| Seventeen-year-old Toby McGonigal
wakes from a 14-thousand year frozen sleep to find his spaceship
is badly damaged and his chance of survival nil. So he returns
to his cold sleep, knowing he will never awaken. But things
don't go as he expected. Toby is found and recovered and wakes
up to a world he couldn't have imagined.
Space travelers have implemented "lockstep," a
system of cryogenic sleeps with brief periods of wakefulness.
This system lessens the drain on natural resources and finally
allows interplanetary travel without faster than light ships.
Karl Schroeder has created a fascinating bit of hard science
fiction with an idea that actually sounds plausible -- no
need for "magic" faster-than-light drives or convenient
wormhole travelling. But the lockstep system requires everyone
to comply in order for the system to function and that means
rules. And where you have rules, you have rule breakers and
enforcers.
On top of all that, Toby learns that some of his family is
still alive and apparently wants him dead. To survive, he
has fight a system that has taken thousands of years to develop
-- and, more difficult still, decide who to trust when not
every smiling face signals a friend. I loved the complexity
of the story here and the ingenious solution for the massive
distances of space. And I found the plot compelling, without
the bleakness that could easily arise from this kind of premise.
The characters stayed with me long after the last page was
turned, and this is easily one of my favorite science fiction
novels of many years.
|
