House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds
It seems like it has been a long time since I have read some ‘real’ scifi. Recent reviews have been as much ’social commentary’ as scifi. But House of Suns is classic space opera.
The story takes place literally millions of years in the future and hundreds of years in time. In this imaginary future, several wealthy individuals have long since created hundreds of cloned personalities. Each of these groups of clones is referred to as a House or Line. Our story concerns the 1000 clones of the Gentian Line, and more specifically two members of this Line, Campion and Purslane. Once every circuit (of the Milky Way) the Gentian Line gathers for a meeting, to exchange memories and learning, before they each set off on another circuit. But this time Campion and Purslane are late, very late. As they approach the planet designated for the meeting, they pick up a distress message that tells them that the planet was under attack and likely to be utterly destroyed within days, along with the vast majority of the Gentian Line. Campion and Purslane together rescue a few survivors and escape to the emergency gathering point where they find only 40 or so other survivors.
The gathering allows guests, and a few of the guests also survived, including three members of the Machine People race. The action is centred on these Machine People and their response to the Gentians.
I could easily go on. That’s the thing about a space opera, vast time, vast space and lots of action. This book is a real page-turner, especially for fans of this genre. Planets are destroyed, Gods are challenged, ships blown out of the sky, kidnapping and murder abound.
However, as with a lot of the spacy scifi, action and adventure are so thick and fast that there is little or no time for character development. Admittedly the reader gets to know Campion and Purslane well because each of them narrate alternate chapters. But the whole sidebar about Abigail Gentian? A waste of space.
I did like the fact that this tale included robots, but this time robots without the programming that includes Asimov’s Three Laws. At times it seems that Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are the foundation of every single robot and android in science fiction since the 50s. House of Suns could easily be seen as a cautionary tale for those who choose to ignore the established wisdom.
