Astropolis: Saturn Returns

By Sean Williams

Paperback: 319 pages
Publisher: Ace Books
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-441-01493-4

Plot Summary:

In the future depicted in Saturn Returns, the human race headed out to the stars and spent the next 150,000 years or so expanding to fill the galaxy, modifying itself along the way into innumerable forms suited to life in different environments or to the vagaries of whatever the local culture considered desirable. Unable to move either matter or information faster than the speed of light, humanity instead modified itself to be able to alter its “tempo”, the perception of the passage of time both mentally and physically, virtually at will. Able to “overclock” and compress hours of thought into a few seconds, or slow down so that decades pass like days, humans are able to cope with interstellar distances and create the Continuum, a galaxy spanning civilization.

Connecting all the systems of the galaxy and forming the basis for all civilization is the Line, the network of maser transmitter stations that sends information (and even properly scanned people) all over the galaxy. Ruling over all are the Forts, superhuman group minds made up of thousands or millions of “frags”, human appearing beings that are essentially the hands, eyes, and voices of the controlling superintelligence. The Forts operate more slowly than any other human type, their ‘top level’ thoughts running at such a low tempo that centuries may seem like seconds to them. Finally, for those times when good management or reasoned persuasion fail, there is the Corps, once a mercenary army, but long ago converted to the military arm of Fort governance. So things persist for almost a million years until….

Imre Bergamasc, once the supreme commander of the Corps, wakes in a new body on a starship orbiting just beyond the edge of the galaxy. He has been reconstituted by the Jinc, a subpart of a human gestalt, a sub-Fort group mind that spends its time at the edge of the galaxy looking for God. In their explorations the Jinc came upon the remains of a destroyed satellite orbiting the galaxy. Reconstructing the fragments of the device they discovered a recording of Bergamasc etched into the satellite’s surface and reconstituted it.

Bergamasc’s resurrection is not an easy one. Due to lost data from the satellites destruction his memory is full of gaps, including why he would have his mind stored as it was in the first place. The Jinc inadvertently put his mind in the wrong body (“he” is now a “she”), and despite his desire to get back in touch with the rest of civilization and fill the holes in his past, the Jinc are unable to provide access to the Line or transportation back to the galaxy. Things seem to be heading from bad to worse, with the Jinc possibly attempting to absorb him into the gestalt, when help comes from an unexpected quarter and Bergamasc is able to escape and return to the Milky Way. But things are very much not as he left them.

Expecting to return to the Continuum, Bergamasc quickly learns that the former supercivilization no longer exists. Civilization has fallen or fallen apart, a side-effect of the “Slow Wave”, a mysterious energy pulse that propagated across the galaxy and broke the connections between all frags everywhere, killing the Forts and plunging the galaxy into chaos. Non-Fort humans left to their own devices rapidly make a mess of things and while civilization is not yet gone completely, things are far from what they once were.

Returning to the Mandala Supersystem, a possibly artificial cluster of stars once home to a major civilization, Bergamasc encounters former Corps comrades from his past, makes a number of discoveries pointing to the idea that the Slow Wave may have been just a first strike in an ongoing war, and ultimately sets out to save the galaxy and put civilization back together again. How his quest will progress or end will need to wait for the next book(s) in the series; this story is obviously just the opening act.

OA Relevance: Moderate to High

The variety of human types, the heavy focus on informational technology as one of the foundations of civilization, and the idea of a really old human spacefaring civilization will all resonate with OA fans. In some ways and with some modifications this story could almost be set in the OA universe, probably somewhere in the High Middle Regions or the Outer Volumes, far from the nearest wormhole gate.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

As anyone who reads this column regularly knows, I’ve read books by Williams before with mixed reviews. Based on how the first book in the series shaped up, I’m hoping that the criticisms I’ve leveled in the past won’t come up again this time. Guess we’ll have to wait and see what the next book brings.

On the good side, if you like character driven fiction, you’ll love this book. From beginning to end, its all about the characters who are both interesting and richly drawn, the more so since they may exist in more than one incarnation (Continuum civilization can make copies of a person’s mind you see…). At the same time, the intense focus on the characters sometimes seems to relegate the setting to a two-dimensional sketch. We read off-hand references or background info to the effect that the Continuum could manipulate pulsars and blow up suns, but we never actually see any of it. Continuum civilization is supposed to be almost a million years old, but based on the descriptions provided I sometimes felt that I could have just as readily been reading something set a few hundred years in the future or maybe a few thousand. The ‘sense of wonder’ and sense of antiquity that other authors have achieved when describing such old civilizations was rarely there. But that could just be me.

Perhaps the second biggest complaint I had with the story was that although we are told that humanity has altered itself into all kinds of new forms we never really see this. The different types of humans depicted in the story would all readily pass as near-baselines in the OA universe and possibly even as baselines at first look. This may be because Williams wanted to focus on character issues rather than describing weird looking people but it still bothered me a bit.

The biggest complaint I would level at the book was that while it explicitly stated that FTL travel and comm were not possible, it largely acted as though they were. Characters casually talk about being caught here or there during the Slow Wave and treat Bergamasc as though he has been gone for only a few years when an examination of the sequence of events would have required them to be in their present situation for centuries to thousands of years. The bad guys react to events almost instantly and show up at just the best dramatic moment, often in situations where that would seem to be impossible if light speed were truly a limiting factor. And so on. The idea of variable temporal perception is intriguing and Williams is exploring an interesting new area I’ve only seen one or two other authors every set foot in. But he could have done much more with it and should have paid closer attention to the realities imposed by light speed limited events if he is going to make that a foundational element of his book. Truthfully it would have worked better if he had just introduced some sort of FTL drive and been done with it.

Overall Rating: Good

If you like character driven space opera, you will love this book. If you’re more into gadgets or like a good dose of scenery and travelogue along with your story of a strange far future, then you may be left a bit wanting.

More about the reviewer, Todd Drasher, here.