Third review today, as part of my plan to get caught up on my book reviews, since I’ve been slacking off on my blogging in general pretty severely. After Excession I was in the mood for some more far-future scifi, and, after some searching around, I stumbled upon a rarity, a scifi trilogy: ::John C. Wright::’s, The Golden Age, which shares its name with its first book.

Set ten thousand years in the future, Age has the rather distinct feature of having humanity still confined to the solar system. Obviously there is no faster that light travel. AIs are pervasive and essentially run things, humanity is ruled by the Golden Oecumene, crime is virtually unknown, Venus and Mars are terraforms, and Jupiter is a 2nd sun.

The majority of humanity lives in virtual reality, though attending some events and meetings is not unheard of. One can choose various levels of realism and filtering. Different houses subscribe to different philosophies of how their members should experience the VR environment. There is a small segment of the population who eschews VR entirely. Lastly, there are different neuroforms (brain designs basically), which can experience (virtual) reality in wild different ways which can even be somewhat incompatible with other neuroforms.

So, what does an AI-ruled, essentially immortal society with no crime worry about? A couple of things are quite important. First, energy, all other things being equal, there is no reason civilization will not outlast the sun, as well as any gas giants they manage to ignite and turn into small suns. The second is an upset of the status quo. The AIs and oldest citizens of the Golden Oecumene are very conservative – they best interests lie in maintaining things as they are, allowing them to accumulate greater fortunes and computing power (which along with energy and information is the basis of the economy).

It opens with our hero, Phaethon, discovering that he has redacted some two and a half centuries of memories, and filtered out parts of the virtual reality to keep him from becoming curious about what he did to warrant the redaction. However, when he is confronted with people’s reactions to him he fells compelled to seek out the reasons for the apparently voluntary removal of his memories. The deal he agreed to only forbid him from restoring the saved memories, not discovering what they are some other way.

What did he do that so upset the rest of civilization? Why do the strange humans (using the term very loosely!) who live out beyond Neptune entreat him to go and recovery his memories? Why do the few who do remember what he did hate him so?

The Golden Age is a wonderfully compelling mystery set in an amazingly conceived future. Phaeton’s development as a character is very well done as is that of those close to him. The portrayal of the challenges of the future society, which are both unique and yet eerily similar to those we encounter today, is realistic and satisfying. I’m very much looking forward to the other books in this series.