Two Line Review: This volume concludes (Yes! Concludes!) the story begun in _The Golden Age_. It is a book of passion, energy, and ideas... the central most of which, alas, happens to be completely wrong because either the author, the principle character, or both, just don't know what the Hell they're talking about.
I reviewed the first two volumes, as well, and they are archived on Google Groups at:
_The Golden Age_
_The Phoenix Exultant_
In the first two books, without spoiling things too terribly much, our main character Phaethon comes to believe that his entire life is, literally, a lie-- there exist technologies in extremely common use which allow people to edit their minds and memories directly. False memories are implantable, and true memories can be erased. Adventures ensue to determine how and why this was done to him, and to regain his rightful place and property so that he can do what he really wants to do, namely, take the starship that he has built, and go exploring the galaxy.
In the course of said adventures, he comes to believe further that there is a threat to his entire civilization, the so-called Golden Oecumene of Earth, which is composed of all the sentient creatures (human, human-origin but deeply modified, and pure computation based) in this solar system. Naturally, Phaethon's other problems are bound up in all of this. This concluding novel shows Phaethon and his very small band of supporters trying to deal with this threat from beyond the Golden Oecumene.
At this point, I would like to pause, and berate myself for not mentioning something that turns out to be important from the second book, _The Phoenix Exultant_. There is a small passage in the book wherein one of the sophotechs (computation based intelligences, the smallest of which ever mentioned has the equivalent of at least one hundred thousand human minds) explains to Phaethon why they have been, in a nutshell, so completely useless to Phaethon in all their wisdom. In brief, it is because the rigid ethics of the sophotechs refuse to allow any use of force at all (except, like modern Libertarians, the force of economics and personal shame.) They cannot force any person or group of people to do the right thing-- they can't even force a person not to harm himself, and so they will blithely go about letting the human-based population of the Golden Oecumene do stupid things right up unto their collective extinction.
This would have been acceptable, had the sophotech not also espoused, at the same time, that his (and by extension, all sophotechs') philosophy was correct. Provably correct. Universally correct for every form of intelligence and consciousness. This rankled, but it was only a passage of a few paragraphs. Perhaps a couple of pages at best, so I decided against bringing it up.
I decided incorrectly.
This is the core conflict of this novel, because the enemies that Phaethon perceives originate outside the Golden Oecumene. They do not share the same moral grounding as Phaethon and his sophotechs, and long, reasonably interesting stretches or time are spent discussing the differences and the ramifications between these two systems of thought. The problem is, to be blunt, either the author or the main character are completely wrong on some key points. In the course of these discussions, we learn more about the sophotechs and their "architecture" for lack of a better word. The point from the second novel is made again (and again and again) and augmented with even sillier ideas.
The thrust of the book is that morality is universal, invariant, and provable. The sophotechs are an expression of this-- they are intelligent and conscious, but incapable of contradiction, internal or external. Their will to compute (ie, their will to live) is a conscious thing which can exist only in the absence of internal contradiction. If you convince one that it is inconsistent, it will no longer desire to compute, and will vanish in a puff of logic, not unlike the machines that Captain Kirk routinely bollixed in just the same way.
Furthermore, THIS EXPLICITLY APPLIES TO ETHICS AND MORALITY!
At this point, mathematicians and computer scientists in the crowd should be feeling distinctly nauseous. This is because even twentieth century mathematicians know that this just isn't possible. Any sufficiently power system of logic must necessarily contain legal formulations that can be neither proven nor disproven. Further, no axiomatic system (and the sophotechs' system is axiomatic) can be proven to be consistent from the inside without actually being inconsistent to begin with.
Having gone this far, I don't even have to spoil the book and tell you who turns out to be right or wrong. It just doesn't matter. If the sophotechs are right, it can only be because the author decided to write a book that deals with a mathematical subject without bothering to look up Kurt Godel. If they are wrong, then the main character, Phaethon, supposedly one of the best engineers and computer scientists of his time, is a complete idiot.
It's a shame, too. There are some nice scenes in the book. Before I realized what the hell was bothering me about the whole set up (and really, I should have spotted it immediately, so perhaps that's a credit to the writing, I don't know) I was enjoying it quite a bit, wondering whether Phaethon was right or wrong in his gamble and his approach to defeating his enemy. There are some other nice ideas, too.
I should note also that, as in previous books, characterization and dialogue are not strong suits, either. The characterization has finally settled down a bit, and the three or four main characters are drawn with adequate consistency. The dialogue, on the other hand, is still crashingly disturbing. At no point can I imagine that these words are coming out of the mouths of people who live tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years in the future. They'd sound clumsy coming out of the mouths of characters from the 1980s.
My final recommendation here, is that if any of these sound interesting despite what I perceive as flaws, wait for the whole thing to come out in paperback.
Posted by John Novak at November 23, 2003 12:37 PM