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Spin Trilogy #1
Spin State
From a stunning new voice in hard science fiction comes the thrilling story of one woman’s quest to wrest truth from chaos, love from violence, and reality from illusion in a post-human universe of emergent AIs, genetic constructs, and illegal wetware...
Spin State
UN Peacekeeper Major Catherine Li has made thirty-seven faster-than-light jumps in her lifetime—and has probably forgotten more than most people remember. But that’s what backup hard drives are for. And Li should know; she’s been hacking her memory for fifteen years in order to pass as human. But no memory upgrade can prepare Li for what she finds on Compson’s World: a mining colony she once called home and to which she is sent after a botched raid puts her on the bad side of the powers that be. A dead physicist who just happens to be her cloned twin. A missing dataset that could change the interstellar balance of power and turn a cold war hot. And a mining “accident” that is starting to look more and more like murder...
Suddenly Li is chasing a killer in an alien world miles underground where everyone has a secret. And one wrong turn in streamspace, one misstep in the dark alleys of blackmarket tech and interstellar espionage, one risky hookup with an AI could literally blow her mind.
Spin State
UN Peacekeeper Major Catherine Li has made thirty-seven faster-than-light jumps in her lifetime—and has probably forgotten more than most people remember. But that’s what backup hard drives are for. And Li should know; she’s been hacking her memory for fifteen years in order to pass as human. But no memory upgrade can prepare Li for what she finds on Compson’s World: a mining colony she once called home and to which she is sent after a botched raid puts her on the bad side of the powers that be. A dead physicist who just happens to be her cloned twin. A missing dataset that could change the interstellar balance of power and turn a cold war hot. And a mining “accident” that is starting to look more and more like murder...
Suddenly Li is chasing a killer in an alien world miles underground where everyone has a secret. And one wrong turn in streamspace, one misstep in the dark alleys of blackmarket tech and interstellar espionage, one risky hookup with an AI could literally blow her mind.
642 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 1, 2003
About the author
Chris Moriarty
10 books185 followersI am the author of SF novels SPIN STATE and SPIN CONTROL, and winner of the 2006 Philip K. Dick Award. Upcoming books include GHOST SPIN and THE INQUISITOR'S APPRENTICE, a middle grade fantasy set on New York's Lower East Side, circa 1900. I also have a regular book review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
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June 24, 2014(This review is from 2004.)
One Sentence Synopsis: A female soldier assigned as the new security captain for a problematic world has to investigate the death of a famous scientist and recover her lost notes before they fall into the wrong hands.
Genre: Post-cyberpunk murder-mystery with an edge of hard science and a lot of political intrigue.
Continuity: Completely standalone, though there is sequel potential.
Content: This one isn’t for the kiddies. It has references to sexuality—though it never gets graphic—and same-sex relationships are not considered abnormal. It is also sprinkled with swearing, depending on the character speaking.
Review:
This is a great book. It actually sat on my shelf for the better part of a year—I’m not as big into SF as I am fantasy. Not because of any real dislike for SF; it’s just that if I’m going to read genre, I might as well read the genre that I publish in so that I can keep up on what my peers are doing.
Two things made me finally pick up the novel. First, I noticed that ChrisChris was up for the Campbell this year. (That’s the ‘best new SF writer’ award given away with the Hugos.) Secondly, I noticed that Chris had been put on the panel I was going to moderate at Worldcon. (The ‘morality and the writer’ panel. Ironically, I finished the book, but Chris had some other conflict and had to drop out of that panel.)
Either way, I’m glad I picked the book up. It really does deserve the praise it’s been getting. While in some ways it feels like a first novel (I’ll get to those later) it has some very strong points (which I’ll also get to later).
The story is that of Catherine Li, a UN Peacekeeper and commander of a small-unit assault team. Near the beginning of the book, one of her missions goes wrong, and this puts her in political hot water. One of the generals pulls her out—or perhaps fans the flames—and promises Li that if she does one favor, her mistakes will be forgiven. That favor—travel to the world called Compson’s World and investigate the death of the woman who discovered FTL travel.
This plot, on its own, isn’t actually all that original. It goes through the motions of a murder mystery—a good one, admittedly, but not one with any real fantastic discoveries or plot revelations. The real genius in this book is not in plot, or even in character, but in worldbuilding. Moriarty (you’ve gotta love that name for a writer) crafts an amazingly original and interesting post-cyberpunk world. I can’t possibly go into all of the interesting elements of the setting, but I’ll try and give a few.
Li is completely hardwired. She always has access to the net, and to GPS. She always knows where she is, and whenever she looks at someone, she can download everything the databases know about them. There’s a cyberpunk virtual world set overlaying the real world as well, so she can pretty much travel anywhere anytime she wants—she just can’t go there physically. On top of this setting, there’s the mechanics of FTL. Doing FTL jumps causes your memory to degrade. So, soldiers like Li keep their memory backed-up on hard disks set into their heads. After jumping, they download their memories and restore who they used to be.
Like any great setting, the true brilliance of the novel comes not in simply thinking up original concepts, but in integrating them. The themes of memory loss, of ghostly memories resurfacing, and of net-hookup dependence play a vital role in the progression of the characters, and in the workings of the plot. This seamless integration of plot and world is what makes the book such a great read, and is what kept me fascinated all the way to the end. Moriarty considered the ramifications of the various different elements she’d introduced—for instance, Li wonders how much she can really trust her hard memory, since her UN supervisors have access to it. They could have rewritten anything into her past that they want, and she’d never know that the events weren’t true.
Now, there are a few weaknesses to Moriarty’s execution. First off, her descriptions are a bit weak. This grows especially problematic with the cyberspace aspect of the novel, since sometimes it’s very difficult to understand which characters are actually present, and which are only digitally present. I would have liked to have ‘seen’ a bit more throughout the entire novel. In addition, I did have some trouble latching onto Li as a character. Part of this was the memory dump problems, and part of it was because she didn’t come off as very sympathetic near the beginning of the book. I think this problem, however, may be more inherent to my preference for fantasy—that genre tends to spend a lot more time establishing character, and focusing on sympathetic characterization, than contemporary SF does.
Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. If you can deal with some profanity and mild sexuality, then I recommend it.
Specific criticisms:
Setting: Great setting elements, as discussed above. Compson’s World is also interesting, in that it’s a futuristic version of a coal-mining town. (In order to use FTL, you need crystals that are found in coal strains on Compson’s World. That is the only place they are found, and they can’t be produced synthetically—and they can’t be mined with heavy equipment, or they’ll break. So, you have a big group of oppressed miners who spend their lives in the mines.)
Originality: Great originality in some of the world elements. I do think that the Compson’s World idea is simply a re-imagining of Dune and its Spice, and the plot itself didn’t feel extremely original. However, this book definitely falls in the ‘new’ category, rather than the ‘rehashed’ category.
Characterization: Two fairly strong characters. (One an AI, who is probably the most interesting in the novel.) Some trouble with Li as a sympathetic character at the beginning, but nothing major. The book does get into some strong explorations of Li as a character, her motivations, and her past—and these are the things that carry the second half of the novel.
Plotting: Good without being great. Enough plot twists to keep things interesting, and some very good storytelling. The end climax wasn’t spectacular—a little ambiguous in places, a little too obvious in places—but it certainly was entertaining.
Fantastic Elements: Explained above. A very well done post-cyberpunk world. Those of you who like military SF and hard SF will probably also enjoy the book’s hard edge. I think there is a strong measure of military-grittiness to the book, as well as a good focus on the science. (It includes an extensive bibliography.)
One Sentence Synopsis: A female soldier assigned as the new security captain for a problematic world has to investigate the death of a famous scientist and recover her lost notes before they fall into the wrong hands.
Genre: Post-cyberpunk murder-mystery with an edge of hard science and a lot of political intrigue.
Continuity: Completely standalone, though there is sequel potential.
Content: This one isn’t for the kiddies. It has references to sexuality—though it never gets graphic—and same-sex relationships are not considered abnormal. It is also sprinkled with swearing, depending on the character speaking.
Review:
This is a great book. It actually sat on my shelf for the better part of a year—I’m not as big into SF as I am fantasy. Not because of any real dislike for SF; it’s just that if I’m going to read genre, I might as well read the genre that I publish in so that I can keep up on what my peers are doing.
Two things made me finally pick up the novel. First, I noticed that ChrisChris was up for the Campbell this year. (That’s the ‘best new SF writer’ award given away with the Hugos.) Secondly, I noticed that Chris had been put on the panel I was going to moderate at Worldcon. (The ‘morality and the writer’ panel. Ironically, I finished the book, but Chris had some other conflict and had to drop out of that panel.)
Either way, I’m glad I picked the book up. It really does deserve the praise it’s been getting. While in some ways it feels like a first novel (I’ll get to those later) it has some very strong points (which I’ll also get to later).
The story is that of Catherine Li, a UN Peacekeeper and commander of a small-unit assault team. Near the beginning of the book, one of her missions goes wrong, and this puts her in political hot water. One of the generals pulls her out—or perhaps fans the flames—and promises Li that if she does one favor, her mistakes will be forgiven. That favor—travel to the world called Compson’s World and investigate the death of the woman who discovered FTL travel.
This plot, on its own, isn’t actually all that original. It goes through the motions of a murder mystery—a good one, admittedly, but not one with any real fantastic discoveries or plot revelations. The real genius in this book is not in plot, or even in character, but in worldbuilding. Moriarty (you’ve gotta love that name for a writer) crafts an amazingly original and interesting post-cyberpunk world. I can’t possibly go into all of the interesting elements of the setting, but I’ll try and give a few.
Li is completely hardwired. She always has access to the net, and to GPS. She always knows where she is, and whenever she looks at someone, she can download everything the databases know about them. There’s a cyberpunk virtual world set overlaying the real world as well, so she can pretty much travel anywhere anytime she wants—she just can’t go there physically. On top of this setting, there’s the mechanics of FTL. Doing FTL jumps causes your memory to degrade. So, soldiers like Li keep their memory backed-up on hard disks set into their heads. After jumping, they download their memories and restore who they used to be.
Like any great setting, the true brilliance of the novel comes not in simply thinking up original concepts, but in integrating them. The themes of memory loss, of ghostly memories resurfacing, and of net-hookup dependence play a vital role in the progression of the characters, and in the workings of the plot. This seamless integration of plot and world is what makes the book such a great read, and is what kept me fascinated all the way to the end. Moriarty considered the ramifications of the various different elements she’d introduced—for instance, Li wonders how much she can really trust her hard memory, since her UN supervisors have access to it. They could have rewritten anything into her past that they want, and she’d never know that the events weren’t true.
