age Baker's latest novel, The Life of the World to Come, is another in a series of stories and novels, among them The Graveyard Game, Mendoza in Hollywood and the collection Black Projects, White Knights, about the altogether too powerful corporate entity Dr. Zeus, Incorporated, otherwise known as the Company. Minions of the Company can travel through time and collect various valuable artifacts, and may be responsible for the twists and turns of much of human history.
As the novel opens, Mendoza, the indestructible cyborg who owes her existence to the Company, is a prisoner, stranded in the prehistoric past by her time-traveling masters and condemned to raise produce for one of the Company's resorts. Suddenly a time shuttle appears, piloted by Alec Checkerfield, a 24th-century adventurer fleeing from an arms-smuggling mission that has gone disastrously wrong. Impossible that this man should be there at all, and even more impossible that he should be a dead ringer for the man Mendoza has fallen in love with twice in two different centuries.
In his own century, Alec Checkerfield is, or at least appears to be, the emotionally deprived child of the alcoholic Earl of Finsbury and his wife, Cecelia, who has never especially wanted a child and clearly resents Alec's presence onboard their ship. When his parents abandon their life of wandering the Caribbean to take up residence in dreary, over-regulated 24th-century London, Alec's only comfort is his Playfriend, a cybernetic companion and tutor who soon takes on the identity of a pirate sea captain. As Alec matures, he seems to be no more than the somewhat dim and dissipated son of an aristocrat, idling away his days aboard his own luxurious sailing vessel, but his secret life of smuggling, wealth accumulation and exploration of cyberspace and its mysteries will eventually reveal the truth about his origins and draw him into a possibly fatal confrontation with the Company.
Lively, witty and entertaining
Readers looking for strikingly new and original science-fictional notions won't find many in The Life of the World to Come, but that is about the harshest criticism to be made of this intelligently told and delightfully entertaining novel. Kage Baker, who recently won the 2004 Theodore Sturgeon Award for her story "The Empress of Mars," has the enviable ability to take the props of so many science fiction stories—time travel, cyberspace, repressive future societies and other such staples—and view them and use them so idiosyncratically and with such wit and amusement that they seem fresh.
Her future England is depicted as oppressive and almost absurd in its various regulations, which mirror the kinds of health-obsessed restrictions our own culture seems intent on erecting around so many indulgences, but her characters Rutherford, Chatterji and Ellsworth-Howard, historical re-enactors in love with their idea of British history who long to create the archetypal hero, fit into their world logically and believably. Their efforts to mimic such past pursuits as enjoying tea and sherry, reading books and going on a walking tour are charming set pieces in a novel chock-full of them. Alec's interactions with his Playfriend and alter ego, whom he has dubbed Captain Henry Morgan, are priceless examples of wit and humor; readers will smile with pleasure while shivering in suspense at the risks Alec takes in a complicated tale of self-discovery and revenge.
Baker seems to have found the ideal way of writing a series without being either overly repetitive or leaving readers who are unfamiliar with earlier works completely adrift in incomprehension; readers can easily pick up any of her volumes and enjoy each individual story on its own. The Life of the World to Come unfolds like a fractal image, opening up and then doubling back on itself, its complications underlined by a sharp and clear intelligence.
