Subject: Review: The Star Fraction, Ken MacLeod (1995)

From: [email-masked] (Rich Horton)
Date: 09 Oct 1998 11:32:33 -0400

The Star Fraction, Ken MacLeod
		Review Copyright 1998 Rich Horton

_The Star Fraction_ is Ken MacLeod's first novel.  He has since published
two more; both set in the same "future history" as _The Star Fraction_.
These are The Stone Canal_ (1996) and _The Cassini Division_.  So far none
of these books have been published in the US, but happily I can say that
Tor has just announced plans to publish at least the latter two in the
near future.

I liked _The Stone Canal_ a great deal, and _The Star Fraction_ no less.
I have yet to read _The Cassini Division_.  MacLeod is a very politically
savvy writer, and his books are full of politics, but the politics is
almost always expressed through action, or it is an integral part of the
setting.  In other words, the books aren't lectures: they are, rather,
about politics in interesting ways, ways that are integral to their
themes.  I should add that besides being about politics, the books concern
interesting future technology, especially computer technology and
Artificial Intelligence, and they are centered on believable and likable
characters.  They have rollicking plots, as well.

_The Star Fraction_ follows several characters through a revolution of
sorts in 21st century Great Britain.  As the novel opens, the UK of our
time has undergone several political upheavals, and is now "balkanized"
into quite a few different, nominally independent political divisions.
These include the "Hanoverians," apparently the closest thing to a
controlling force on the island; the "Army of the New Republic," the
remnants of a liberal/socialist republic which apparently succeeded the
Kingdom of our present time; a number of basically independent
"mini-states," some occupying only a few blocks of territory, with wildly
different political organizations: these include the religious "states,"
radical Greens, homosexual enclaves, and finally an anarchic area of
London called Norlonto (North London Town).  Furthermore, the whole world
seems to be under the loose control of some combination of the US and UN,
and such organizations as Stasis, which proscribes certain technology, and
Space Defense, which controls the orbital anti-nuclear lasers.  This
society is fascinating, and the details are well portrayed, with off the
cuff hints, and only the occasional well-done infodump.

The main characters are Moh Kohn, a basically Trotskyite mercenary; Janis
Taine, a scientist studying memory enhancement; and Jordan Brown, a young
atheist computer expert, fleeing from his upbringing in the Fundamentalist
Christian enclave Beulah City.  Their paths intersect when one of Moh's
jobs involves defending Janis' lab: Stasis seems to have decided that
Janis' research is dangerous, and Moh takes her to Norlonto, in the
process becoming infected her new memory drug.  At the same time Jordan
encounters the mysterious "Black Planner," an entity of the net, who some
think may be the long-feared "Watchmaker:" an AI coalesced from the
combined networked computing power of the world.  Jordan also flees to
Norlonto, and hooks up with Janis and Moh.  Moh soon begins to remember
details about his late father's work, which involved a freeware program
called (cleverly) Dissembler, which has become omnipresent on the world's
computers.  People are beginning to ask Moh what he knows about a
mysterious organization called The Star Fraction.

The novel is fast moving and clever throughout.  The action is resolved
intelligently: none of the characters really know what they're doing, or
necessarily why.  This results in some wonderful irony, and in a
believable and honest plot.  The villains have believable, even
defensible, motives; and the heroes, while they are virtuous, may not be
right.  Or, better, what is "right" is ambiguous.

A further delight of the book is MacLeod's writing.  He is a clear and
elegant writer, with a great ear for clever brand names and other phrases,
which subtly illuminate the nature of this future world.  In this he is
like Greg Egan and perhaps most of all Bruce Sterling.  As with those two
writers, MacLeod' near futures seem fully furnished, real.  He also loves
puns (i.e. "the house ... had the look of a castle in which there had been
many wild knights"). Usually these are fun, and work to further enhance
our feeling for his setting; but sometimes this facet of MacLeod's writing
may be a bit overdone, or self-indulgent.  At times MacLeod is capable of
exhilarating flights of metaphor, such as his description of Moh's first
experience of what we might tiredly call "cyberspace:" several pages of
kinesthetic description ("She wiped the sarcasm from her lips and shook in
small drops, like sneers, from her fingers") which was both fun to read
and a reasonable representation of what Moh might have felt.

This is an excellent book, and all the more remarkable for being a first
novel.  Iain Banks' jacket quote says "this man's going to be a major
writer:" for my money, he already is.

%A Ken MacLeod
%T The Star Fraction
%I Legend
%C London
%D 1996 (HC 1995)
%P 341 pp 
%G 0-09-955881-5
%O PB, UK 5.99 pounds

Rich Horton | [email-masked]
"I am an excellent cook, and anyway when I am fifty I will probably
prefer the breakfast to the girl anyway." - W. M. Spackman