Now, there are a few weaknesses to Moriarty’s execution. First off, her descriptions are a bit weak. This grows especially problematic with the cyberspace aspect of the novel, since sometimes it’s very difficult to understand which characters are actually present, and which are only digitally present. I would have liked to have ‘seen’ a bit more throughout the entire novel. In addition, I did have some trouble latching onto Li as a character. Part of this was the memory dump problems, and part of it was because she didn’t come off as very sympathetic near the beginning of the book. I think this problem, however, may be more inherent to my preference for fantasy—that genre tends to spend a lot more time establishing character, and focusing on sympathetic characterization, than contemporary SF does.
Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. If you can deal with some profanity and mild sexuality, then I recommend it.
Specific criticisms:
Setting: Great setting elements, as discussed above. Compson’s World is also interesting, in that it’s a futuristic version of a coal-mining town. (In order to use FTL, you need crystals that are found in coal strains on Compson’s World. That is the only place they are found, and they can’t be produced synthetically—and they can’t be mined with heavy equipment, or they’ll break. So, you have a big group of oppressed miners who spend their lives in the mines.)
Originality: Great originality in some of the world elements. I do think that the Compson’s World idea is simply a re-imagining of Dune and its Spice, and the plot itself didn’t feel extremely original. However, this book definitely falls in the ‘new’ category, rather than the ‘rehashed’ category.
Characterization: Two fairly strong characters. (One an AI, who is probably the most interesting in the novel.) Some trouble with Li as a sympathetic character at the beginning, but nothing major. The book does get into some strong explorations of Li as a character, her motivations, and her past—and these are the things that carry the second half of the novel.
Plotting: Good without being great. Enough plot twists to keep things interesting, and some very good storytelling. The end climax wasn’t spectacular—a little ambiguous in places, a little too obvious in places—but it certainly was entertaining.
Fantastic Elements: Explained above. A very well done post-cyberpunk world. Those of you who like military SF and hard SF will probably also enjoy the book’s hard edge. I think there is a strong measure of military-grittiness to the book, as well as a good focus on the science. (It includes an extensive bibliography.)
December 23, 2012
I am so pleased to have discovered this talented writer. In this debut novel from 2003, we get a compelling sci fi detective tale and thriller bound up with a fascinating human-AI (Artificial Intelligence) love story and themes of class struggle projected to a future where the defining characteristics of humanity have become ambiguous.
The beginning of the story drops you right into the middle of action, with the female protagonist Li leading United Nations Peacekeeper soldiers on a raid on an illegal genetics laboratory on a newly colonized world. The raid goes bad and lives are lost. As a consequence, a spymaster with the UN Security Forces branch is able to force Li to take on an investigation on Compson’s World, the planet she ran away from. The mines there are the only source of the crystals that make it possible for quantum teleportation of people and goods in a wormhole network controlled by the UN. A mine explosion has killed a famous physicist who was secretly working on a method to artificially create the quantum condensates. Li’s mission is to identify the killers and recover the precious data.
The reader has to imbibe the technological wonders at play as you go along, which can be exhilarating or frustrating depending on one’s tolerance of incomplete knowledge. Basically, the major forces in competition are: the UN worlds, which are run by those who are cyborgs with lots of wiring interfaces to their brains and make use normal humans as working class; the Syndicate worlds, which are populated by clones which are genetically engineered for total loyalty to the corporations; and the Artificial Intelligences, which have achieved citizen rights and contract out their services running the infrastructure. The factions all have interest in the mines and intersect with sectors of the mining community, including corporate lackeys, unionists, and cultists who believe the crystals to have spiritual powers. Li walks the tightrope in her tense and dangerous investigations. The complexity of the various schemes and alliances she comes up against felt a bit excessive to me, as was the length of the book.
She eventually teams up with her longstanding friend, the AI Cohen, who has a presence through virtual reality interfacing or through “shunting” into the body of properly wired humans. Her growing love for Cohen is undermined by barriers of trust in his motivations and “humanity”. She suspects his involvement in the disaster of the raid. In turn, he leads her to suspect her spymaster boss. These psychological dimensions of the tale and exploration of what it means to be human gave me the most pleasure in the reading.
I will be pursuing Moriarity’s sequel, Spin Control, from 2006, and a second sequel Ghost Spin, due out in 2013. Otherwise, he has only one other novel, a paranormal mystery.
The beginning of the story drops you right into the middle of action, with the female protagonist Li leading United Nations Peacekeeper soldiers on a raid on an illegal genetics laboratory on a newly colonized world. The raid goes bad and lives are lost. As a consequence, a spymaster with the UN Security Forces branch is able to force Li to take on an investigation on Compson’s World, the planet she ran away from. The mines there are the only source of the crystals that make it possible for quantum teleportation of people and goods in a wormhole network controlled by the UN. A mine explosion has killed a famous physicist who was secretly working on a method to artificially create the quantum condensates. Li’s mission is to identify the killers and recover the precious data.
The reader has to imbibe the technological wonders at play as you go along, which can be exhilarating or frustrating depending on one’s tolerance of incomplete knowledge. Basically, the major forces in competition are: the UN worlds, which are run by those who are cyborgs with lots of wiring interfaces to their brains and make use normal humans as working class; the Syndicate worlds, which are populated by clones which are genetically engineered for total loyalty to the corporations; and the Artificial Intelligences, which have achieved citizen rights and contract out their services running the infrastructure. The factions all have interest in the mines and intersect with sectors of the mining community, including corporate lackeys, unionists, and cultists who believe the crystals to have spiritual powers. Li walks the tightrope in her tense and dangerous investigations. The complexity of the various schemes and alliances she comes up against felt a bit excessive to me, as was the length of the book.
She eventually teams up with her longstanding friend, the AI Cohen, who has a presence through virtual reality interfacing or through “shunting” into the body of properly wired humans. Her growing love for Cohen is undermined by barriers of trust in his motivations and “humanity”. She suspects his involvement in the disaster of the raid. In turn, he leads her to suspect her spymaster boss. These psychological dimensions of the tale and exploration of what it means to be human gave me the most pleasure in the reading.
I will be pursuing Moriarity’s sequel, Spin Control, from 2006, and a second sequel Ghost Spin, due out in 2013. Otherwise, he has only one other novel, a paranormal mystery.
December 11, 2018
I don't know how exactly to categorize this story, it is a military sci-fi espionage mystery set in a post-cyberpunk world. The overall feel reminds me of The Quantum Thief but on a smaller and more manageable scale. It come with a bit of a learning curve but it intriguing enough to help you push through until it starts to click.
January 16, 2015
Oh my yes. Oh MY yes.
Some years ago, I made a conscious effort to switch my home genre from hard SF to fantasy. Fantasy had more women writing in it, and it seemed to be growing and developing as a genre, while SF stagnated. There seemed to be far fewer fantasy books where women existed only as prizes, as nonsentients, as set dressing, as motivation for the Man to do Manly Things for Manly Reasons. There were fewer (though still many, sadly) fantasy books where queer people and brown people just didn't exist. There was heart in fantasy, too, that hard SF seemed to have lost.
At first it was rough, trading spaceships for dragons. But I adjusted.
But this book. This book is everything I once hoped to find in hard SF and gave up on ever seeing there. It's smart and fun and imaginative and there's enough science to make you salivate. The characters are real people, the future comes in all colors, and queerness appears to be standard-issue. The technology and science affect society and politics. People remain people, but the world has changed.
And this book is good. It's compelling, it's twisty, it's smart. (Yes, okay, there was a point at like 60% in where I went, "Okay, that's it, that's one twist too many," but I got better.) I read it in a day. (After waiting several days to start it because it begins in my least favorite place: Right Before Everything Goes to Hell. But it's all up from there.) And I finished it wanting more. (And realized it's basically just the setup, and I'm not sure the rest of the series can follow through on the promise of this one. But I'm looking forward to finding out.)
And at the end there was a delightful bonus waiting for me. Most SF books are other genres filtered through an SF lens. Action adventure (but in space)! Court intrigue (but with clones)! Mystery (but with robots)! Literary fiction (but by Philip K. Dick)! It took me until the last 10% of this book to see what genre it's blended with, and once I did, I loved it even more.
Basically, this was awesome and satisfying and made me happy in a way SF hasn't in years. Yes, please, thank you.
Some years ago, I made a conscious effort to switch my home genre from hard SF to fantasy. Fantasy had more women writing in it, and it seemed to be growing and developing as a genre, while SF stagnated. There seemed to be far fewer fantasy books where women existed only as prizes, as nonsentients, as set dressing, as motivation for the Man to do Manly Things for Manly Reasons. There were fewer (though still many, sadly) fantasy books where queer people and brown people just didn't exist. There was heart in fantasy, too, that hard SF seemed to have lost.
At first it was rough, trading spaceships for dragons. But I adjusted.
But this book. This book is everything I once hoped to find in hard SF and gave up on ever seeing there. It's smart and fun and imaginative and there's enough science to make you salivate. The characters are real people, the future comes in all colors, and queerness appears to be standard-issue. The technology and science affect society and politics. People remain people, but the world has changed.
And this book is good. It's compelling, it's twisty, it's smart. (Yes, okay, there was a point at like 60% in where I went, "Okay, that's it, that's one twist too many," but I got better.) I read it in a day. (After waiting several days to start it because it begins in my least favorite place: Right Before Everything Goes to Hell. But it's all up from there.) And I finished it wanting more. (And realized it's basically just the setup, and I'm not sure the rest of the series can follow through on the promise of this one. But I'm looking forward to finding out.)
And at the end there was a delightful bonus waiting for me. Most SF books are other genres filtered through an SF lens. Action adventure (but in space)! Court intrigue (but with clones)! Mystery (but with robots)! Literary fiction (but by Philip K. Dick)! It took me until the last 10% of this book to see what genre it's blended with, and once I did, I loved it even more.
Basically, this was awesome and satisfying and made me happy in a way SF hasn't in years. Yes, please, thank you.
