The Cassini Division : A Novel (Fall Revolution) by
Ken MacLeod
"There are, still, still photographs of the woman who gate-crashed the party on the observation deck of the Casa Azores, one evening in the early..." (more) SIPs:
daughter wormhole, fast folk, attitude jets, artificial woman, command deck (more)
CAPs:
New Mars, Command Committee, Malley Mile, New Martians, Alexandra Port (more)
$6.99
and
eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
See details
Availability:
This title usually ships within 2 to 3 weeks. Please note that special order titles occasionally go out of print, or publishers run out of stock. These hard-to-find titles are not discounted and are subject to an additional charge of $1.99 per book due to the extra cost of ordering them. We will notify you within 2-3 weeks if we have trouble obtaining this title. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Amazon.com With his third novel, Ken MacLeod elaborates on the future timeline from his first two works, The Star Fraction (1995) and The Stone Canal (1996). Most relevant is book two, which established a colony on the remote world of New Mars via a spatial wormhole created by superhumans--transcendent machine-hosted intelligences called the "fast-folk." The original fast-folk crashed from too much contemplation of their metaphorical navels, but their descendants on Jupiter still harass Earth with virus transmissions that have killed off computers and the Internet. Enter heroine Ellen May Ngwethu of the Cassini Division, an elite space-going force created to defend against the fast-folk. Her wild doings in the 24th century's anarcho-socialist utopia make for fun reading--everyone will covet her smart-matter clothing that can become a spacesuit, combat outfit, evening gown, or satellite dish at will. But the Division's political philosophy is brutally tough, with alarming plans to use a planet-wrecking doomsday weapon against "enemies," who may not be hostile at all. In a climax of slam-bang space battle, MacLeod crashes the ongoing ethical debate into a brick wall and leaves you gasping. Witty, skillful, provocative, but just a trifle too glibly resolved. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly A rare but successful fusion of hard SF, space opera and serious political speculation, this is the third novel from MacLeod, who's Scottish, but his first to be published in the U.S. The story takes place in a 24th-century Sol system still recovering from a near-catastrophic clash between humanity and post-humanity, the latter a society of godlike, possibly insane former humans who have uploaded themselves into computers and set up their own civilization on Jupiter. At the center of the narrative stands Ellen May Ngwethu, commander of the spaceship Terrible Beauty and an officer in the Cassini Division. This semiautonomous military organization operates as Earth's frontline defense against the dangerous and enigmatic post-humans. Society on Earth, based on a unique combination of socialist and anarchist beliefs, has achieved a high degree of environmentally responsible prosperity in recent years, but the post-humans on Jupiter are an ever-increasing threat. As the forces of the Cassini Division prepare to destroy the post-humans without warning, Ngwethu finds herself on a dangerous mission through a wormhole to reestablish contact with another potential enemy, the long-lost, libertarian-capitalist interstellar colony of New Mars. Despite heavy doses of political theory, MacLeod generally manages to keep the first half of his novel moving at acceptable speed, aided by solid prose, a strong protagonist and some fascinating bits of high tech. The latter half of the tale, which features a battle in space, complete with comets used as superweapons, is more lively. This is an enjoyable and ambitious novel, and hopefully presages the American publication of MacLeod's earlier work. (July) FYI: MacLeod's first two novels, The Star Fraction and The Stone Canal, each received the Prometheus Award from the Libertarian Futurist Society. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
First Sentence:
There are, still, still photographs of the woman who gate-crashed the party on the observation deck of the Casa Azores, one evening in the early summer of 2303. Read the first pageStatistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
daughter wormhole, fast folk, attitude jets, artificial woman, command deck, ten thousand light years, virtual mass, mid deck
Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New Mars, Command Committee, Malley Mile, New Martians, Alexandra Port, Inner System, Solar Union, Carbon Conscience, Ship City, Solar Council, Ellen May Ngwethu, Mutual Protection, Running Dog, Earth Defence, Jonathan Wilde, Joe Lutterloh, Green Death, Turing Tester, Doctor Malley, Kuiper Belt, Dave Reid, Fall Revolution, Blue Goo, Tony Girard, Under Flyover
New! Books on Related Topics
|
Concordance
|
Text StatsBrowse Sample Pages: Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
The Cassini Division reads like an abridgment of a longer, better, more gripping novel. MacLeod almost seems in a rush to communicate his ideas, not realizing that he is instead shortchanging them. For example, he dedicates much of this short novel to the interactions among the socialist, anarchic Solar Union, the capitalist New Mars, and the posthuman Jupiter. He confronts his protagonist with valid ethical questions regarding her own motivations and her mission to destroy the Jovians. However, then MacLeod decides suddenly to resolve the tangible conflict, forgetting completely all concerns of moral ambiguity.
