he solar system of the year 3013 is stranger than anything imagined by the average person of our era. Most astonishingly, the inner planets from Mercury to Mars have been literally linked together by the Met, a network of giant hawsers, which also boasts many lesser extensions and tributaries. These tubes, many a kilometer in diameter and running from planetary pole to planetary pole, are engineered from incredibly strong nano-fabricated material, and are inhabited by a huge number of people, perhaps more than dwell on the various worlds and satellites.
But the citizens of the 31st century rely on nanotech--or "grist," as they refer to it--for much more than mere architectural wonders. They live amid ambient grist, as naturally as fish in the sea. Grist serves as their faster-than-light communications network and virtual reality; grist hosts a community of bodiless artificial intelligences, coats the living quarters of people and their clothing and forms add-on portions of their physical bodies and minds.
The Met stops at the barrier of the asteroid belt, however, due to insurmountable engineering problems, and so spaceships--grist-enhanced--are still needed to penetrate further, all the way to the Oort Cloud and beyond, the realm of the sentient cloudships. The outer solar system, relatively free of the government of the Met, is a rambunctious and rebellious place, and this tension finally ignites a war, mostly due to the overweening ambitions of Director Ames, a megalomaniacal genius whose twisted
childhood has left him a sociopath.
To limn the enormous canvas and far-ranging tale he has conceived, Daniel splits his story among a large number of characters and venues, both minor and major. Among the latter: we follow the efforts of failed priest Andre Sud and his longtime friend TB to stop the war by exploiting TB's weird ontological connections; we go on the run with the Graytor family of Mercury as they attempt to escape the chaos of war; we watch soldier Roger Sherman mount his defense of Triton against the Met forces; we experience the warped childhood of Claude Schlencker, which turns him into Director Ames; we flee with Roger's son Leo as he helps adolescent Aubry Graytor escape the Met agents seeking her for mysterious reasons; and we watch Danis Graytor, Aubry's mother despite being a wholly disembodied entity, as she labors in a digital concentration camp.
SF that swears by e pluribus unum
Two stories in Tony Daniel's fine collection, The Robot's Twilight Companion (1999), prefigure this ambitious, omnivorous new novel: "Mystery Box" and "Grist," both featuring characters from the new book, seemed at the time of standalone publication almost too dense for full comprehension. The reason is obvious now: they represented the merest tip of the bizarre universe which Daniel barely begins to explore in over 400 pages.
Daniel has sat down and rethought all the cliches and tropes of nanotech, solar system colonization, interplanetary war, intelligence extension and a dozen other SF fascinations. The result is a book that is remarkably fresh and alluring, yet one which deliberately speaks to the past work of a handful of major authors, continuing that tradition of cross-generational dialogue for which SF is justifiably famous.
In the linkage of celestial bodies via ropes, Daniel harks back to Brian Aldiss' The Long Afternoon of Earth (1962), and in fact the portion of the Met connecting the Earth and the moon is named after Aldiss. In his New Ageish metaphysics, Daniel is cousin to Howard Hendrix and Frank Herbert. Danis Graytor's virtual dilemma speaks to Greg Egan's concerns. The ferret-girl Jill, TB's servant, inevitably brings to mind the underpeople of Cordwainer Smith, and the Met Directorate is reminiscent of the Instrumentality. Director Ames, though not a mutant, occupies the same history-upsetting role as Asimov's Mule. The bodily mutability and "steel beach" mentality of the 31st-century folk recall John Varley's early work. Anne McCaffrey comes to mind when the sentient cloudships are brought onstage. The various sensually and perceptually odd environments of the
Met would feel at home in Stephen Baxter's or Fritz Lieber's books. And the strange sex between individuals brings to mind the novels of Scott Westerfeld and Samuel Delany.
But, as mentioned, none of this strikes the reader as derivative, only savvy and respectful. The voice of Metaplanetary is Daniel's alone, and his mix of characters and speculations is unique. Radical new ideas pop up fast and furious, and the action never flags.