June 4, 2013
Just wonderful. All of the best elements of classic sci-fi and who-done-its, yet totally new at the same time. I was fascinated on every single page. The way she wove the science and human angles together was perfect. In an odd way, it reminded me of the first Dune book. Not the story in any way other than perhaps the genetics/breeding humans stuff, but because both universes were so fully imagined that they feel absolutely real, from technology to politics to interpersonal relationships, it all rings 100% true. I'd also compare it to Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series in the areas of writing skill, smart authors who don't make the reader feel dumb, likable but deeply flawed heroes, and great use of imagined and real technology. It also includes my favorite sci-fi elements of a deep question of morality with more than one legitimate answer (if not methods?) and an exploration of human, and non-human, rights. Without being preachy, always a tough thing to do.
June 2013 - I'm happy to say that I still loved it after reading it a second time. I was nervous that the glow would have worn off, but the second reading just let me appreciate and absorb the details more, and take note of a few things that I vaguely remember might have significance in the second book as well. I'm so thrilled that the third book in the trilogy has finally been released, I wasn't sure if it would ever happen at one point. Chris is one of the smartest authors I've come across. This series and her new YA historical fantasy series (totally different in every way except for the cleverness that permeates every bit of it, check it out) are real achievements, I'm so happy for her.
June 2013 - I'm happy to say that I still loved it after reading it a second time. I was nervous that the glow would have worn off, but the second reading just let me appreciate and absorb the details more, and take note of a few things that I vaguely remember might have significance in the second book as well. I'm so thrilled that the third book in the trilogy has finally been released, I wasn't sure if it would ever happen at one point. Chris is one of the smartest authors I've come across. This series and her new YA historical fantasy series (totally different in every way except for the cleverness that permeates every bit of it, check it out) are real achievements, I'm so happy for her.
June 1, 2009
Recommended to me by OddKaren, and upholds the general trend from her of high quality recs. OddKaren is always on the search for "Ladies and spaceships" books, (and who isn't?) and this one exceeds the genre.
Moriarty (I hope this is a pseud, as it would be an awesome one) writes a thickly textured future in which the definition of life is expanding in all directions: AIs, comprised of unstable networks of smaller awarenesses, are fighting for their civil rights, genetic constructs are second-class citizens, and thanks to quantum information transfer, the virtual and the real span the galaxy and lie overtop each other.
This book manages to be about all of those at once, without relegating any of them to set dressing. The physics in particular are at the heart of the book, and as an interested amateur, I was pretty quickly lost, although the pages of bibliography at the back (with less math-heavy papers helpfully starred) were sufficient to convince me that Moriarty knows what she's talking about, at least, a great deal more than I do. I hope this doesn't scare potential readers off, though.
Points of interest: sexuality in this world is a non-issue. Cohen, an AI and a major character, while doing his impression of "Shucks, I'm just folks" for a reporter, recommends she ask any of his "ex-wives and -husbands," for confirmation that he's very boring, really. Cohen, BTW, rents out brainspace in human beings in order to have a meat-presence, and doesn't particularly care the gender of the human; but Catherine Li, the equally bisexual protagonist (tending, I would say, slightly towards the homo- end of the Kinsey scale) thinks of him as unquestionably male.
Also, a future that is not white, or post-racially beige. Spanish is the lingua franca, Catherine's home-world was heavily settled by the Irish, Cohen thinks of himself as to some degree Jewish, and Catherine's gene-set, although constructed, has left her with Han features.
Catherine is an interesting protagonist. At times her self-deception annoyed me, but she is tough, capable, smart, and able to be very stupid. She is military, a genetic construct who has escaped registration and is living an illegal existence. Half cyborg, her military issue brain is the only thing that allows her to remember the past that quantum travel irreversibly erodes with every jump. Of course, she can not entirely trust the memories the military has both read- and write-access to. And Cohen is in love with her, but she can't remember all of her past with him. So maybe she has reasons to be twitchy and paranoid.
I read it one go. Recommended.
Moriarty (I hope this is a pseud, as it would be an awesome one) writes a thickly textured future in which the definition of life is expanding in all directions: AIs, comprised of unstable networks of smaller awarenesses, are fighting for their civil rights, genetic constructs are second-class citizens, and thanks to quantum information transfer, the virtual and the real span the galaxy and lie overtop each other.
This book manages to be about all of those at once, without relegating any of them to set dressing. The physics in particular are at the heart of the book, and as an interested amateur, I was pretty quickly lost, although the pages of bibliography at the back (with less math-heavy papers helpfully starred) were sufficient to convince me that Moriarty knows what she's talking about, at least, a great deal more than I do. I hope this doesn't scare potential readers off, though.
Points of interest: sexuality in this world is a non-issue. Cohen, an AI and a major character, while doing his impression of "Shucks, I'm just folks" for a reporter, recommends she ask any of his "ex-wives and -husbands," for confirmation that he's very boring, really. Cohen, BTW, rents out brainspace in human beings in order to have a meat-presence, and doesn't particularly care the gender of the human; but Catherine Li, the equally bisexual protagonist (tending, I would say, slightly towards the homo- end of the Kinsey scale) thinks of him as unquestionably male.
Also, a future that is not white, or post-racially beige. Spanish is the lingua franca, Catherine's home-world was heavily settled by the Irish, Cohen thinks of himself as to some degree Jewish, and Catherine's gene-set, although constructed, has left her with Han features.
Catherine is an interesting protagonist. At times her self-deception annoyed me, but she is tough, capable, smart, and able to be very stupid. She is military, a genetic construct who has escaped registration and is living an illegal existence. Half cyborg, her military issue brain is the only thing that allows her to remember the past that quantum travel irreversibly erodes with every jump. Of course, she can not entirely trust the memories the military has both read- and write-access to. And Cohen is in love with her, but she can't remember all of her past with him. So maybe she has reasons to be twitchy and paranoid.
I read it one go. Recommended.
March 14, 2008
It gives me great pleasure to finally be able to write a review on this amazing book. This is one of the best Hard SF books I've read in some time. It combines theories of quantum mechanics and multi-universe theory as well as confronting issues of class, humanity, identity and the nature of love all in a wonderfully creative and gripping way. Genetic constructs and sentient vs. nonsentient AIs, war, intrigue, betrayal, romance--this book has it all. And the main character Catherine Li, as well as the major supporting characters are so easy to fall into and believe. This is one of those books that had me holding my breath flipping pages, especially approaching the end.
If you only read one book this year--shame on you--Spin State is a damn good choice.
If you only read one book this year--shame on you--Spin State is a damn good choice.
July 5, 2011
Spin State sets a blistering pace and trusts the reader to catch on quickly. I had to read at a slower pace than usual or risk missing something important. There's a large cast of characters made larger by the concept of shunts that allow another to inhabit a person's body temporarily. There's murder and quantum physics and politics and artificial intelligence and human enhancement and emotional entanglement and a fine, flawed protagonist in soldier-with-a-secret Catherine Li. I'm not sure I understood all of the science, but like all good science fiction the science was a vehicle for the story.
March 4, 2023
Catherine Li is a UN Operative with a capital O, doing whatever wetwork is required out on the interplanetary frontier to keep humanity safe. And there's a lot of work that needs doing. While people back home in the metropole enjoy arts, culture, and fine food, the survival of baselines humans rests on a narrow beam above the tumultuous posthuman clades of artificial intelligences and genetic syndicates composed of indoctrinated clones bred to endure the rigors of space. UN superiority is maintained by their control of the FTL communication and transport grid, which requires precious Bose-Einstein condensate crystals from Compton's World, mined from coal veins with backbreaking labor.
After a mission goes wrong, Li is given a chance to redeem herself by carrying out an investigation/coverup on Compton's World. The UN's greatest physicist, Hannah Sharrif, and the local UN security chief, died along with hundreds of miners in a subterranean fire that seems linked, in some way, to Sharrif's experiments to find a synthetic replacement for Bose-Einstein condensate crystals. The job is a viper's pit of intrigue, and one that has brought Li back to a planet that she has tried very hard to forget.
Because Sharrif and Li are genetically identical, both from the same clone line, separated by 20 years. But while Sharrif has risen as a scientist against human racism, Li has a fabricated past that says she is only a quarter genetic construct, enough to pass the blood purity laws and work as a spy and soldier. Her augmented genetics have been boosted by specialist cybernetic hardware, making her a posthuman weapon, one who has been aimed by hidden hands, but may take control of her own path.
This book fires on all cylinders: Technothriller infiltration sequences shine, and don't outstay their welcome. Compton's World is a vivid Dickensian nightmare of coal dust and child labor, with a few thousand impoverished and exploited workers propping up prosperity for billions. By far my favorite parts of the book involved Cohen, a centuries old AI who sometimes works with Li on UN projects, but always on his own agenda. Cohen is a sybaritic humanophile, who's elegance and love of the finer things in life conceals an entirely alien intelligence. This is not a story about science and war and politics, though there is plenty of that. This is a love story, to it's quantum entangled core.
The hard scifi is full of provocative ideas, the characters are great, the world-building and plot well-trodden but executed with verve. 20 years on is a great time to read this book, and I'm excited for the rest of the series.
After a mission goes wrong, Li is given a chance to redeem herself by carrying out an investigation/coverup on Compton's World. The UN's greatest physicist, Hannah Sharrif, and the local UN security chief, died along with hundreds of miners in a subterranean fire that seems linked, in some way, to Sharrif's experiments to find a synthetic replacement for Bose-Einstein condensate crystals. The job is a viper's pit of intrigue, and one that has brought Li back to a planet that she has tried very hard to forget.
Because Sharrif and Li are genetically identical, both from the same clone line, separated by 20 years. But while Sharrif has risen as a scientist against human racism, Li has a fabricated past that says she is only a quarter genetic construct, enough to pass the blood purity laws and work as a spy and soldier. Her augmented genetics have been boosted by specialist cybernetic hardware, making her a posthuman weapon, one who has been aimed by hidden hands, but may take control of her own path.
This book fires on all cylinders: Technothriller infiltration sequences shine, and don't outstay their welcome. Compton's World is a vivid Dickensian nightmare of coal dust and child labor, with a few thousand impoverished and exploited workers propping up prosperity for billions. By far my favorite parts of the book involved Cohen, a centuries old AI who sometimes works with Li on UN projects, but always on his own agenda. Cohen is a sybaritic humanophile, who's elegance and love of the finer things in life conceals an entirely alien intelligence. This is not a story about science and war and politics, though there is plenty of that. This is a love story, to it's quantum entangled core.
The hard scifi is full of provocative ideas, the characters are great, the world-building and plot well-trodden but executed with verve. 20 years on is a great time to read this book, and I'm excited for the rest of the series.
January 22, 2023
I've left it too long and forgotten most of what I should say here, but I'm nearing the end of book 2 and as I collect my thoughts about that one, it reminded me of a few things about this one.
