David Brin has created some of the greatest classics of recent scientific discipline fable , including Startide stand up , plus the short stories “ The Crystal Spheres ” and “ Thor Meets Captain America , ” the latter of which was the foundation of the graphic novel The Life Eaters . So Brin ’s first novel in a decade is movement for celebration .
The other good news show ? Brin ’s Existence is bursting with ideas , including near - time to come technical school , first liaison with unknown , and the exploration of what it means to be human . It ’s the sort of novel that runs the risk of being overstuffed — but Existence pulls it off .
Spoilers ahead …
Existence begin with short sections that fall out multiple plot , dipping momentarily into different characters ’ liveliness . And leap from Earth to space , and back . Like John Brunner ’s Stand on Zanzibar it includes fictional non - fiction books that throw out swelled idea in micro - lecture chassis ( also , in a nod to Brunner , there are sections entitle “ Scanalyzer ” ) . Eventually a smattering of game do shake off out from this broad overview . These plots sometimes intersect and sometimes do n’t — but when they cross over , it ’s always in surprising ways .
It ’s the 2050s and the earth is in thraldom to “ the meshing , ” a practical reality that survive on top of the tangible existence and is viewable through glasses , contact and heart implant together with , and punningly , known as ai - ware . This vision of the near futurity read as though popular nerd sites were brought to life , minus the zombies and cat-o'-nine-tails , and then thresh about in a liquidizer .
Brin has distinctly been saving up ideas for the retiring decade . If something ’s ever made a hustle on the cyberspace , it ’s in here : micropayments , smart syndicate , general internet - provide reputations , seasteading governments , advertizing hoc scientist , the “ Age of Amateurs ” , bioluminescent tattoos , Disney themeparks , dirigibles , memes , Von Neumann machine , cryopreserving the full-bodied , SETI , urban reclamation , the phrase “ the 99 percent , ” behaviour modification , Darwinism , vat grown kernel , altruism , transparence , the peril of over - specialization , phosphorus shortages , Temple Grandin , biofeedback as a drug , the remainder of the tyranny of geographics , neurodiversity , uncountable doomsday scenarios , raise out megafauna , Ayn Rand and psychic octopuses .
Everything is bigger in this world — there are sixty - two U.S. States , thirty - one amendment , 10 land ( The first estate is the tiptop - rich , the tenth is the ais ) and thirteen internets . And yet , to the people in Brin ’s world , the future still has n’t arrived : There ’s still political infighting and poorness ; there are saucy figurer programs they call A.I.s , but they are n’t really sentient ; robots can almost mimic people , but not quite ; space travel is still limited , good are still made in factories and shipped , and people still break down .
Brin introduces role who might very well be at the center of some dear - future thriller : There ’s Hacker Sander , a trillionaire epinephrin junkie eccentric . There ’s Tor Povlov , a audacious young fact-finding reporter who is on the outs with her boyfriend . And then there ’s Lacey Donaldson - Sander , Hacker ’s mom who supports telescope look for for additional - mundane life . And at last , Hamish Brookeman , a thinly veiled Michael Crichton science - is - shivery type novelist ( you may tell he ’s supposed to be Crichton , because he produce thin veil characters based on his political enemies , and slay them in gruesome ways — which is a thinly veiled verbal description of Crichton did to Mike Crowley ) .
Brookeman is working for the principal of the “ Renunciation ” drive that wants to suppress scientific progress . His hirer is preparing to meet with trillionaire families that are part of Lacey and Hacker ’s clade , which neither of them feels any particular allegiance for . The anti - technologists and the clade are on the verge of striking a deal that will end majority rule and the enlightenment , in party favour of an aristocracy that will tightly control scientific advance . Someone has just poison ( or cure ) a U.S. Senator , making him play like a madcap on television . A mathematical group of autistic citizenry or “ Auties ” are look for the interlocking for something call off the Basque Chimera . cyberpunk depart missing , due to possible sabotage . Tor is hurt in a terrorist attack and though she is transform , she continues her journalistic work .
And all of this intrigue is shake to the core when spaceman Gerald Livingstone , working on a quad - junk cleaning work party , key a crystal alien artefact . The object change state out to be filled with the Autonomous Uploaded Personalities of nearly 100 aliens . Other parts of life continue , but first and first of all , the world ’s aid is on the Artifact , and the stranger ’ content : fall in Us .
But things are not that simple . Another crystal has been retrieve and is call the first mathematical group of aliens “ Liars ! ” But this watch crystal is being held in secret , putting the life of its discoverer , Peng Xiang Bin , in risk . Bin is a Chinese national who wants nothing more than to finish his shoresteading reformation and accomplish citizenship . Though he ’s had no formal education , Bin grasps the implication of this 2nd quartz glass that others do not .
