The Light Ages by Ian R. MacLeod, Earthlight, 拢17.99, ISBN 0743462424
Polystom by Adam Roberts, Gollancz, 拢17.99, ISBN 0575071788
Darwin鈥檚 Children by Greg Bear, HarperCollins, 拢17.99, ISBN 0002257327
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Natural History by Justina Robson, Pan Macmillan, 拢16.99, ISBN 0333907450
ENGINE ice glitters like spent dreams across the landscape of Ian R. MacLeod鈥檚 transformed Britain. The residue of aether use, it drifts through the air and builds up in sparkling hills at the edges of towns. The wealth of the richly imagined novel The Light Ages is built upon aether, a magical substance that powers engines and strengthens iron. Young Robert Borrows is unhappy with his life as the son of a lower master of a lesser guild, and when his mother is poisoned by aether and becomes a changeling he runs away, heading for London in search of a better life. Here he becomes caught up in political struggle as the third industrial age draws to a violent close. MacLeod has created a marvellous world of weird science and revolution. It鈥檚 grim in many ways, the characters often uncertain about what they want to achieve or how to achieve it, and the struggle for social change is never clear-cut.
In Polystom Adam Roberts gives us another hierarchy, in this case an almost static society of landed gentry and surprisingly passive servants. Polystom, the Steward of Enting, lives in a small solar system entirely filled with an atmosphere.
Moons and even other planets are thus within easy reach of propeller-driven aircraft and giant airships. The universe itself is fascinating, but too much is presented as lectures from Polystom鈥檚 scientist uncle. There are some good scenes of trench warfare in the last third of the book, but the philosophical quandary of the denouement is marred by more lectures and a lack of life in the characters.
Greg Bear develops his characters extremely well, and there is plenty of action, too, in Darwin鈥檚 Children. The millions of altered children born at the end of Darwin鈥檚 Radio are now 11 years old, and a fearful US government has rounded them up into camps.
These children鈥檚 faces express emotion directly through melanophores that change colour, and they use these and pheromonal scenting to communicate. The changes have been caused by SHEVA, a set of retroviruses that have lain dormant in the human genome for millions of years. Kaye Lang, who has a Shevite daughter herself, argues that this is an evolutionary leap, creating a new species of human. But government scientists are convinced they are dangerous mutants, probably carrying diseases with the potential to wipe out ordinary humans.
The government is rapidly eroding civil liberties as it attempts to contain the children and control their angry parents. Bear is very good at blending hard science, politics and fiction, and this is one of his strongest novels yet. Convincing, and at times depressing, it tackles the difficult question of whether a government gripped by prejudice and fear can be prevented from wiping out its perceived enemies.
Justina Robson takes the transformation of humanity even further in her third novel, Natural History. In a distant future, many humans have been 鈥淔orged鈥� into sentient workers who are part-mechanical, part-computerised, part-flesh. Shaped for specific jobs, they were originally designed as intelligent tools for the unevolved humans. But now many of them want freedom and a place away from what they call the 鈥渕onkeys鈥� where they can explore their own potential.
Then a Forged spaceship, Voyager Lonestar Isol, runs into a cloud of debris on her way to Barnard鈥檚 star, and discovers an alien technology that becomes whatever she wishes it to be. With her new jump engine, she visits the apparently abandoned alien homeworld and claims it for Forged humanity. Robson always tackles big ideas and, if she falls a little short in the telling, it鈥檚 still a fine effort of imagination.