I think this was written rather well, if you'll excuse a few boldly stated philosophically shaky sentiments. The characters felt real and appealing, their motivations were interesting and the main investigation of the plot is engagingly unravelled.
The book took a serious change of pace and style at about two thirds of the way through it. It had felt like a nearly complete story, but after somewhere around that point it carried on with a much more personal series of events. The love story and the details of how all the half-lies and mistrust have worked to shape the eventual outcome.
I didn't really get anything out of the quantum vibe. But I think I wasn't really listening properly to those details. So I think maybe I would read this again some day.
I think this was written rather well, if you'll excuse a few boldly stated philosophically shaky sentiments. The characters felt real and appealing, their motivations were interesting and the main investigation of the plot is engagingly unravelled.
The book took a serious change of pace and style at about two thirds of the way through it. It had felt like a nearly complete story, but after somewhere around that point it carried on with a much more personal series of events. The love story and the details of how all the half-lies and mistrust have worked to shape the eventual outcome.
I didn't really get anything out of the quantum vibe. But I think I wasn't really listening properly to those details. So I think maybe I would read this again some day.
December 28, 2022
What an astounding book ! Hard science fiction with echoes of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Richard K. Morgan, Derek Kunsken and Hannu Rajaniemi. And, this was apparently her first book ! Nominated for numerous awards, I am surprised it didn't win any and wasn't nominated for the Hugo or the Nebula. A wonderful mix of hard sci/fi quantum mechanics with a murder mystery, a love story and a "kick ass" bit of military fiction. Excellent plot, character development and pacing. My only disappointment is that the author has apparently dropped off the map since 2013 after completing the trilogy of which this is the first book and two YA fantasies I googled her name and found no reference to her demise or illness. Therefore, I will continue to holdout hope that she resurfaces with another wonderful book such as this one.
December 18, 2010
Genre: Science Fiction (post-human, far dark future) / Romance
Brainycat's 5 B's:
boobs: 1 // blood: 3 // bombs: 3 // bondage: 1 // blasphemy: 2
Currently listening to: ESA "The Sea and the Silence"
Sometimes books have a singular aspect that attract their readership despite all the other failings; one thing the author got so right that all the problems with the book seem trite and easily overlooked. What Spin State got right for me was the protagonist. Catherine Li is made of pure win. She's no Takeshi Kovacs, mind you, but that's because she's more human and fallible. I love Catherine. She profoundly reminds me of myself. Like Catherine, I have numerous large gaps in my memory that I have to work around on a daily basis. I wish I could say mine were from something as exotic as quantum travel, but unfortunately mine come from a disastrously terrible childhood and a 25 year long relationship with alchohol. I, too, have my secrets that I try so hard to keep, so hard that the size and shape of what I don't talk about must be clear to everyone around me. I keep my heart closed and find ways to avoid entangling my feelings with other people, even people who offer me their unconditional love. I've done things I'm ashamed of and wish I could undo and forget. I use my wit to forge my simmering rage into a scathing snarkiness designed to keep everyone around me at arm's length.
And just like myself, Catherine refuses to feel regret. Catherine owns her foibles and her strengths. She owns up to everything she's done, every decision she's made. She's not proud of everything she's done, but she takes responsibility for the way she's lived her life and the decisions she's made and has no patience for anyone who tries to judge her. Long before we meet her as she prepares to lead a raid into an illegal bioware researach lab, Catherine had made the decision to live her life on her own terms with no apologies to anyone else, doing what she feels is best for her.
This book crosses a lot of genres, but I don't know if it really nails any of them. I guess that makes it "literature" or something; I'll leave it to the publicists to decide what they want to put on the dust jacket. This book is a romance wrapped up in a detective story set in a far dark future. With capital "s" Science scattered around inside it. Everything we know about how quantum entanglement works is vividly illustrated in this book. However, I don't know if I'd call this a "hard science fiction" book. Science does not drive the story. The conflict and resolution arcs are all intra and interpersonal. As far as my understanding goes, the science is accurate but I can't say that any new conceptualizations of the ramifications of quantum physics were illustrated. This book is not of the intellectual density I've come to expect from (for example) Charles Stross.
After the introductory scene that doesn't tell but shows us that Catherine is a valuable pawn in the interstellar war between "humans" - people born with randomly recombinated genes from two parents and "constructs" - people born from artificial wombs and tailored genesets. Catherine's genetics put her in a grey legal area. She was born on Compson's World in a creche with a set of genes designed to optimize her body for the mining of Bose-Einstein crystals, but she had her genes altered so she could join the human UN military and begin a career far and away from the victorian-esque inequalities of her homeworld.
The third powerbase in this universe are the emergent artificial intelligences. Some of them hundreds of years old, they've grown so complex they've aquired a computational equivalence of self-awareness and what philosophers have historically referred to as "consciousness". The AIs are strictly regulated by the UN and feared, albeit to a slightly lesser degree, by the constructs. Every emergent AI has a failsafe loopback built into their code, allowing human operators to break apart their networks if the AI gets "out of hand".
Bose-Einstein crystals are the most valuable substance in the universe and the technological focalpoint of the story. The crystals occur naturally, deep in coal deposits on Compson's World, a planet at the edge of known human space but at the center of the human's economic engines. The crystals are entangled with each other, allowing information to exist simultaneously in crystals that are split apart into smaller pieces. This is the technology that allows the UN to maintain control of most of the known worlds. With their monopoly on the ability to move information (and everything is information in the quantum world - including physical objects) instantly across the galaxy, they maintain strategic superiority over the handful of construct controlled worlds.
But enough about the world. It's well thought out in that "human nature won't change even when technology does" sort of way. Capitalism is still the state-sponsored economic system, with it's attendant inequalites and short sighted policies. It all hangs together and 'gels' though we really don't see very much of it, as most of the story takes place on Compson's World or in the "spinstream", the quantum entangled heir to cyberspace.
Against this verge-of-post-human backdrop, the real story happens. Relationships drive the story, and the internal life of Catherine is where all the important struggles take place. The first relationships we see are to her team of hardened warriors. She feels protective of them; she is able to freely admit her feelings to herself when the objects of her affection don't expect anything from her other than for her to do her job. We also meet Cohen, the most personable of the AIs, who enjoys experiencing the world through human "shunts", people who allow him to take over their bodies and temporarily replace their minds with his own. After the introductory fiasco, we meet Helen Nguyen who is Catherine's superior officer. Helen sends Catherine to her homeworld to find out why Hannah Sharifi, who discovered how to make quantum entanglement practical, died under mysterious circumstances while researching the Bose-Einstein crystals. Catherine begins her investigation and runs into the following characters that, while dressed up for this particular dance, have been around for quite a while:
1) The perverted, sadistic executive who's skimming off the top of the till
2) His psychopathic security agent
3) The helpless damsel in distress who tugs at Catherine's heartstrings to get what she wants
4) The earnest young officer full of optimism who plays by the rules to advance his career
5) Salty old miners who remember her father and grudgingly offer her a modicum of respect based on his memory
This is a pretty standard setup for what becomes a pretty standard scifi/detective plot. As I was reading the story, I kept thinking, "This is what they did in all those other books." and "That same problem happens (everytime there's a clandestine EVA)" and "This character is just like every other character in this position and setting." Honestly, the action and detective parts of the plot feel derivative. Maybe I've read too much cyberpunk. Maybe I'm expecting too much. The ultimate groaner moment for me was when Cohen allows Catherine's consciousness into his internal networks. How is the AI's mind described? Cohen creates a virtual house, each room off a long hallway representing a part of himself, and each object in the room representing a dataset. Yawn. I've only seen that a million times before; it's so overdone Hollywood has even put it into film.*
As the story progresses, Catherine is caught between her loyalty to Helen and her attraction to Cohen. Though it's not clear to Catherine until much later in the book (with a thorny rose analogy - ohpleasegawdmakeitstop) Cohen is utterly smitten with Catherine and is probably the one character that actually has Catherine's best interests at heart. Everyone but Catherine sees this from about page thirty onwards. Their mutual arcs intersect when Cohen has to inhabit wetware implanted into Catherine so Catherine can carry Cohen to meet a semisentient emergent AI that doesn't have any network access (again, more of the overused cyberpunk tropes) and Catherine can't handle the interface. After a long heart to heart and nearly kissing (thepaininmyheart itachesitaches) Catherine comes to understand that she has to open herself and her feelings and experiences to Cohen, and allow herself to be truly intimate with him. Not for her sake, or for the sake of their years-long, on again off again relationship, but so they can complete their mission. Of course once she opens up to him (she just needed to meet the right guy?) all is milk and honey and they're wildly in love with each other tilldeathdotheypart.
They manage to complete their mission together, double crosses are crossed, people die, tears and gnashing of teeth ensue. Until the story finally wraps up in a climax that should've been obvious to anyone who's ever read a story involving emergent AIs many, many pages ago. The denouement is mercifully short, and puts the reader exactly where you expected the story to end - the surprise twists are only surprising to Catherine, not to the reader.
But I liked this book. Simply because the characterization is awesome. The auther excells at using dialogue to hint at internal motivations and conflicts, drawing feelings not with a wide brush but rather a pointillism that is succinct and believable. The story is shown to the reader, rather than told, and the command of the language is refreshing. Neither windy like China Mieville nor terse and hammery like Gibson's earlier works, it flows naturally and is a pleasure to read. Cohen is believable as an AI, and I think his character captures the essence of masculinity very well. He is the perfect counterpoint to Catherines hard-edged ("thorny") over-the-top femininity. The story moves in relationships, flowing through dialogue that is witty and well honed. Every character has a unique, believable voice that makes the setting fall away like background chatter in an restaurant.
If I weren't such a lazy reviewer, I'd find some quotes to illustrate my points. Instead, I'm going to wrap this up and recommend that you read the book - not as a scifi adventure, but as a romance with a strong (brittle) warrior heroine and the man who's wise enough not to change her, or try to box her in, but instead let her be herself and come to him on her own terms.
*brainycat's first law of creativity in scifi: "Hollywood is phobic of innovation, therefore anything they commit to film is already old, worn out, overused and boring."
