes
the target of an attack seemingly linked to that mystery
mission, and escapes only to find her family wiped out by the
attackers. With Herman's help, she flees on an interstellar
liner.
While Singularity Sky was a delightful romp
describing a society which had deliberately relinquished
technology in order to maintain a stratified class system
with the subjugated masses frozen around the Victorian
era, suddenly confronted with the merry pranksters of the
Festival, who inject singularity-epoch technology into
its stagnant culture, Iron Sunrise is a
much more conventional mystery/adventure tale about
gaining control of the ambassadorial keys, figuring out
who are the good and bad guys, and trying to avert a
delayed but inexorably approaching genocide.
This just didn't work for me. I never got engaged in the story,
didn't find the characters particularly interesting, nor came
across any interesting ways in which the singularity came into
play (and this is supposed to be the author's “Singularity
Series”). There are some intriguing concepts, for example
the “causal channel”, in which quantum-entangled
particles permit instantaneous communication across spacelike
separations as long as the previously-prepared entangled
particles have first been delivered to the communicating parties
by slower than light travel. This is used in the plot to break
faster than light communication where it would be inconvenient
for the story line (much as all those circumstances in Star Trek
where the transporter doesn't work for one reason or another
when you're tempted to say “Why don't they just beam
up?”). The apparent villains, the ReMastered, (think
Space Nazis who believe in a Tipler-like cult of Omega Point
out-Eschaton-ing the Eschaton, with icky brain-sucking
technology) were just over the top.
Accelerando and Singularity Sky
were thought-provoking and great fun. This one doesn't
come up to that standard.
December 2018 