Overall, the plotting suffers from unsupported developments and twists, such as the physicist Malley's sudden decision to cast his lot in with the elite military of the Utopian society he abhors and from which he has exiled himself for decades. The best reason to read the Cassini Division is the political theory, which begs further development. In MacLeod's universe, is it really possible for the Jovians' radio and video transmissions to infect passive observers so easily with mental viruses, or is it a cover story to explain censorship on the part of the Solar Union, as Malley seems to hint once in the beginning? MacLeod leaves such possibilities completely unexplored.
For a much more developed treatment of the collision between a successful socialist anarchy and a capitalist state, do yourself a favor and read LeGuin's The Dispossessed.
Ellen May Ngwethu is the central character in this sequel to THE STONE CANAL, and this novel begins many years later. Ellen is a member of the Jupiter system based 'Cassini Division', their purpose is to destroy any posthuman life they encounter, primarily around the planet Jupiter. In the beginning of this novel Ellen travels to Earth as the commander of the fusion ship 'Terrible Beauty' to enlist the help of Dr. I.K. Malley, the physicist who knows more about the wormhole near Jupiter than anyone else, connecting our solar system to where New Mars is located, thousands of light years distant. The Cassini Division would like to travel through the wormhole to New Mars so they would be able to search for and destroy any posthumans found there.
There is debate as to whether or not the posthumans are conscious at all, and Macleod illustrates a racism here that one day may actually take place to our detriment and shame: is posthuman life conscious or just a computer program emulation of consciousness? Also discussed is the question of identity when a mind is uploaded into a computer, is the person the same as the original, or just a copy, with the original alive or dead giving added debate. This is a very complex topic and Macleod touches on it briefly as he presents to us a far ranging philosophical view of what it means to be human in this future he has spun, several hundred years from now, a future after the 'Singularity' in which science and technology has very nearly totally transformed life as we know it and how we live, great reading indeed. Plot and character development were good, and this novel is full of many interesting ideas, not necessarily original, including nano-fabrication of food and almost anything else, mind viruses, wormholes (most unlikely part of the book), anti-aging pills for eternal youth, mind back-ups in computers (with it's ensuing questions of identity), cloning, artificial people, smart suits (the book is worth reading just for this).
The book was a page turner for me, and I loved it's no-nonsense forward looking philosophy.
----------------------------------------------------------- Rating: "A" -- a fresh look at future politics, married to solid hard-sf extrapolation. Short & sweet, fast & funny, but with an appalling protagonist and a weak, pat ending. Even so, highly recommended.
This isn't a preview-type review. *SPOILER ALERT* You really shouldn't read past here if you haven't read the book. And much of what follows won't make sense if you do.
S P O I L E R S * * *
"A brilliant novel of ideas" -- front-cover blurb by Vernor Vinge.
The central anarcho-socialist idea -- the "True Knowledge" -- is, well.... "Might Makes Right". Ugh. I've always thought the best way to judge a person's character is to watch how they treat someone who has no power over them -- think back to good & bad bosses you've had. Fortunately, the "comrades" don't seem to apply this principle in their everyday lives. But the protagonist, Ellen May Ngewthu, is an appalling individual, a close analog to Gen. Curtis "Bomb 'em back to the Stone Age" LeMay. Unlike LeMay, she has the freedom to act, and completely destroys the "post-human" Jovian civilization for the offense of hijacking a third-party spaceship. Even the crudest SF carnography trots out a stronger casus belli to trigger mass genocide (at least for human aggressors).
Ellen has a remarkable ability to dehumanize her opponents -- bluntly, she's a violently paranoid racist. Even after personal contact with legally-human "robots" on New Mars has, kind of sort of, made her accept them as "part of *us*, whereas the Jovians -- 'You mean you would contemplate a union -- with *them*?'...."
".... Time for Plan B," Ellen decides, disregarding a direct order from the Solar Council delegate -- Plan B being genocide by comet bombardment. Worked, too. And the Jovies *were* baddies, through & through, in the pat, weak & rather disappointing ending. Feh.
