uring a war in the 21st century between the United States and Europe, the war machine artificial intelligences underwent a rapid evolution, sparking a singularity event, the Hard Rapture, which resulted in most of humanity dead and/or scanned and stored by the AIs. Most of the AIs left Earth to continue their evolution, and the remnants of humanity that did not flee were left struggling to survive.
Newton's Wake begins in the 24th century, when several groups of humans have survived and even prospered in this post-human future. Lucinda Carlyle is a young member of a family descended from Scottish gangsters that has gained control of the Skein, an extensive system of interplanetary star gates, left behind by the post-human AIs, that connect numerous planets across the galaxy. Family Carlyle has prospered by sending their "combat archaeologists" through the Skein to scavenge technology left behind by the war machine AIs. Lucinda is leading an expedition to a remote new planet, Eurydice, that contains one of the most massive machines yet discovered, and discovers a previously unknown but thriving and prosperous civilization of humans that were scanned and reconstituted on the terraformed planet by one of the post-human AIs.
The Carlyle invasion is immediately repelled by the activated war machine and the Eurydician forces, which capture Lucinda and liberate and reconstitute her captive uploaded version of an Israeli scientist, Professor Shlaim. Soon other groups of humans who survived the Hard Rapture show up in faster-than-light-speed starships, including the Japanese-descended Knights of Enlightenment, the Americans Offline, who are descended from American farmers, and various Chinese communist DK collectives, all vying with the Carlyles, the remaining war machines and native Eurydicians for their share of the resources of Eurydice. In response, the Eurydice government approves reconstituting many more stored humans with combat experience, including many members of the Returners, who want to return to Earth, take back full control and reconstitute any additional human consciousnesses held by the AIs. Among the others reconstituted on Eurydice are two 21st-century Scottish folksingers who team up with Ben-Ami, Eurydice's foremost playwright, to develop a new historical play about the events of the 21st-century war.
When hostilities are finally ended on Eurydice, Lucinda Carlyle and a varied contingency of humans decide to return to Earth to seek to free any remaining human consciousnesses being stored by the remaining AIs.
An original post-human future
This is Ken McLeod's first book that does not appear to be part of a series, and I believe it represents a significant step forward toward a more compact and transparent narrative style. The 21st-century backstory in Newton's Wake could have been a separate fist novel in a series. Instead, MacLeod starts his action-packed narrative in the 24th century and provides the backstory slowly throughout the novel at a pace that just barely allows the current action to be comprehensible.
McLeod, with his hard-left libertarian political philosophy, provides a novel perspective of the future, especially for American readers. He takes communism and other collectivist political philosophies seriously, or at least as seriously as he takes any political philosophy, which often seems to be not very. Although slightly more subtle and less strained than in his earlier novels, the ironic humor spread throughout the book adds welcome counterpoint to the otherwise serious adventure story. He pokes fun at each of the surviving human groups, whether it is the somewhat thuggish Carlyles, the hick American farmers of America Offline, the conservative militarists of the Japanese Knights of Enlightenment, the collectivist dogmatists of the Chinese communist DK or the somewhat effete Eurydicians, whose Ben-Ami writes the most ludicrously bad (from our viewpoint) historical plays ever conceived. (Oddly, no Russian communists, a staple of earlier novels, seem to have survived in this particular future.) One minor quibble in this is that the Carlyles' dialogue is presented in phonetic Scottish brogue, making it difficult reading at times, and slowing down an otherwise well-paced story.
Although much clearer and better paced than MacLeod's earlier novels, Newton's Wake becomes a bit muddled in the end. Throughout the novel, the background information is provided just in time to understand what is happening, but is seldom sufficient to allow the reader to expect or anticipate what might happen next. This works well through most of the book, but the denouement leaves one with insufficient knowledge of what is to come, or even what just happened. But then again, the most important characteristic of a post-singularity, post-human future is that it is not comprehensible.