Brainycat's 5 B's:
boobs: 1 // blood: 3 // bombs: 3 // bondage: 1 // blasphemy: 2
Currently listening to: ESA "The Sea and the Silence"
Sometimes books have a singular aspect that attract their readership despite all the other failings; one thing the author got so right that all the problems with the book seem trite and easily overlooked. What Spin State got right for me was the protagonist. Catherine Li is made of pure win. She's no Takeshi Kovacs, mind you, but that's because she's more human and fallible. I love Catherine. She profoundly reminds me of myself. Like Catherine, I have numerous large gaps in my memory that I have to work around on a daily basis. I wish I could say mine were from something as exotic as quantum travel, but unfortunately mine come from a disastrously terrible childhood and a 25 year long relationship with alchohol. I, too, have my secrets that I try so hard to keep, so hard that the size and shape of what I don't talk about must be clear to everyone around me. I keep my heart closed and find ways to avoid entangling my feelings with other people, even people who offer me their unconditional love. I've done things I'm ashamed of and wish I could undo and forget. I use my wit to forge my simmering rage into a scathing snarkiness designed to keep everyone around me at arm's length.
And just like myself, Catherine refuses to feel regret. Catherine owns her foibles and her strengths. She owns up to everything she's done, every decision she's made. She's not proud of everything she's done, but she takes responsibility for the way she's lived her life and the decisions she's made and has no patience for anyone who tries to judge her. Long before we meet her as she prepares to lead a raid into an illegal bioware researach lab, Catherine had made the decision to live her life on her own terms with no apologies to anyone else, doing what she feels is best for her.
This book crosses a lot of genres, but I don't know if it really nails any of them. I guess that makes it "literature" or something; I'll leave it to the publicists to decide what they want to put on the dust jacket. This book is a romance wrapped up in a detective story set in a far dark future. With capital "s" Science scattered around inside it. Everything we know about how quantum entanglement works is vividly illustrated in this book. However, I don't know if I'd call this a "hard science fiction" book. Science does not drive the story. The conflict and resolution arcs are all intra and interpersonal. As far as my understanding goes, the science is accurate but I can't say that any new conceptualizations of the ramifications of quantum physics were illustrated. This book is not of the intellectual density I've come to expect from (for example) Charles Stross.
After the introductory scene that doesn't tell but shows us that Catherine is a valuable pawn in the interstellar war between "humans" - people born with randomly recombinated genes from two parents and "constructs" - people born from artificial wombs and tailored genesets. Catherine's genetics put her in a grey legal area. She was born on Compson's World in a creche with a set of genes designed to optimize her body for the mining of Bose-Einstein crystals, but she had her genes altered so she could join the human UN military and begin a career far and away from the victorian-esque inequalities of her homeworld.
The third powerbase in this universe are the emergent artificial intelligences. Some of them hundreds of years old, they've grown so complex they've aquired a computational equivalence of self-awareness and what philosophers have historically referred to as "consciousness". The AIs are strictly regulated by the UN and feared, albeit to a slightly lesser degree, by the constructs. Every emergent AI has a failsafe loopback built into their code, allowing human operators to break apart their networks if the AI gets "out of hand".
Bose-Einstein crystals are the most valuable substance in the universe and the technological focalpoint of the story. The crystals occur naturally, deep in coal deposits on Compson's World, a planet at the edge of known human space but at the center of the human's economic engines. The crystals are entangled with each other, allowing information to exist simultaneously in crystals that are split apart into smaller pieces. This is the technology that allows the UN to maintain control of most of the known worlds. With their monopoly on the ability to move information (and everything is information in the quantum world - including physical objects) instantly across the galaxy, they maintain strategic superiority over the handful of construct controlled worlds.
But enough about the world. It's well thought out in that "human nature won't change even when technology does" sort of way. Capitalism is still the state-sponsored economic system, with it's attendant inequalites and short sighted policies. It all hangs together and 'gels' though we really don't see very much of it, as most of the story takes place on Compson's World or in the "spinstream", the quantum entangled heir to cyberspace.
Against this verge-of-post-human backdrop, the real story happens. Relationships drive the story, and the internal life of Catherine is where all the important struggles take place. The first relationships we see are to her team of hardened warriors. She feels protective of them; she is able to freely admit her feelings to herself when the objects of her affection don't expect anything from her other than for her to do her job. We also meet Cohen, the most personable of the AIs, who enjoys experiencing the world through human "shunts", people who allow him to take over their bodies and temporarily replace their minds with his own. After the introductory fiasco, we meet Helen Nguyen who is Catherine's superior officer. Helen sends Catherine to her homeworld to find out why Hannah Sharifi, who discovered how to make quantum entanglement practical, died under mysterious circumstances while researching the Bose-Einstein crystals. Catherine begins her investigation and runs into the following characters that, while dressed up for this particular dance, have been around for quite a while:
1) The perverted, sadistic executive who's skimming off the top of the till
2) His psychopathic security agent
3) The helpless damsel in distress who tugs at Catherine's heartstrings to get what she wants
4) The earnest young officer full of optimism who plays by the rules to advance his career
5) Salty old miners who remember her father and grudgingly offer her a modicum of respect based on his memory
This is a pretty standard setup for what becomes a pretty standard scifi/detective plot. As I was reading the story, I kept thinking, "This is what they did in all those other books." and "That same problem happens (everytime there's a clandestine EVA)" and "This character is just like every other character in this position and setting." Honestly, the action and detective parts of the plot feel derivative. Maybe I've read too much cyberpunk. Maybe I'm expecting too much. The ultimate groaner moment for me was when Cohen allows Catherine's consciousness into his internal networks. How is the AI's mind described? Cohen creates a virtual house, each room off a long hallway representing a part of himself, and each object in the room representing a dataset. Yawn. I've only seen that a million times before; it's so overdone Hollywood has even put it into film.*
As the story progresses, Catherine is caught between her loyalty to Helen and her attraction to Cohen. Though it's not clear to Catherine until much later in the book (with a thorny rose analogy - ohpleasegawdmakeitstop) Cohen is utterly smitten with Catherine and is probably the one character that actually has Catherine's best interests at heart. Everyone but Catherine sees this from about page thirty onwards. Their mutual arcs intersect when Cohen has to inhabit wetware implanted into Catherine so Catherine can carry Cohen to meet a semisentient emergent AI that doesn't have any network access (again, more of the overused cyberpunk tropes) and Catherine can't handle the interface. After a long heart to heart and nearly kissing (thepaininmyheart itachesitaches) Catherine comes to understand that she has to open herself and her feelings and experiences to Cohen, and allow herself to be truly intimate with him. Not for her sake, or for the sake of their years-long, on again off again relationship, but so they can complete their mission. Of course once she opens up to him (she just needed to meet the right guy?) all is milk and honey and they're wildly in love with each other tilldeathdotheypart.
They manage to complete their mission together, double crosses are crossed, people die, tears and gnashing of teeth ensue. Until the story finally wraps up in a climax that should've been obvious to anyone who's ever read a story involving emergent AIs many, many pages ago. The denouement is mercifully short, and puts the reader exactly where you expected the story to end - the surprise twists are only surprising to Catherine, not to the reader.
But I liked this book. Simply because the characterization is awesome. The auther excells at using dialogue to hint at internal motivations and conflicts, drawing feelings not with a wide brush but rather a pointillism that is succinct and believable. The story is shown to the reader, rather than told, and the command of the language is refreshing. Neither windy like China Mieville nor terse and hammery like Gibson's earlier works, it flows naturally and is a pleasure to read. Cohen is believable as an AI, and I think his character captures the essence of masculinity very well. He is the perfect counterpoint to Catherines hard-edged ("thorny") over-the-top femininity. The story moves in relationships, flowing through dialogue that is witty and well honed. Every character has a unique, believable voice that makes the setting fall away like background chatter in an restaurant.
If I weren't such a lazy reviewer, I'd find some quotes to illustrate my points. Instead, I'm going to wrap this up and recommend that you read the book - not as a scifi adventure, but as a romance with a strong (brittle) warrior heroine and the man who's wise enough not to change her, or try to box her in, but instead let her be herself and come to him on her own terms.
*brainycat's first law of creativity in scifi: "Hollywood is phobic of innovation, therefore anything they commit to film is already old, worn out, overused and boring."
June 16, 2020
I read 'Spin State' at the wrong time. It was first published in 2003 and I would have wholeheartedly enjoyed it back then. I still love sci-fi, but in 2020 found this novel extremely predictable as I've read similar plots so many times before. That may sound damning, but don't get me wrong about the novel's quality. It works very well as a hard sci-fi thriller and there are some interesting features. I waited in vain for the plot to surprise me, though. The protagonist is a bisexual woman, which is pleasantly atypical for hard sci-fi. However, she is also a jaded and traumatised soldier with a dark past who, after a mission gone disastrously wrong, is sent back to her home planet to investigate a mysterious death. Who can she trust? Will she have to reckon with her repressed traumatic past? Is there a dark conspiracy at work? Etc. The noir tropes are all present and deployed efficiently: brutal boss-guy, femme fatale, jacked-up goons, downtrodden peons, and a mystery item needing to be recovered (dataset, in this instance).
The action is set on a planet that combines the ultra-high tech (genetically engineered clones, AI, interstellar travel) with the archaic (child labour in mines). While the instability of this is shown via wildcat strikes, it did verge upon hyperbole. With the technology available, it seemed counterproductive and frankly stupid to have so few safety monitoring measures. It's bad for profits when the mine is shut down by an explosion that kills hundreds and was entirely preventable! I mean, capitalism can certainly be that way, but the idea that Germinal would still be happening in a situation of seemingly unlimited technology and labour shortage stretches credulity. The mine scenes were suitably alarming and claustrophobic, though. I might have appreciated the whole thing more had it been from the perspective of the miners, actually. Focusing on the futuristic struggle over employment rights would have made for a more original plot structure.
The kids are down the mine digging for a mysterious crystal that allows FTL travel. A famous scientist died down there while investigating the crystal and it is up to our protagonist, Li, to discover how, why, and who. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of mystery about it. Her investigation hits all the expected notes: warnings from a shadowy organisation, uncertainty about who to trust, reminders of her dark past, an elaborate heist, an ill-advised one night stand, and a great deal of exposition. These are all done very competently, I just found them entirely unsurprising. Perhaps my brain is still in the Pynchon Zone after Gravity's Rainbow and expects fiction to be not just cryptic but incomprehensibly bizarre.
The most interesting element, to my mind, was Cohen the seductive Jewish AI. I was amused by the fact that everyone could tell when he was piloting a body as they became at least 50% sexier. It was a refreshing reversal of the sexy-lady-robot trope, as not only is Cohen always gendered as male, but his seductiveness seems entirely unrelated to his embodiment. I also liked his memory palace and decadent tastes. I also appreciated the references to interplanetary diasporas that had survived after humanity left the ruined Earth to colonise the stars. Ireland may have become uninhabitable, but the IRA is still going strong.
