Newton’s Wake (book review)

Newton’s Wake is a standalone 2004 novel from Scottish science fiction author Ken MacLeod.

MacLeod (born in 1954) is an interesting figure. He started out as an old school leftist with Trotskyist leanings. When the Old Left crashed and burned he started to use science fiction as a way of exploring political options. Some of the options he has explored are fascinating, like the communists in The Star Fraction who believe passionately in capitalism. Some of the options are daft (like anarcho-capitalism). His attempts to reconcile Trotskyism with libertarianism are somewhat bizarre. His sympathetic view of populism leads to some surprising results. Not many people see parallels between Trump and Jeremy Corbyn. His hopes for a leftist populism might be optimistic but might well be fruitful. MacLeod’s political speculations are always at the very least interesting.

Newton’s Wake begins in 2367 with a team of Carlyle combat archaeologists led by Lucinda Carlyle emerging from a wormhole gate to find a rather surprising planet. The first surprise is that the planet Eurydice is home to an advanced human civilisation. The second surprise is a gigantic structure apparently carved from diamond, but was it carved by nature or by human agency? To the Carlyles it looks suspiciously post-human. Which means it is likely to be both dangerous and profitable.

There are four main human cultures, scattered over various planets and co-existing uneasily. There are the Americans, subsistence farmers who (as we will learn) have good reason to fear post-human technology. There are the North Koreans, communists but happy to do business with the other cultures. There are the technologically sophisticated Knights of Enlightenment, a mix of Chinese, Japanese and Indians. And then there are the Scots, which means the Carlyles. The Carlyles started out as gangsters. Now they’re very rich and very powerful anarcho-capitalists, they control the wormhole network, and morally they’ve degenerated slightly from their gangster days.

These four cultures don’t just represent competing economic and political systems. They also differ markedly in their attitude to the two most pressing technological and philosophical problems of the day, how to deal with the legacy of the Singularity and how to deal with the problem of death.

The Singularity is what happened when the Americans launched their retaliatory nuclear strike against the Europeans. The computers coördinating the American strike suddenly upgraded themselves into full-blown artificial intelligences, they upgraded their new human servants into post-humans and they created the war machines that went on to ravage Earth. Three-and-a-half centuries earlier the galaxy is still littered with post-human tech. Some of this tech is very useful indeed. All of it is potentially extremely dangerous. The Americans avoid such tech. The North Koreans approach it with extreme caution, if at all. The Knights of Enlightenment believe that post-human tech can be studied and understood, and utilised, as long as you’re careful (and they’re very careful). The Carlyles believe post-human tech is there to be looted and sold.

The problem of death has been solved. Sort of. You just upload your personality and your memories and if you die your personality and your memories are downloaded to a new body. The Carlyles are quite happy with this. The Knights and the North Koreans think it’s nonsense. If you’re dead you’re dead. Having a copy of yourself walking around after you’re dead is no consolation at all.

The Eurydiceans have now complicated matters because nobody knew they existed. And Lucinda Carlyle has complicated matters much more comprehensively by awakening whatever it is that’s in that strange structure on Eurydice.

The two primary themes, post-humanism and the question of death, intersect more and more as the story unfolds.

On one level this is a delightful tongue-in-cheek satire. And it’s very funny. Laugh-out-loud funny at times (the excerpt from Shakespeare’s famous play The Tragedy of Leonid Brezhnev, Prince of Muscovy, is hilarious). MacLeod exercises his considerable wit at the expense of left-wing politics, right-wing politics, folk music, religions both secular and spiritual, art, the entertainment business and science fiction. It’s a glorious romp. But there’s a serious science fiction tale here as well. In fact as the book progresses it veers more and more in the direction of old-fashioned big-ideas science fiction speculating on the nature of mind, the nature and purpose of the universe and the rewards and pitfalls of pushing technology to the limit.

Newton’s Wake is a dazzling exercise in style and wit and adventure. It really is great stuff. Highly recommended.