Newton's Wake: A Space Opera
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Newton's Wake: A Space Opera, by Ken MacLeod, is a science fiction novel set in the 24st century. It follows human life after a partially cataclysmic Singularity, and in particular a conflict on a far-flung planet that upsets the prevailing order. It has elements of both transhumanism and satire and is written using the printed versions of common translation stereotypes (ie. Scottish people say "tae").
[edit] Plot
In the late 20th century, at the start of a war between the European nations and the United States, a US Army AI directing weapons overcame its programming to become self-aware. The 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 Online, the Knights of Enlightenment and DK. Examination of the posthuman relics has resulted in deep but sporadic knowledge of such things as FTL travel.
The main character is Lucinda Carlyle, a member of a Scottish family of entrepeneurs/thugs that controls a system of wormholes known as the Skein. Lucinda is a "combat archeologist", leading a team to the unexplored world of Eurydice to salvage any 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 (with cosmic string weapons far beyond those of other groups). Each side is more surprised than 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.
[edit] Nods
A character in the book, Benjamin Ben-Ami, is a playwright on Eurydice, and a master of revisionist fiction. His works include:
- A tank warfare scene in the scottish play MacBeth.
- A fallout shelter in the Gangster musical West Side Story.
- The replacement of the Sharks and the Jets in West Side Story with The Bin-Ladens and the Bushes.
- An Antiaircraft gun on Juliet's balcony in Romeo and Juliet.