Li's constant agonising over who to trust became slightly tiresome. She's in a noir plotline, so obviously should not trust anyone whatsoever. I did sympathise with her, as she's so traumatised and in need of help yet has no support network whatsoever. It baffles me that in hard sci-fi settings like this all kinds of complex cybernetic enhancement and mental manipulation are possible, yet apparently no-one uses them for PTSD treatment so that soldiers can remain functional. Given the publishing date, perhaps this was a comment on young soldiers traumatised by the War on Terror? But why do such people always end up investigating a mysterious death that turns out to be part of a larger conspiracy? It must be a narrative law.
The action is set on a planet that combines the ultra-high tech (genetically engineered clones, AI, interstellar travel) with the archaic (child labour in mines). While the instability of this is shown via wildcat strikes, it did verge upon hyperbole. With the technology available, it seemed counterproductive and frankly stupid to have so few safety monitoring measures. It's bad for profits when the mine is shut down by an explosion that kills hundreds and was entirely preventable! I mean, capitalism can certainly be that way, but the idea that Germinal would still be happening in a situation of seemingly unlimited technology and labour shortage stretches credulity. The mine scenes were suitably alarming and claustrophobic, though. I might have appreciated the whole thing more had it been from the perspective of the miners, actually. Focusing on the futuristic struggle over employment rights would have made for a more original plot structure.
The kids are down the mine digging for a mysterious crystal that allows FTL travel. A famous scientist died down there while investigating the crystal and it is up to our protagonist, Li, to discover how, why, and who. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of mystery about it. Her investigation hits all the expected notes: warnings from a shadowy organisation, uncertainty about who to trust, reminders of her dark past, an elaborate heist, an ill-advised one night stand, and a great deal of exposition. These are all done very competently, I just found them entirely unsurprising. Perhaps my brain is still in the Pynchon Zone after Gravity's Rainbow and expects fiction to be not just cryptic but incomprehensibly bizarre.
The most interesting element, to my mind, was Cohen the seductive Jewish AI. I was amused by the fact that everyone could tell when he was piloting a body as they became at least 50% sexier. It was a refreshing reversal of the sexy-lady-robot trope, as not only is Cohen always gendered as male, but his seductiveness seems entirely unrelated to his embodiment. I also liked his memory palace and decadent tastes. I also appreciated the references to interplanetary diasporas that had survived after humanity left the ruined Earth to colonise the stars. Ireland may have become uninhabitable, but the IRA is still going strong.
Li's constant agonising over who to trust became slightly tiresome. She's in a noir plotline, so obviously should not trust anyone whatsoever. I did sympathise with her, as she's so traumatised and in need of help yet has no support network whatsoever. It baffles me that in hard sci-fi settings like this all kinds of complex cybernetic enhancement and mental manipulation are possible, yet apparently no-one uses them for PTSD treatment so that soldiers can remain functional. Given the publishing date, perhaps this was a comment on young soldiers traumatised by the War on Terror? But why do such people always end up investigating a mysterious death that turns out to be part of a larger conspiracy? It must be a narrative law.
May 26, 2013
Perhaps I should be upfront, this is not a 4 star book yet I could not bring myself to give it a mere 3 stars for I feel I owe it. Thanks to this book I have had an enjoyable introduction to the world of Hard Science Fiction and I know that could have easily not been the case.
Spin State is, in a way, two books:
1. An inventive extrapolation forwards of human science and human nature to conjure a world which is at once familiar in its motivations but monumentally different in its experiences
2. A mediocre and unsatisfying noir-esque who dunnit.
The first book is worthy of the 4 stars for its faithfulness to scientific possibility (although with some artistic licence) and its realistic views on human reaction to perfection and artificial intelligence. The second book has; some extremely 2 dimensional and predictable characters; a protagonist who hints at inner turmoil and issues but ultimately comes across as a bit dippy when it comes to personal choices and finally a predictable storyline.
The only thing that saves the second book from worthlessness is the character of the AI, partly because he's just plain likeable and partly because his nature is not just a human being on a hard drive.
I may be expecting too much of the Spin State, but it brings it on itself for having such a stellar proposition and setting so the storyline stands out all the worse in comparison but none the less I would recommend it.
lets put it this way, I'm buying the sequel.
Spin State is, in a way, two books:
1. An inventive extrapolation forwards of human science and human nature to conjure a world which is at once familiar in its motivations but monumentally different in its experiences
2. A mediocre and unsatisfying noir-esque who dunnit.
The first book is worthy of the 4 stars for its faithfulness to scientific possibility (although with some artistic licence) and its realistic views on human reaction to perfection and artificial intelligence. The second book has; some extremely 2 dimensional and predictable characters; a protagonist who hints at inner turmoil and issues but ultimately comes across as a bit dippy when it comes to personal choices and finally a predictable storyline.
The only thing that saves the second book from worthlessness is the character of the AI, partly because he's just plain likeable and partly because his nature is not just a human being on a hard drive.
I may be expecting too much of the Spin State, but it brings it on itself for having such a stellar proposition and setting so the storyline stands out all the worse in comparison but none the less I would recommend it.
lets put it this way, I'm buying the sequel.
February 6, 2015
There is nothing wrong with world building, as long as that world is being built in service of the story. (See Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, Asimov's The Gods Themselves, or nearly any James Tiptree story.) In Spin State, there are piles and piles of endlessly dense and often incomprehensible details about a dystopian world, all in order to tell a straightforward and less than genre-bending murder mystery. Painted in tiny yet muddied strokes (the pointillism of science fiction?) the "mystery" itself is straight out of Raymond Chandler - including a beautiful but dangerous dame in distress, corrupt authoritative agencies, shady labor union dealings, and blackmail.
January 18, 2015
Oh my god. Oh my GOD.
Hard SF - three pages of "recommended reading"-type hard SF - with genetically modified humans and AIs and weird-ass xenobiology AND A MOTHERFUCKING BISEXUAL PROTAGONIST.
This is everything I have ever wanted, EVER. So good, so good, SO GOOD. I think I need to reread to get the science all straight in my head? but, oh my god, seriously, hands down the best hard SF I have read in a long fucking time.
AND IT HAS TWO SEQUELS. FUCK YEAH!!!!!
Hard SF - three pages of "recommended reading"-type hard SF - with genetically modified humans and AIs and weird-ass xenobiology AND A MOTHERFUCKING BISEXUAL PROTAGONIST.
This is everything I have ever wanted, EVER. So good, so good, SO GOOD. I think I need to reread to get the science all straight in my head? but, oh my god, seriously, hands down the best hard SF I have read in a long fucking time.
AND IT HAS TWO SEQUELS. FUCK YEAH!!!!!
November 7, 2019
A strong 4.0 Stars
The writing is great and the world is deep and well-thought but it never quite came together for me.
I kinda love when mystery have the big reveal and tie up all the seemingly unrelated subplots and characters into a nice clean narrative bow. I was eagerly anticipated that moment in Spin State from about the half way point but it unfortunately never really comes together at the end and I think with a story as somewhat complicated and complex as this one having that big moment where everything is laid bare for the reader would have been really cathartic and satisfying. Instead, the novel sort of has a climax where I didn't really know what the stakes where or really what the consequences were going to be and because of that the ending felt a little flat.
But for a 600 page book, it flew by, mainly because Moriarty's deep but quick conversational style prose always kept me engaged and interested. For a debut novel, it's very impressive and I am looking forward to digging into the PKD awarded sequel.
The writing is great and the world is deep and well-thought but it never quite came together for me.
I kinda love when mystery have the big reveal and tie up all the seemingly unrelated subplots and characters into a nice clean narrative bow. I was eagerly anticipated that moment in Spin State from about the half way point but it unfortunately never really comes together at the end and I think with a story as somewhat complicated and complex as this one having that big moment where everything is laid bare for the reader would have been really cathartic and satisfying. Instead, the novel sort of has a climax where I didn't really know what the stakes where or really what the consequences were going to be and because of that the ending felt a little flat.
But for a 600 page book, it flew by, mainly because Moriarty's deep but quick conversational style prose always kept me engaged and interested. For a debut novel, it's very impressive and I am looking forward to digging into the PKD awarded sequel.
April 28, 2013
So. Spin State is a pulp sci-fi novel set largely in a mining town on a distant planet. It’s very much a thriller, with a lot of action and characters that are unsure how much they can trust one another. The author creates a whole universe, and does so quite convincingly, but this does affect the pacing somewhat as the book is quite long and there isn’t that much plot to sustain it. Equally it means that some aspects of the universe are described that just aren’t relevant to the plot or characters. Those characters are generally perfectly serviceable. The central character is certainly tiresome at points but then most of us are. The secondary characters are a bit one-dimensional but fine for the story.
As a thriller, trying to talk about central themes is always a bit redundant - that’s simply not the point of the book - but if there were such a thing it would be identity and consciousness. Unfortunately, an exploration of this theme doesn’t sit very well with the murky background to the characters because they’re simply not sketched in enough. Are the different forms of life meant to be fundamentally the same or different? It was hard to say, despite a large part of the book being dedicated to this theme This difficulty is of course shared across all sci-fi to some extent, but generally aliens are meant to be just stereotyped humans, and the stories told in sci-fi are really about the human condition. When the emphasis is on the ‘other’, then the bar for them is set much higher.
Ultimately Spin State is fine. I delayed writing this review for ages because I couldn’t really think of much to say about it, but this isn’t by any means an indictment of the book. It’s an enjoyable read, but if I had one piece of advice it would be to not read it critically.
As a thriller, trying to talk about central themes is always a bit redundant - that’s simply not the point of the book - but if there were such a thing it would be identity and consciousness. Unfortunately, an exploration of this theme doesn’t sit very well with the murky background to the characters because they’re simply not sketched in enough. Are the different forms of life meant to be fundamentally the same or different? It was hard to say, despite a large part of the book being dedicated to this theme This difficulty is of course shared across all sci-fi to some extent, but generally aliens are meant to be just stereotyped humans, and the stories told in sci-fi are really about the human condition. When the emphasis is on the ‘other’, then the bar for them is set much higher.
Ultimately Spin State is fine. I delayed writing this review for ages because I couldn’t really think of much to say about it, but this isn’t by any means an indictment of the book. It’s an enjoyable read, but if I had one piece of advice it would be to not read it critically.
