ost in Transmission continues the story that began in the novels The Collapsium (2000) and The Wellstone (2003) about a future ruled by the Queendom of Sol where mankind has become affluent and essentially immortal due to the discovery of collapsium, which allows body-rejuvenating facsimiles with memories intact, and programmable matter called wellstone. In The Collapsium, Bruno de Towaji, inventor of collapsium, saves the solar system and becomes King of Sol through marriage to Queen Tamra. In The Wellstone, their rebellious teenage son, Prince Bascal, attempts a revolution with others of his small generation, including best friend Conrad Mursk and Xiomara ("Xmary") Li Weng. The result of the failed rebellion is the banishment of several thousand youths on the first colony ship going to Barnard's Star.
In Lost in Transmission, Bascal, Conrad, Xmary and their comrades make the century-long journey to Barnard's Star aboard the starship Newhope. Most of the crew spend most or all of the voyage in storage in the fax machines. Bascal spends much of the voyage nearly alone, learning all he can, preparing to serve as King of the new colony. Xmary, as the ship's captain, also spends much time living aboard the ship, as does Conrad, who has become her lover. Everyone stays young and healthy by frequently faxing themselves in and out of storage.
When they reach their destination, they begin the long process of colonizing and terraforming the only marginally habitable planet. Bascal serves as King, and Conrad is his First Architect, while Xmary continues to captain Newhope, shuttling people and material throughout the system. Over the decades, Conrad becomes bored with his career and moves through a diverse series of occupations. He eventually begins to suspect that the colony is not progressing as well as his friend King Bascal contends, and all of them may be doomed to extinction due to their inability to construct new medical-grade fax machines faster than old ones fail. He and Xmary must decide whether to engage in a new rebellion, and return to Earth to seek to save some of the thousands in their colony.
In a short story framing the main narrative, we see Conrad in a degenerated far-future Earth system, where mankind is seeking to survive.
An intriguing end to an ambitious vision
Wil McCarthy's Queendom of Sol series, seen as a hole, has many aspects that are original and intriguing. Far future monarchy is one of the hoariest cliches of science fantasy, but McCarthy does a creditable job in making it believable in a hard SF context among a high-tech society of immortals. But as in most utopian works, the concept is facilitated by assuming certain basic aspects of human behavior will become quite rare—in this case, the desire for power over others, and the corruption such power usually breeds. (King Bascal arguably does succumb to this latter fault as he hides the true problems his colony is facing.) The technology of collapsium and wellstone are also fascinating, with the latter being an intriguing version of nanotechnology.
Conrad Mursk matures into a likeable viewpoint character, and his mid-life crisis that sends him off on odd jobs for decades, and his on-and-off-again relationship with Xmary, make the middle of the book compelling when it could have become tedious. Bascal is an engaging, larger-than-life character, as was his father Bruno in the earlier books.
The only real problem with this novel is not what's here, but what's frustratingly missing. The story frame that forms the prologue and epilogue makes it clear that both Conrad and Bascal survive to meet again in the Sol system many centuries later. But what happened to the Barnard's Star colony? And what happened in the Queendom of Sol in those intervening centuries that led to its degeneration? These compelling questions remain frustratingly unanswered in this book.
