Big ideas
The only realistic way for mankind to explore the
galaxy is to clone oneself (shatter) into 1,000, not quite identical, parts,
send them on different round trips around the Milky Way, and hold a reunion
every 10,000 years at which experiences are combined and shared. In this
universe a small handful of humans did this, each creating a `Line' based at
some titular `House'.
Another Line of civilisation is a reproducing set
of robots. There is one in the present universe, but an earlier one was wiped
out by the book's protagonist Gentian Line; it was an accident, but the
genocide has been masked for millions of years by the creation of a secret
Line called the House of Suns. These are people who oversee through covert
infiltration all aspects of the universe, and act to keep the dark secrets
hidden.
But the last few of the original robots escaped
the deathly man-made plague, and were instead trapped inside a star-dam, a
device which entombs stars to prevent local populations from being obliterated
by supernova explosions. Only this particular dam holds not a star, but the
entrance to a wormhole which leads to another galaxy. It is believed that the
remnant robot population would have thrived in this other galaxy, and now a
massive population of them is about to come back and reclaim the Milky
Way.
Local picture
Two of the shatterlings have formed a
relationship and are circumnavigating the local galaxy together, an act almost
unforgivable in the Line as it decreases the efficiency of the process of
galactic exploration. On their journey they pick up a member of the modern
robot population in a state of disrepair and with some amnesia. The big
reunion is about to happen and they are a good number of years late for that
appointment.
However, when they arrive at the meeting point
they find it has been obliterated, along with all but about fifty of the Line
of shatterlings. This results in a little murder-mystery novella, the end
result being the elucidation of the big ideas described above. It turns out
that two modern robots have learnt of the previous genocide, and planned on
revenge by both wiping out Gentian Line and opening the star-dam to let the
ancient population of robots back into this galaxy, presumably for total
domination. The book ends up being action-adventure as the efforts of these
two robots must be defeated.
Overview
The ideas and the stories that are woven around
them are wonderful, realistic.
But there is one thread, which follows the early
life of the original progenitor of the Line, which really has no connection
with the rest of the book. It is interesting back-story, but ultimately it
proves disappointing that this thread has nothing to do with any final
reveal.
As with all Reynolds' work, the book starts out
on a big plan, and then expands out by two orders of magnitude to even bigger
things. Often this produces works which seem to be unbalanced, the latter
part of the books seeming to betray the earlier reading effort. But not in
this case. This book, as a whole, is a wonderful exploration of ideas on
truly galactic scales, both in proportions of time and in those of space.
This is the best book of his that I have read. |
