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The 27th Book: The Star Fraction

The Star Fraction Cover.jpg I believe that if I had grown up in Edinburgh, or Europe in general, I would have resonated much more with Ken Macleod’s The Star Fraction. As it is, the book clicked at about the 2/3 mark and turned out to be quite thought provoking.

The need for a European sensibility comes from Macleod’s approach to politics. As much as The Star Fraction is about hacking computing systems, it’s about hacking political systems. Here in the US we really don’t have a wide diversity of political thought. As our most recent election demonstrated, just an off-hand mention of spreading the wealth can reveal you as a godless, tyrannical, socialist. This makes it a bit tricky to build up empathy with many of the characters as I didn’t have that common ground of political encounters.

The Star Fraction’s protagonist is Moh Kohn, a Trotskyist mercenary who contracts to provide deadly force in the very precisely legislated resolution of conflict. Kohn plies his trade in an ultra-fragmented Europe and specifically the Isle of Britannia. Every stripe of political leaning seems to (un)peacefully coexist in little slivers of the former Kingdom. The good old UN and US are the international bully boys. Meanwhile, man has progressed somewhat into space, where Space Defense can laser fry any serious unrest and workers out of this world are plotting revolutions.

Kohn gets hooked up with Janis Taine, an idealistic scientist on the lam from both ecoradicals and secretive Men-In-Black. The pair is joined by Jordan Brown, an atheist refugee from a fundamentalist Christian enclave. Between the viral AI legacy of Kohn’s father, Taine’s photographic memory inducing drug experiment, and Brown’s encounter with an emergent consciousness an extended chase leads to a phase change for the climax of The Star Fraction.

Despite the lack of political touchpoints, I still managed to connect with Kohn, Taine, Brown, and an assortment of other interesting characters. Macleod also does a fine job of developing the interactions between humanity and emergent AI. I can’t do it justice, but his writing is complex, touching, and evocative in this regard. Once the characters are introduced and the chase really gets going, the plot moves quickly.

If a big helping of overt political thinking on top of your singularity fix sounds intriguing, then The Star Fraction is for you. Recommended.

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