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The Godel Operation
Jun. 16th, 2022 01:15 pmThe Godel Operation, James L Cambias.
A standalone novel set about 8.000 years in the future of the solar system. No FTL. Energy is currency, but with earnings of around 20,000 gigajoules for a week of casual pick-up work, it's really only interesting when you want to move mass around the system (or buy something that has been moved across the system.) There are plenty of biological creatures including clades of enhanced humans, uplifted chimpanzees and orcas. AIs range from nonsentient maintenance systems through human equivalents up through multiple levels of singularity, culminating in a Dyson swarm around the Sun that hosts quadrillions or quintillions of sapients, uploads and native digital life, right up to gods.
(The author notes influences from Atomic Rockets and Orion's Arm; Eclipse Phase is not noted but quite similar.)
The story is narrated by Daslakh, a baseline-plus sentience wearing a small mechanical crab-spider body, who becomes friendly with Zee, a human ice-miner. Zee gets into some trouble, Daslakh arranges to solve it, and the plot begins - partially a travelogue, partially a hunt-the-McGuffin, partially a drama about making mistakes and sometimes being able to fix them.
Much better than I expected, though I should not be surprised: his previous novel A Darkling Sea was a nicely original first-contact story.
A standalone novel set about 8.000 years in the future of the solar system. No FTL. Energy is currency, but with earnings of around 20,000 gigajoules for a week of casual pick-up work, it's really only interesting when you want to move mass around the system (or buy something that has been moved across the system.) There are plenty of biological creatures including clades of enhanced humans, uplifted chimpanzees and orcas. AIs range from nonsentient maintenance systems through human equivalents up through multiple levels of singularity, culminating in a Dyson swarm around the Sun that hosts quadrillions or quintillions of sapients, uploads and native digital life, right up to gods.
(The author notes influences from Atomic Rockets and Orion's Arm; Eclipse Phase is not noted but quite similar.)
The story is narrated by Daslakh, a baseline-plus sentience wearing a small mechanical crab-spider body, who becomes friendly with Zee, a human ice-miner. Zee gets into some trouble, Daslakh arranges to solve it, and the plot begins - partially a travelogue, partially a hunt-the-McGuffin, partially a drama about making mistakes and sometimes being able to fix them.
Much better than I expected, though I should not be surprised: his previous novel A Darkling Sea was a nicely original first-contact story.