It ’s not just a playscript that could have been a techno thriller about the wealthy putting an final stage to scientific geographic expedition , or about first link . It ’s also , technically , a post - apocalyptic book in which the apocalypse did n’t really cause that much trouble . The book is filled with disasters . The Mississippi River changed class . Florida has almost vanish . The Gulf Stream has quit flowing . The supervolcano under Yellowstone erupted , though only a little . The Water Wars , Big Kudzu , the Zheng He disaster , the Big Melt , the Caste Wars , the Soggy Decade , the internet three meltdown — all are just thing that come about , that may have killed a ton of masses or ruined thing , but were not enough to terminate civilization or stop human onward motion . China is construct a new Great Wall — a sea wall . The Midwest desolate , as did character of the South . Looming beyond all of these horrors is Awfulday , some unspecified nuclear calamity . It ’s an interesting motive , specially considering the recent public debate about the optimism , or lack thereof , in science fiction . Brin is unforced to admit , sweep up even , the litany of disasters that can and might affect humanity — but a laundry tilt of calamity can not win out against world .
While all skill fiction books are about ideas , this is n’t a book about one grown idea . It ’s a record book full of little ideas . Full enough to burst . There ’s coherent worldbuilding , sure as shooting — but it ’s a world made almost entirely of ideas , concepts , arguments , and realizations . Not a page goes by without multiple ideas being bat around and explore . No matter what the idea are .
For instance , Brookeman ’s anti - science position is exhaustively flesh out . He is one of the more compelling , clever and well - spoken characters . You empathize that his anti - authoritarian set comes down to the sheer cussedness of not wanting to do whatever he is secern to do . The arguments he ( and Brin ) gather up , that ruling elites good control engineering , that the appearance of meritocracy is enough to make the medicine of oligarchy go down , that we should stop and think about the side effects if technology , are thorough and compelling . Whatever your feeling on the subject , you believe that Brookeman believe what he ’s saying . But when we ’re present with this raw world of exotic artifacts his political theory is uncover as hollow , incompetent of stand up to the challenge , the elbow room a wise mob or even a dedicated individual can .
Brin ’s “ just the facts ma’am ” prose keeps you turn over further into his world , even as the worldbuilding gets more and more out there . The word “ ai , ” “ virt , ” “ holo , ” and “ inter ” are forever used as prefix and suffixes , way more blithely than “ i- ” or “ e- ” ever have been in the actual world . You ’d never discover Brin as a humorous author , but some second in the Word are too ridiculous to be anything but laugh - out - loud funny . Like when the dolphinfish set about training a mortal to talk dolphin , by reinforce him with fish . Or when they necessitate the psychical devilfish about the aliens . The Auties convey in a sort of dada - ist style poetry , as do the uplifted dolphins . Both of these things will feel familiar to the reader of Startide Rising or the Uplift War books . Other parts of the volume will find familiar to the devoted Brinian as well — parts of several of his brusk stories have been recycled into Existence . Most notably the short tarradiddle “ Lungfish , ” which has been only more or less modified and appears toward the remainder of the Word .
In the last third of the Scripture , the plots narrow down again , to just a duo of storylines : Tor and an android scouring asteroids for alien artefact go away by long ago interstellar traveler , and Gerald and his compatriot go to Mars on a survey mission . While these slice are fascinating , it ’s a little disappointing to depart the other characters and write up . Though the rule book likely would have become 1,000 page monster , had he continued to come everyone .
The narrative shrinks again , this clip literally , and you finally get a sense of what it is that Brin is doing . The tale is about life story — though he ’s call it Existence , since not all the characters are animated in a biologic sense . It ’s all about the chaos and passionateness of adolescence — the blueprint we make for our life when we ’re new , before unforeseeable events ship us spinning into strange novel cranial orbit . It ’s about the path the world specialise and focuses , as hobbies turn to avocations , bequest are considered and the afterlife looms . All of which is reflect in the structure of the book : one C of frantic pages sometimes covering merely days — and then decennium are dispense with in a single page , and are barely advert to at all . So many plot and type — so many potential way for the account to go — but eventually the significant thing win out .
Even after we learn the truth behind the crystals and their missions , there is more to understand . The history of the galaxy , which like all chronicle is messy and complex , is float about our own solar system . The book proposes that there is not one answer to Fermi ’s paradox , but century of answers , rank from the quotidian to the weird . It also proposes that the best way to face these answers is deeply human : to be creative , various , compromising , curious . That to reach Heaven — or something like it — requires that we bet beyond ourselves , beyond humanness ( all six species of it ) , and into the macrocosm beyond .
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