October 27, 2009
In a future where quantum entanglement has enabled FTL transportation and communication, Major Catherine Li is a UN peacekeeper with a shoddy, piecemeal memory, a lot of hardware in her brain, and a secret she's been keeping for her entire professional life. She gets assigned to investigate the death of a prominent gene-engineered scientist
So, right around the time that the pretty lady in white showed up in Li's office, a classic damsel in distress move if I ever saw one, I realized that this was a boilerplate mystery novel in sci-fi clothing. And then I went from just enjoying this book to LOVING it. This was my favorite sci-fi discovery in years. I like genre-bending. I also really loved the world-building and technology. A lot of sci-fi tech was created using popular science that was hot and new forty years ago or more-speed of light, relativity, wormholes. Think Ender's Game or Star Trek. This book actually uses the popular science of today to design its tech: spin theory, quantum entanglement, quantum computing, electron tunneling, cloud computing, and the result was striking and novel to me. I think a physicist would either enjoy the hell out of it or want to kill someone. For myself, I knew just enough to think it was cool as shit.
Character-wise, Li and her various paramours were interesting to me, and I liked the casual depiction of sexuality as fluid and situational. Cohen the AI fascinated me, and Li's edged interactions with him made up the most memorable parts of the plot for me. The whodunnit plot? Eh, I didn't care so much, and it wasn't the point of the book for me. Consequently, it wore a little thin. But the worldbuilding was first class.
So, right around the time that the pretty lady in white showed up in Li's office, a classic damsel in distress move if I ever saw one, I realized that this was a boilerplate mystery novel in sci-fi clothing. And then I went from just enjoying this book to LOVING it. This was my favorite sci-fi discovery in years. I like genre-bending. I also really loved the world-building and technology. A lot of sci-fi tech was created using popular science that was hot and new forty years ago or more-speed of light, relativity, wormholes. Think Ender's Game or Star Trek. This book actually uses the popular science of today to design its tech: spin theory, quantum entanglement, quantum computing, electron tunneling, cloud computing, and the result was striking and novel to me. I think a physicist would either enjoy the hell out of it or want to kill someone. For myself, I knew just enough to think it was cool as shit.
Character-wise, Li and her various paramours were interesting to me, and I liked the casual depiction of sexuality as fluid and situational. Cohen the AI fascinated me, and Li's edged interactions with him made up the most memorable parts of the plot for me. The whodunnit plot? Eh, I didn't care so much, and it wasn't the point of the book for me. Consequently, it wore a little thin. But the worldbuilding was first class.
June 18, 2013
'spin state' leaps out of the gate as a military mission gone wrong, then shifts into a far more densely complex and thinky mystery, where the whodunnit is far secondary to the world it's wrapped up in. oh, Moriarty (and if that's her real name, +100 awesome points), wow can you craft a future. it's a post-human world full of illegal genetic surgeons, emergent AIs, and travel and communications fueled by quantum mechanics and bose-einstein condensates (yes, this one had me taking a few trips to the university de wikipedia). i would have almost been fine with the story that was making me linger in this universe being only incidental, except that the characters stumbling through the smoke & mirrors were equally fascinating to spend time with.
i've heard it said that the fun part of mystery novels is trying to solve the crime before the main character does, and that if the author withholds clues so that this isn't possible, it's all a big cheat. if you're a firm believer in this concept, well, you might need to brush up on quantum theory possibility to play along with the mystery game (i.e., the density of the central mystery flirts with opacity in a few places, and that slows the pacing down some). if, however, you're ok with just letting the story zip on by, while balancing a wide batch of characters with shifting loyalties, dive right in.
i've heard it said that the fun part of mystery novels is trying to solve the crime before the main character does, and that if the author withholds clues so that this isn't possible, it's all a big cheat. if you're a firm believer in this concept, well, you might need to brush up on quantum theory possibility to play along with the mystery game (i.e., the density of the central mystery flirts with opacity in a few places, and that slows the pacing down some). if, however, you're ok with just letting the story zip on by, while balancing a wide batch of characters with shifting loyalties, dive right in.
March 7, 2010
Stayed up until the wee hours finishing this one. I must admit that a lot of the explanations of the technology went way above my head, but the story was top-notch. I guess that is reasonable since this book of fiction has several pages of bibliography at the end of it, all relating to quantum physics, if that gives you any idea. BUT, you don't need to be interested in quantum to really enjoy this book...there is something for everybody. Mystery, crime, romance, social commentary, etc. and so forth. Am looking forward to reading the sequel this week--I just need to start it a little earlier in the day!
September 5, 2023
I've read this series many times. MANY. For me, it's endlessly fascinating, it stretches my brain, it goads my imagination, and it has a wonderful and unusual romance that was completely unexpected on that first reading. It has Cohen, a heartbreakingly human AI, who is one my favorite characters ever. It has non-humans discovering and defining what it means to be human.
This series deserves more attention.
This series deserves more attention.
August 14, 2009
I give Moriarty credit for trying to be hard SF, but found the business about one human shunting into the body of another unconvincing. Yes, the advanced AI's might do it--assuming the human host was specially wired, conditioned, etc., etc.--but not humans.
For all the supposed hard science, the book explores many social and political issues, in the grand tradition of SF.
For all the supposed hard science, the book explores many social and political issues, in the grand tradition of SF.
September 13, 2008
There is nothing I like better than a good old fashioned "what-if" this book asks some of those questions about quantum physics and entanglement, and asks them in the form of space opera.
June 4, 2024
A gripping hard science fiction mystery with elements of cyberpunk, space opera, espionage, and military science fiction. In a nutshell, the novel is about UN Peacekeeper Major Catherine Li, who is sent to a mining colony world known as Compson’s World. A famous researcher, Hannah Sharifi (“the most prominent theoretical physicist in UN-controlled space… [h]er equations made Bose-Einstein transport possible, had woven themselves into the fabric of UN society”), was researching on the world that is home to the quantum entangled crystals that make reliable, commercial-scale FTL interstellar travel possible but died under mysterious circumstances. Li is sent to solve the mystery of her death but primarily to find the missing dataset she was working on, one that could change the balance of power between UN-governed human worlds and the Syndicates (the two engaged in an interstellar cold war). As an added wrinkle, Li was born and raised on Compson’s World, with great difficulty escaping the rough mining planet through means she has kept hidden and if discovered, could cause her a lot of problems. Li is operating alone, unsure of if she can trust planetary authorities and the company, Anaconda Mining Corporation or AMC, who run the mines she has to investigate in, no one eager for the UN to be looking at anything too closely. This all while finding out that it looks like Sharifi was murdered and people might start to see that LI and the researcher are clones, something Li took great pains to hide and again, would be the cause of problems for Li.
Author Chris Moriarty has some extremely impressive worldbuilding, as the novel has so many great elements, including the more times people make faster-than-light jumps, the more memory they lose in each jump (having to back up memories in hardware or have them restored, maybe never sure they can entirely trust the backups or restorations, with occasionally lost memories resurfacing later), the existence of Emergents (AI that have become sentient and independent, with one Emergent named Cohen a vital part of the story and a friend and maybe lover to Li), shunting (taking over the body of a person, either by AI or another human, with the human not always willing), terraforming (with Compson’s World the only planet so far encountered with any signs of complex life, though when humans arrived was extinct except for cold, windswept algae tundra though the planet has vast coal deposits from formerly abundant life, but it is a world being made more Earth-like), an extinct Earth (evacuated and essentially uninhabited and lifeless owing to a climatic disaster, much of humanity existing in a huge space station essentially ringing Earth), constructs (genetically engineered lines of posthumans designed to do various jobs, who with considerable human help rebelled for independence but lost, those remaining in UN-controlled space essentially second-class citizens with very rare exceptions such as Sharifi, the rest escaping to form Syndicate Space, worlds controlled and populated by various syndicated genelines), streamspace (as opposed to realspace, a complex virtual world that overlies the physical world that is “more than the sum of things humans have put there” including not only Emergents but other types of AI and areas that don’t correspond to realspace, with whether or not one is connected to streamspace an important plot element), and ceramsteel (a number of people like Li have internal wirings and support mechanisms that give them added durability, speed, and other abilities but come with a cost, including making them valuable for their parts or enabling those possessing them use their biological bodies past the breaking point).
Some reviewers noted the central science fiction plot mystery can be figured out fairly early on and largely I agree the main mystery of the book can be figured out given the clues the author gave, though the particular’s of Sharifi’s death weren’t obvious nor who were the main villains. The book can be read as a standalone as it has a great ending point, but I see that is book one of a trilogy and there is definitely potential for more story. The worldbuilding is rich and amazing, including biological and cultural aspects of Compson’s World I didn’t mention above. It was a little strange to read a novel largely set on a mining colony or in the mines themselves, with elements that wouldn’t have looked out of place even on 19th century Earth, but the setting was vital to the overall story and the interstellar setting of the novel. The AI character Cohen was amazingly complex and one of the better posthuman type characters I have seen in my readings, embracing what it might be like to interact with someone with abilities and an intellect well beyond that of normal humans. The book has some violent scenes especially towards the end.
Author Chris Moriarty has some extremely impressive worldbuilding, as the novel has so many great elements, including the more times people make faster-than-light jumps, the more memory they lose in each jump (having to back up memories in hardware or have them restored, maybe never sure they can entirely trust the backups or restorations, with occasionally lost memories resurfacing later), the existence of Emergents (AI that have become sentient and independent, with one Emergent named Cohen a vital part of the story and a friend and maybe lover to Li), shunting (taking over the body of a person, either by AI or another human, with the human not always willing), terraforming (with Compson’s World the only planet so far encountered with any signs of complex life, though when humans arrived was extinct except for cold, windswept algae tundra though the planet has vast coal deposits from formerly abundant life, but it is a world being made more Earth-like), an extinct Earth (evacuated and essentially uninhabited and lifeless owing to a climatic disaster, much of humanity existing in a huge space station essentially ringing Earth), constructs (genetically engineered lines of posthumans designed to do various jobs, who with considerable human help rebelled for independence but lost, those remaining in UN-controlled space essentially second-class citizens with very rare exceptions such as Sharifi, the rest escaping to form Syndicate Space, worlds controlled and populated by various syndicated genelines), streamspace (as opposed to realspace, a complex virtual world that overlies the physical world that is “more than the sum of things humans have put there” including not only Emergents but other types of AI and areas that don’t correspond to realspace, with whether or not one is connected to streamspace an important plot element), and ceramsteel (a number of people like Li have internal wirings and support mechanisms that give them added durability, speed, and other abilities but come with a cost, including making them valuable for their parts or enabling those possessing them use their biological bodies past the breaking point).
