Hydrogen Steel features a fascinating backstory of galactic expansion by humanity. Some 150 years prior to the realtime of the narrative, Earth suddenly vanished, leaving the various extant interstellar colonies of mankind to scramble for new arrangements of survival and commerce and mutual support. In the subsequent decades, they did pretty well, building a flourishing set of disparate habitats on planets, satellites and artificial worldlets. Then, just 20 years in this scenario's past, another setback: Unseen aliens nicknamed the Silent shut down humanity's warmaking abilities in punishment for an alien genocide. Ever since, our species has lived in doubt about when, where and how the next blow will fall.

Of course, it doesn't help that "fireminds," or Planck-level-dwelling AIs, are also scheming to manipulate our race. And now our heroine has run afoul of one such disembodied intelligence, dubbed "Hydrogen Steel."

Suzette "Zette" McGee is a retired cop, a private eye with a difference. In a world where android "disposables" are regarded as semi-sentient subhumans, she has found herself to be a freak, an unprecedented fully conscious android. Imagining she's unique, she has retreated from easy friendships with humanity, save for one with an old man named Gideon Smith, who helps her occasionally on cases.

But then Zette is contacted by another fully sentient android who needs her help: Someone's trying to frame the man for the murder of his wife. This simple domestic matter will spiral outward to cosmic levels, however, as Zette and Gideon find themselves racing across the galaxy, coming between rival fireminds, being trapped in hyperspace and under frozen seas and eventually becoming transformed beyond all resemblance to their old selves.

High-flying sci-fi concepts

If you were to cross David Brin's Kiln People (2002) with John Varley's Steel Beach (1992) and toss in some elements of the postmodern space operas of Shane Dix and Sean Williams (Australians like Bedford, and no coincidence), and a soupçon of Damien Broderick's eschatological speculations (Yes, Broderick's an Aussie as well!), you'd have a fair approximation of the very pleasant frissons to be encountered in Bedford's third book.

Bedford amasses plenty of high-flown SF concepts. (I particularly like his notion of turning whole planets into computers, and of course the exotic nature of the fireminds and their existence on zero-point energy.) He also investigates intelligently Philip K. Dick's classic themes regarding what constitutes true humanity. He crafts likable characters and bumps them up against each other well. His overall plotting is quite deft, and he takes some brave narrative leaps, such as a major time disjunction after the book's big climax with Hydrogen Steel. So this book will go down easy and keep you absorbed. It's a reassuring model for the continuing progress of SF.

But despite these virtues, there are two areas where I have to fault this novel, both matters easily susceptible to modification in what I hope and expect will be a long, successful career for Bedford.

First is the familiar lament I've made before about other new authors. The ratio of information and action to sheer wordage in this book is unbalanced. Consider that the first 11 chapters—nearly a third of the book—must pass before Zette and Gideon reach the first stop on their quest, the world of New Norway. Getting marooned in hyperspace is all well and good—but for almost 40 pages? Take a look at any masterpiece of information-dense SF—from Gibson or Rucker, say—and gauge how fast stuff happens. Any sense of propulsion or headlong action is lost at the speeds Bedford employs. Although, granted, the climax happens laudably faster.

Second, Bedford's cosmos seems underpopulated. There're just not enough characters, walk-ons or supporting, to convey a sense of fecundity, not enough different cultures or venues or customs. Again, hold up this book to M. John Harrison's Light (2002), or any book by Jack Vance, to get a sense of what I'm talking about.

Still, Bedford's press release for Hydrogen Steel in which he calls himself a "journeyman writer" who will always be seeking to perfect his craft, bodes well for improvements to an already impressive skill set.