Newton's Wake: A Space Opera, by Ken MacLeod

Ken MacLeod

Ken MacLeod , is a Scottish science fiction writer.MacLeod was born in Stornoway. He graduated from Glasgow University with a degree in zoology and has worked as a computer programmer and written a masters thesis on biomechanics....

, is a science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel (ISBN 1841492248) published in 2004. Set in the 24th century, it follows human life after a partially cataclysmic Singularity

Technological singularity

Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as...

, and in particular a conflict on a far-flung planet that upsets the prevailing order. It has elements of both transhumanism

Transhumanism

Transhumanism, often abbreviated as H+ or h+, is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human...

 and satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 and is written using the printed versions of common translation stereotypes (eg. Scottish people say "tae"). The novel was nominated for the British Science Fiction Award in 2004, and the John W. Campbell Award in 2005.

Plot

In the late 20th century, at the start of a war between the Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an nations and the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, a US Army AI

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 directing weapons overcame its programming to become self-aware. Then followed the "Hard Rapture", an explosive expansion and evolution of computer systems that left most of humanity dead or devoured while the AIs and assimilated persons progressed into posthumanity beyond human comprehension and departed for parts unknown, leaving behind artifacts on a number of worlds.

With the Earth now populated by varyingly dormant, partially sentient war machines, humanity lives offworld. The three main sects are America Offline (AO), the Knights of Enlightenment (KE) and Demokratische Kommunistbund (or Democratic Korea or Kampuchea or something else entirely) (DK). Examination of the posthuman relics has resulted in deep but sporadic knowledge of such things as FTL

Faster-than-light

Faster-than-light communications and travel refer to the propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light....

 travel.

The main character is Lucinda Carlyle, a member of a Scottish family of entrepreneurs/thugs that controls a system of traversable wormholes known as the Skein. Lucinda is a "combat archeologist", leading a team to the unexplored world of Eurydice to salvage posthuman technology and deal with whatever it tries in response. Not only does she find a motherlode of an artifact, but a lost colony of humans that escaped Earth in the Hard Rapture and are living in a post scarcity society

Post scarcity

Post scarcity is a hypothetical form of economy or society, in which things such as goods, services and information are free, or practically free...

 (with cosmic string

Cosmic string

Cosmic strings are hypothetical 1-dimensional topological defects which may have formed during a symmetry breaking phase transition in the early universe when the topology of the vacuum manifold associated to this symmetry breaking is not simply connected. It is expected that at least one string...

weapons far beyond those of other groups). Each side is as surprised as the other, having thought themselves the only survivors. Then the Knights of Enlightenment discover that the artifact, originally the crashed colony ship of the Eurydiceans, is the focal point of the Skein.

External links

• Newton's Wake at Worlds Without End