Some reviewers noted the central science fiction plot mystery can be figured out fairly early on and largely I agree the main mystery of the book can be figured out given the clues the author gave, though the particular’s of Sharifi’s death weren’t obvious nor who were the main villains. The book can be read as a standalone as it has a great ending point, but I see that is book one of a trilogy and there is definitely potential for more story. The worldbuilding is rich and amazing, including biological and cultural aspects of Compson’s World I didn’t mention above. It was a little strange to read a novel largely set on a mining colony or in the mines themselves, with elements that wouldn’t have looked out of place even on 19th century Earth, but the setting was vital to the overall story and the interstellar setting of the novel. The AI character Cohen was amazingly complex and one of the better posthuman type characters I have seen in my readings, embracing what it might be like to interact with someone with abilities and an intellect well beyond that of normal humans. The book has some violent scenes especially towards the end.
August 23, 2020
I won't even pretend to understand the actual physics behind some of the concepts this fascinating mash-up of military sci-fi, post-cyberpunk, murder mystery, spy thriller, and so much more plays around with. And hey - I don't have to understand the scientific background to be deeply intrigued by the worldbuilding. Lots of action, numerous plot twists, and all of it held together by a strong, complex female protagonists surround by a number of equally well-developed and fascinating characters - a great read that easily kept me hooked.
April 20, 2023
I had almost given up hope that somebody else could write a novel with this sort of research and idea density. I love that feeling of being in medias res with new ideas that slowly coalesce into a coherent picture. Moriarty does a nice job of cultivating his characters in step with those ideas and the story plot. Although the concept that culminates the novel was not fleshed out as much as I would have liked, it probably would have been difficult to structure some surprises if he had done it differently.
October 12, 2018
Like someone described it, a great space-noir, reminiscent of Altered Carbon but much grander, and much more human.
October 2, 2011
An excellent book, with a startlingly new spin on some basic tropes (alien life, the 'space marine' as a character trope, and artificial intelligence especially). After quickly finishing both this book and its sequel, Spin Control, I was disappointed to learn that Moriarty hadn't published any more in the series. The re-read which prompted this review was done in celebration of the fact that she seems to be preparing a third book, Ghost Spin, although the release date has yet to be announced.
It's the Future, and humanity has moved out into space using both slower-than-light travel and some slightly hand-wavey quantum tunneling effects to transport good, services, and information across a rapidly expanding envelope of space which has been divided into UN territory (including a ecologically devastated Earth) and the worlds of the Syndicates, whose population is comprised of clones whose genetic material is tailored for specific tasks - something which is explored more in the sequel than in this novel, where the Syndicates are more a background threat. The protagonist, Major Catharine Li, is a tough UN soldier who also happens to be a lesbian, to have Syndicate genes in her background (a serious business in a UN career), and to be increasingly disenchanted with the murky politics and political games which keep getting people around her or under her command killed. In concert with a mercurial AI, Cohen, she ends up on Compson's World - a mining planet which produces the unobtanium/Spice analogue which enables the UN's quantum-spin technology to function - investigating a murder which quickly transforms into a crisis for Compson's World's inhabitants (human and non) as well as humanity as a whole.
The plot is engaging and the characters are fairly well fleshed out, but what really struck me about this book was the way in which it engaged with many issues that science fiction more generally tends to background. The issue of prejudice based on genetics (Major Li) or against AIs (Cohen) are played straight but also dealt with in a more realistic and careful way than is usual. The economic situation of the Compson's World miners struck me at first as kind of unrealistic - what, we've settled other worlds but we've still got guys punching on the clock to go down shafts and get killed by explosive gas? Really? - but at the same time I give Moriarty serious kudos for suggesting that the future may hold economic and social injustices much like (if not identical to) the ones we see around us today. It reminded me of some of Richard K. Morgan's work, and not just because the two are often found near each other on the shelf.
The alien, when it appears, reminded me somewhat of the lifeforms encountered in Peter Watts' Blindsight, in that it is bluntly and honestly inhuman while also drawing on the writer's knowledge of and obvious fascination with Earth's wide variety of lifeforms - in this case, with coral reefs. The creature isn't as shocking or frightening as Watts' are, and the intended point seems more geared toward the problem of environmental overexploitation and ecological disaster (hinted at by the vision of Moriarty's future Earth as well) than Watts' focus on existential horror.
There are some weaknesses - as I mentioned, Irish miners IN SPAAAAACE won't necessarily be as easily believable as the Syndicates or Catherine Li and her compatriots in the UN military, and at several points in the narrative you start to lose track of what precisely is going on - the machinations and motivations of various groups and individuals involved - including Syndicate spies, UN politicians, labor unions and strike-breaking managers, a dead scientist and her genetically engineered lover, and several AIs - are cloudy at best. Spin Control, which I'll get around to reviewing eventually as well, was much more polished and clear in execution, but Spin State is well worth reading nonetheless, both in its own right and as a solid foundation for the second and - soon appearing, one can hope! - third installments.
It's the Future, and humanity has moved out into space using both slower-than-light travel and some slightly hand-wavey quantum tunneling effects to transport good, services, and information across a rapidly expanding envelope of space which has been divided into UN territory (including a ecologically devastated Earth) and the worlds of the Syndicates, whose population is comprised of clones whose genetic material is tailored for specific tasks - something which is explored more in the sequel than in this novel, where the Syndicates are more a background threat. The protagonist, Major Catharine Li, is a tough UN soldier who also happens to be a lesbian, to have Syndicate genes in her background (a serious business in a UN career), and to be increasingly disenchanted with the murky politics and political games which keep getting people around her or under her command killed. In concert with a mercurial AI, Cohen, she ends up on Compson's World - a mining planet which produces the unobtanium/Spice analogue which enables the UN's quantum-spin technology to function - investigating a murder which quickly transforms into a crisis for Compson's World's inhabitants (human and non) as well as humanity as a whole.
The plot is engaging and the characters are fairly well fleshed out, but what really struck me about this book was the way in which it engaged with many issues that science fiction more generally tends to background. The issue of prejudice based on genetics (Major Li) or against AIs (Cohen) are played straight but also dealt with in a more realistic and careful way than is usual. The economic situation of the Compson's World miners struck me at first as kind of unrealistic - what, we've settled other worlds but we've still got guys punching on the clock to go down shafts and get killed by explosive gas? Really? - but at the same time I give Moriarty serious kudos for suggesting that the future may hold economic and social injustices much like (if not identical to) the ones we see around us today. It reminded me of some of Richard K. Morgan's work, and not just because the two are often found near each other on the shelf.
The alien, when it appears, reminded me somewhat of the lifeforms encountered in Peter Watts' Blindsight, in that it is bluntly and honestly inhuman while also drawing on the writer's knowledge of and obvious fascination with Earth's wide variety of lifeforms - in this case, with coral reefs. The creature isn't as shocking or frightening as Watts' are, and the intended point seems more geared toward the problem of environmental overexploitation and ecological disaster (hinted at by the vision of Moriarty's future Earth as well) than Watts' focus on existential horror.
There are some weaknesses - as I mentioned, Irish miners IN SPAAAAACE won't necessarily be as easily believable as the Syndicates or Catherine Li and her compatriots in the UN military, and at several points in the narrative you start to lose track of what precisely is going on - the machinations and motivations of various groups and individuals involved - including Syndicate spies, UN politicians, labor unions and strike-breaking managers, a dead scientist and her genetically engineered lover, and several AIs - are cloudy at best. Spin Control, which I'll get around to reviewing eventually as well, was much more polished and clear in execution, but Spin State is well worth reading nonetheless, both in its own right and as a solid foundation for the second and - soon appearing, one can hope! - third installments.
March 4, 2014
In the far future, humans cling to relevance through a combination of money and military. They are dependent on sentient AIs with impenetrable motives and on the Bose-Einstein condensates, which enable them to communicate and travel instantaneously through the universe. But the condensates are only found on Compson's World, and humanity's greatest scientist was just killed in a cave-in there. Catherine Li, a UN peacekeeper with secrets of her own, is sent to investigate Hannah Sharifi's death, and find what her latest discovery was.
The universe she lives in is fascinating, teeming with gene modded humans living in hive minded Syndicates, shunting one brain through another body, wiring fighters for greater reflexes and strength...And Moriarty mines modern quantum physics for sf ideas, coming up with teleportation that leads to imperceptible loss of people's mental states and memories every time they are reconstituted (because you can perfectly recreate their atoms, but not their constituents' spin). This is a fast paced thriller with excellent action scenes and...yet its also a beautifully sensitive portrait of Li's mind. I loved her vicious fighting style and pragmatic view of social interactions, but I also really felt like I got to know her, inside and out. Li has had to hide parts of herself to maintain her career, but when Moriarty also shows us what we might look like to other intelligence forms, ex:
I was so tempted to give this four stars, because the emotions and thought this book evoked were so intense and complex. But I felt like the mystery of Sharifi's death and final discovery were too convoluted, with too many players that I was expected to remember. Nevertheless, an excellent posthuman adventure.
The universe she lives in is fascinating, teeming with gene modded humans living in hive minded Syndicates, shunting one brain through another body, wiring fighters for greater reflexes and strength...And Moriarty mines modern quantum physics for sf ideas, coming up with teleportation that leads to imperceptible loss of people's mental states and memories every time they are reconstituted (because you can perfectly recreate their atoms, but not their constituents' spin). This is a fast paced thriller with excellent action scenes and...yet its also a beautifully sensitive portrait of Li's mind. I loved her vicious fighting style and pragmatic view of social interactions, but I also really felt like I got to know her, inside and out. Li has had to hide parts of herself to maintain her career, but when Moriarty also shows us what we might look like to other intelligence forms, ex:
She looked across the little distance between them and had a sudden shadowy glimpse of herself as he saw her. A fierce dark mystery, gloriously tangled in a too-fragile body, slipping away from him down a hall-of-mirrors perspective of increasingly pessimistic statistical wave functions.
I was so tempted to give this four stars, because the emotions and thought this book evoked were so intense and complex. But I felt like the mystery of Sharifi's death and final discovery were too convoluted, with too many players that I was expected to remember. Nevertheless, an excellent posthuman adventure.
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