From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Mon Dec 16 2002 - 08:47:20 MST
I'm just finishing "The Golden Age" by John C. Wright. This is an
extraordinarily good book -- so much so that when I neared the end and
discovered that it was the first part of at least two books (a note on
the last page indicates that it will only have a second part), I was
both disappointed to not have the story fully resolved and also happy to
know that there was a good deal more to come.
Because of the plot structure of the book, it is difficult to discuss
its substance without spoilers, so I won't do so here. However, a
description of the setting of the book is possible without undermining
the pleasure of reading it. The novel is set in a fairly distant future
-- I gathered that it is at least thousands, and perhaps tens of
thousands of years in the future. The world depicted in "The Golden
Age" is definitely a post-human one, in which there is a wide range of
sentient beings -- from unmodified human "primitivists," through a host
of various modified and augmented forms that are more or less human
through vastly intelligent and often very strange group and synthetic
minds.
I *highly* recommend this book as perhaps the best SF novel I've read in
years and would welcome discussion of it.
Two points I find worth noting -- and that contain only the most modest
of spoilers (people who want to be *completely* surprised may want to
skip what follows below):
-- mild spoiler buffer --
The book envisions a world in which extremely sophisticated forms of
virtual reality and personality modifications are possible and
commonplace. The texture of these experiences is vividly conveyed in
ways that many SF authors who have tackled the problem fail at for lack
of both sufficient imagination and erudition. Wright is enough of a
historian and classical scholar that I found the dense mélange of
cultural and artistic styles prevalent in the world he depicts
believable and satisfying.
There is also a "legal" angle to the book that I, as a lawyer, found
quite well done. Some brief research indicates that Wright is a retired
lawyer and it shows: The substantive and procedural details of the legal
context of the book are believable to me and tackle transhumanist issues
-- many we've discussed here over the years, including the nature of
identity -- in a very interesting way.
Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
http://www.gregburch.net <-- lots of new stuff
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