Post-socialism (or anarcho-socialism) in MacLeod's Solar Union adopts the form, but little content, from present-day socialism and communism -- irony? (At least, I hope the character who says that Lenin was "just misunderstood" is intended as irony.) The Union economy isn't described in enough detail to judge whether it might actually work (though with enough to succeed as a fictional device). Perhaps there's more detail elsewhere -- this is the first MacLeod book I've read (but it won't be the last).
MacLeod has clearly read his Vinge -- though, curiously, the Union's policy is to avoid a Vingean singularity at almost any cost, and to destroy any culture that reaches it. For a more convincing (IMO) snapshot of a successful democratic anarchy, read Vinge's "The Ungoverned." Another sfnal predecessor that likely influenced MacLeod is Ursula K. LeGuin's wonderful "The Dispossessed" and related works. And read Hans Moravec's recent "Robots" for another view of the coming post-human era.
Humans as aliens: the MacLeod future history has encountered no aliens, so they've made their own -- the "fast folk" or post-humans are the most dramatic example, but all three societies here -- the post-socialists, the anarcho-capitalists and the fast folk -- are quite different from today's cultures, and quite strange to each other, a welcome relief from the more usual "futures" that are today with tailfins stuck on. And it's a pleasure to read a lean, non-bloated novel.
Not that there aren't some future-anachronisms here: helicopters, elevator attendants(!), brass-&-steel(!) mechanical computers.... Memo to MacLeod: brush up on your Drexlerian molecular rod-logic nanocomputers. Or if those won't work -- DNA-based biocomputation. Or if you *have* to go macro-mechanical, you'd use lightweight composites & light metals -- inertia in the gear trains, y'know? And anyway -- how likely is it that non-networked electronic computers would be crippled -- or taken over -- by "radio viruses" from Jupiter?
Tin Ear Dept: ".... I weren't that worried. Had you lot figured.... Just gosh-darn lucky...." (p. 168, US hc ed). Umm. Mebbe this rancher emigrated to Texas from the lil ol' UK?
Enough of this grumbling & nit-picking -- I had a great time reading "Cassini Division", which you might not have guessed, I just realized, from reading this far. I found myself deliberately slowing down to savor the book, something I last did for Phyllis Gotlieb's lapidary "Flesh & Gold". And it makes you think. A definite keeper, highly recommended despite the appalling genocidal "heroine."
Hey, it could be worse. Consider, for example, Barnes' "Kaleidoscope Century", or Barton's "When Heaven Fell." At least Ellen has self-doubts...
Happy reading! Pete Tillman (review written 10-99)
This is a reasonably entertaining book. The plot concerns the efforts of humans, assisted by advanced technology including everyone's fad favorite, nanotechnology, to combat sentient 'post-human' entities who developed from a melding of human minds with computer technology. This book contains a lot of entertaining ideas and suffers from MacLeod's tendency to pack a large volume of material into a relatively short book. Plot and characterization suffer considerably as a result.
Ken MacLeod is a skillful writer, one worth watching in the future. However, his literary execution falls far short of all the hoopla about him that I've read on the paperback cover. Unfortunately, there are many passages where it reads almost like your typical run-of-the-mill Star Trek novel. Somehow his deft prose and witty dialogue saves this from being a generic SF novel, yet I certainly was expecting more insight akin to the works of Arthur C. Clarke or Ursula K. LeGuin than Star Trek. Instead, MacLeod tries to blend space opera with nanotechnology and cyberpunk, and the result isn't a satisfactory mix. Yet if you're interested in some light SF reading, then do buy this book.
Flimsy, unlikeable SF, December 19, 2001
Reviewer: A reader This book is described as a political SF book of ideas. Where were they? So we're told the future is communist...but very little evidence is given as to how this works, why it works, and how it is enforced. It is simply stated as a matter of fact and hardly tied into the plot at all.
The main character, Ellen, is quite unlikeable. In fact, I was openly hostile towards her and was hoping the plot would twist around somehow in a way that put her at a grisly end.
As for the plot, there hardly is one. The conclusion is of no significance and there are no rewarding revelations to be had. Skip this book.
Cart Wish List Help
See all Editorial Reviews
Interesting concepts, but needs some more work, March 27, 2001
Ideas That Push The Envelope Of Possibilities!, June 9, 2002
Short & sweet, fast & funny, but a weak, pat ending, December 29, 2003
Flimsy, unlikeable SF, December 19, 2001