''Newton's Wake: A Space Opera'' is a

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

novel by British writer

Ken MacLeod Kenneth Macrae MacLeod (born 2 August 1954) is a Scottish science fiction writer. His novels ''The Sky Road'' and '' The Night Sessions'' won the BSFA Award. MacLeod's novels have been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo, Nebula, Locus ...

, published in 2004. Set in the 24th century, it follows human life after a partially cataclysmic Singularity, and in particular a conflict on a far-flung planet that upsets the prevailing order. It has elements of both

transhumanism Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates the human enhancement, enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available new and future technologies that can greatly enhance longevity, cogni ...

and

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposin ...

and is written using the printed versions of common translation stereotypes (e.g. Scottish people say "tae"). The novel was nominated for the British Science Fiction Award in 2004, and the

John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel The John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, or Campbell Memorial Award, was an annual award presented to the author of the best science fiction novel published in English in the preceding calendar year. It was given by s ...

in 2005.

Plot

In the late 20th century, at the start of a war between the

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an nations and the United States, a US Army AI directing weapons overcame its programming to become self-aware. Then followed the "Hard Rapture", an explosive expansion and evolution of computer systems that left most of humanity dead or devoured while the AIs and assimilated persons progressed into posthumanity beyond human comprehension and departed for parts unknown, leaving behind artifacts on a number of worlds. With the Earth now populated by varyingly dormant, partially sentient war machines, humanity lives offworld. The three main sects are America Offline (AO), the Knights of Enlightenment (KE) and Demokratische Kommunistbund (Democratic Communist Union) (DK). Examination of the posthuman relics has resulted in deep but sporadic knowledge of such things as

FTL FTL may stand for: Science and technology * Faster-than-light communication and travel * Ferritin light chain, encoded by the ''FTL'' gene * Flash Translation Layer * Foot-lambert ft-L, a measure of luminance * Olympus FTL, a camera * FreeMa ...

travel. The main character is Lucinda Carlyle, a member of a Scottish family of entrepreneurs/thugs that controls a system of traversable wormholes known as the Skein. Lucinda is a "combat archeologist", leading a team to the unexplored world of Eurydice to salvage posthuman technology and deal with whatever it tries in response. Not only does she find a motherlode of an artifact, but a lost colony of humans that escaped Earth in the Hard Rapture and are living in a post scarcity society (with

cosmic string Cosmic strings are hypothetical 1-dimensional topological defects which may have formed during a symmetry-breaking phase transition in the early universe when the topology of the vacuum manifold associated to this symmetry breaking was not simpl ...

weapons far beyond those of other groups). Each side is as surprised as the other, having thought themselves the only survivors. Then the Knights of Enlightenment discover that the artifact, originally the crashed colony ship of the Eurydiceans, is the focal point of the Skein.

References

External links

''Newton's Wake''
at Worlds Without End *{{Isfdb title, id=29837 Novels by Ken MacLeod 2004 science fiction novels British science fiction novels English-language novels 2004 British novels Orbit Books books