Spin State
by Chris Moriarty
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Book Summary Information
Author: Chris MoriartyEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-11-23
ISBN: 0553586246
Number of pages: 640
Publisher: Spectra
Book Reviews of Spin State
Book Review: Bend Space with BEC
Summary: 3 Stars
This first novel seems built upon homages, large and small, to other novels, SF and other. Moriarty's key concept is a substance that is a naturally occurring Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). This substance, called crystal for short, is found on only one planet in the universe and can be extracted only by the most dangerous means. The substance allows space-time to the effectively collapsed ("folded," perhaps?) such that instantaneous transport and communications can be attained. (These properties are yet to be discovered in BEC, a real substance, in our century.)
Well, 40 odd years ago in "Dune" the substance was called spice and the foiling of relativity was given a lot less scientific window-dressing, but the similarity is clear. And I don't doubt Moriarty read the many papers and books in her bibliography, and talked to the scientists she credits, but she never makes any real attempt to explain the means by which quantum entanglement might actually facilitate instantaneous transport or communications. What I expect in a good SF story that extrapolates from some real discovery is some convincing mumbo-jumbo that makes me believe, or at least *want* to believe, that the science might really work. I would refer the readers to Niven, Heinlein, Haldeman, or Clarke for many examples. (Yeah, I'm old - get over it.)
The novel opens with an action prologue a little like the James Bond movies where we meet our heroine, Catherine Li, while she is on a dangerous mission to bust into a lab to steal some technology. She is revealed to be *twice* augmented beyond a normal human, being both the product of genetic engineering and also internally wired with bionic assists that are always on the verge of injuring her more than her opponents by overstressing her remnant bones, tendons, adenoids, etc. Even 20th century fighter planes had software smart enough to prevent the pilot from breaking the wings off by pulling too many G's. You'd think her designers would have built in similar stoppers. And yes, she reminded me of Juan Rico and William Mandala in their fighting suits. This is not a bad thing, of course. But Heinlein and Haldeman seemed to put more thought into the actual engineering than Moriarty, who relies more on rapid-fire use of buzz- and coined words to convey futuristic technology.
After the prologue, we spend most of the rest of the story on the planet Compton's World where miners work in 19th century conditions mining the crystal which is threaded through veins of coal. A couple comments here--Martin Cruz Smith took a break from the great Arkady Renko series to write an excellent novel, "Rose," set in a 19th century coal mine in England. Now I have only ever read one coal mine novel, and "Rose" was it, and maybe they are all similar, but I'd swear Moriarty was channeling Smith in her descriptions of the mine and the company town. Maybe there's only one way to describe a coal town... More importantly: the mine is the only source of the most important substance in the universe, the BEC. It supports the whole infrastructure of galactic commerce. So why do the miners live in incredible poverty and filth? Surely they could have, like, middle class lives, if not outright wealth.
Oh well, the story does go on from there - there's a murder in the mine and the outsider, Li, is sent to investigate (as also happened in "Rose"). Li interacts with and is helped by Cohen, an AI who is a combination of Michael the Computer in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and Agent Aloysius Pendergast in the novels of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Cohen ends up being the best character, no doubt due to the illustrious parentage, but again seems derivative. He lives in a fabulously appointed mansion (although it is possibly a VR), is tremendously suave and urbane, and even makes great use of the "memory palace" mental trick, all reminiscent of Pendergast.
So. Three stars for nice descriptive writing, an awareness (but not convincing use) of leading-edge science, good bad guys, and Cohen. Good editing could have added at least another half star. The book is 250 pages too long for its story. The sequel, "Spin Control," is in my in-basket. If it gets up to four stars, I'll be back with another review.
Summary of 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.
In her debut novel, the terrific thriller Spin State, Chris Moriarty melds cutting-edge science with post-cyberpunk fiction and neo-noir suspense to create a complex, believable future inhabited by one of the most intriguing characters in modern science fiction.
Major Catherine Li is a veteran United Nations Peacekeeper in a future of world-nations. Humanity has spread across interstellar space by "jumping": teleportation enabled by quantum physics and a bizarre crystal found only on Compson's World. The jumps destroy memory, so jumpers back up their memories on computer. Despite this precaution, frequent jumpers still lose some memories, a fact that poses a far greater problem for Catherine Li than it does for other Peacekeepers. For Li has a dangerous, potentially deadly secret: she's an illegal clone.
When a UN mission goes awry, Li finds herself shipped on solo duty to Compson's World--her home world, to which she'd vowed never to return. Her mission initially seems simple: to determine if the death of brilliant physicist Hannah Sharifi was a crystal-mining accident or cold-blooded murder. Like Li, Sharifi is a clone--in fact, she's Li's genetic twin. Li swiftly finds herself enmeshed in the intertangled politics of the UN, the multiplanetary corporations, the miners, and the human-created Artificial Intelligences, who have enigmatic agendas of their own. --Cynthia Ward
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