Subject: Review: "The Cassini Division" by Ken MacLeod

From: [email-masked] (pm agapow)
Date: 08 Sep 1999 21:59:14 -0400

"The Cassini Division" by Ken MacLeod
	A Postview, copyright p-m agapow 1999

It is 300 years in the future and much has changed. Earth is an idyllic
paradise, peaceful under a ruthlessly pragmatic socialist ideology.
Government is nearly non-existent, laws few, and the land returning to
wilderness. Space is a different proposition. Centuries ago, post-humans
retreated into Jupiter, living at vastly accelerated speeds within
simulated environments. The lethal computer viruses they spew into space
have already once brought Earth to the point of destruction. Now the
Cassini Division monitor Jupiter, their ships circling the planet, packed
with nano-mechanical computers and the most lethal weaponry available. In
a society with hierarchy, the buck stops with the Cassini Division. In a
society without secrets, the Cassini Division have hatched a plot to end
the Jovian problem once and for all.

For some time, I nursed the suspicion that Ken Macleod was actually Iain M
Banks under a different name. Although that hypothesis is certainly false
- I've seen them in the same room - it is a fair description of MacLeod's
work, his worlds being a less advanced version of Banks' Culture. They are
different from a lot of SF worlds in that they are utopian, although not
flawless. These utopias just don't work like our world. Many SF futures
are distressingly similar to the present day, despite intervening
centuries.  People go to work, get paid, read their mail. To unfairly pick
only one example, see Jerry Pournelle's work.  But "The Cassini Division",
illustrates a wide and probably realistic gap, like when the protagonist
catches a flight and falls into a conversation with a fellow passenger:

   "Did you know," she said as we poured coffee mugs and tea into
   cups, that in the old system, there were people who did this as
   a fulltime occupation?"
   "Did what?"
   "Serve refreshments on aircraft."
   [...] "Really?" I said. "Why? Did they enjoy it or something?"
   "No," she said earnestly, "they did it because it was a way of
   getting what they needed to live on." 

The past is so dead that people have forgotten there was ever anything
else.  To continue the comparison to Banks, the Cassini Division
themselves are much like the Special Circumstances, the freewheeling,
dirty tricks agency of Banks' Culture. They are driven yet joyful,
hedonistic and like their job. The Cassini Division do vicious, dangerous
work, are ruthless and amoral but you want to meet these people. Hell, you
want to be them. It's an achievement to make such potentially horrible
people so likable.

Technology freaks will find a lot to like with space-time wormholes,
downloaded minds, fusion jets, nano-factories and morphing smart matter,
mixed with philosophy and a good ear for a mean phrase. ("If it isn't
running programs and it isn't fusing atoms, it's just bending space.")

On the downside, "The Cassini Division" is a sequel, of sorts. You
certainly don't need to have read MacLeods preceding novels ("The Star
Fraction", "The Stone Canal") to understand and enjoy "The Cassini
Division". However, certain characters and events loom large in the story
that are only important in the context of the earlier work. For a new
reader I suspect they would seem strangely over-emphasized and out of
place. At the same time, the climax feels slightly incomplete, as if this
was just the setup for a larger story. As a final quibble, the view of
scientific progress is a touch simplistic. To understand a wormhole
constructed by the post-humans, the Division recruits a physics genius,
albeit one who hasn't practiced his trade in decades. Convenient for the
plot but barely realistic.

In balance, "The Cassini Division" is a good book, not only worthy but
also an enjoyable read.  But darn it all, MacLeod's already gone and
written another one ("The Sky Road"). [***/recommended] and Prague on the
Sid & Nancy scale.

%A Ken MacLeod
%T The Cassini Division
%I Orbit
%C London
%D 1998
%P 240pp
%G ISBN 1-85723-603-3
%O hardback, UKP15.95

Paul-Michael Agapow ([email-masked])
"We were too young, we lived too fast and had too much technology ..."