Tony Daniels's Metaplanetary is drunk with ideas, giddy at its own intricate invention. Enormous space cables, known collectively as "the Met," connect the inner planets of the solar system together. As Daniels prettily describes it in a glossary that, in hindsight, should have been read first: "When seen from a vantage point above the planetary ecliptic near the asteroid belt, the Met shines like a spider's web, wet with dewdrops, hanging in space between the wheeling planets." The outer system--from the gas giants to the Oort Cloud--is too dispersed to make space cables feasible, but spaceships nevertheless connect them to the solar core, a kind of frontier to the densely populated urban centers within the asteroid belt. The entire system is densely infused with a nanotechnology known as the grist, which "enables instantaneous information transfer over any distance which the nano is dispersed." (The precise mechanism is explained in a particularly inspired bit of loony hard science.)

All of this advanced technology has drastically changed mankind. The very nature of human identity has been fractured. We are, Daniels tells us, composed of three parts: an aspect (our biological form), a convert (which I think is our intelligence and identity), and a pellicle (the grist that permeates our bodies). Computer systems, supplemented by the grist, are now advanced enough to allow so called "free converts," or intelligences who exist outside of any biological structure. (They resemble artificial intelligences, except that all of them derive from--or are descended from--an actual human being.) The grist's ability to transmit communications instantaneously also allows certain psychologically hardy individuals to become "Large Array of Personalities," whereby an individual makes multiple copies of his convert, places them in different bodies (or not--free converts are allowed), and then links them all together so that the entire entity thinks as one thing. Then there are the cloudships, free converts who have downloaded their identities into enormous, planet-sized spaceships, whose destructive powers Daniels lovingly describes.

There's more. But you get the basic idea. Daniels has created a far future that, for once, feels as utterly alien as our present must have seemed to somebody 1,000 years ago. Part of this feeling of foreigness is due to some self-conscious weirdness that Daniels inserts in the book (like the bizarre denizens of the Carbuncle at the edges of the solar system), but most of it is a direct implication of the hyper-tech that he invents. Unfortunately Daniels delays a full explanation of his inventions until far too late in his book (and, in some cases, not until the lengthy appendix at the end). This delay has the benefit of immersing the reader in an exotic place and giving her the joy of discovery. But it also makes much of the early part of the book that much more confusing.

You see, the whole system described above, in all its nanotechnological wonder, erupts into civil war. But the point of the war, first explained in the opening chapter, is entirely opaque. Here it is (no spoilers, since this occurs within 20 pages):

"You only see the future, Morton. Thaddeus Kaye can affect the future directly, from the past."

"So what? We all do that every day of our lives."

"This is not the same. Instantaneous control of instants. What the Merced quantum effect does for space, Thaddeus Kaye can do for time. He prefigures the future. Backward and forward in time. He is written on it, and the future is written into him. He's like a rock that has been dropped into a lake."

"Are you saying he's God?"

"No. But if your vision is a true one, and I know that it is, then he could very well be the coming war."

"Do you mean the reason for the war?"

"Yes, but more than that. Think of it as a wave, Morton. If there's a crest, there has to be a trough. Thaddeus Kaye is the crest, and the war is the trough. He's something like a physical principle. That's how his integration process was designed. Not a force, exactly, but he's been imprinted on a property of time."

"The Future Principle?"

"All right. Yes. In a way, he is the future. He's still alive."

Huh? To be fair, the explanation of the purpose behind the war is just as obscure after reading the entire book (and its sequel). But to lay this all out on the reader on the outset is very heavy.

Which is a shame, because the introduction is a gentle parody (parrotting?) of Ernest Hemingway's famous short story, "A Clean Well-Lighted Place," from its existential angst to the occasional Spanish nonsense. The next chapter (labeled "Jill") is jarringly different, a hideous and violent little tale about a ferret killing a huge rat. With these two starting chapters, Daniels is just showing off his range, like a singer running through a ridiculous number of scales. He didn't need to convince me. Ever since reading his phenomenal short story, "A Dry Quiet War," I've known that Daniels is a first-class writer. And in this book (with the exception of an excruciatingly amateur chapter on the music student Claude), he's in fine form. There are plenty of quiet, heartfelt chapters, as when a resurrected priest reunites with a long ago lover who has become a Large Array of Personalities. And then there are the gory war chapters, from long descriptions of the horrible effects of nanotech warfare to the nerve-wracking torture perpetrated by a heartless scientist called Dr. Ting.

There are two huge flaws in Metaplanetary (aside from its being confusing). First, the book flits from character to character, planet to planet, and Daniels has the annoying habit of featuring some characters in only one chapter, so that you lose sight of them once you start getting interested. (This is most notable in the chapter(s) featuring Ames, the power-hungry dictator who starts the war.) Second, the book--as long as it is--is just a prelude. The war has barely started by the end of the book, and it's clear that Daniels has done nothing beyond laying the necessary groundwork for what seems like an extremely long-running series.

But that's forgivable. Metaplanetary is a fit of imagination; its sharp writing and its exotic and densely thought through portrait of our far future more than make up for its many dangling narrative threads.

Copyright © 2005 Steven Wu

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