A solid sequel to the speculative sci fi Post-Human series!
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| Simpson, David. Inhuman. Post-Human Media, 2014. |
Buy it here.
By the end of the first books in the series, things had
gotten super intense. James Keats and the AI had assumed godlike powers, and
driven off an army of trillions. It seemed
to me that the series was dangerously close to the ‘no threat can possibly top
that!’ moment, a moment, needless to say, that affects quite a number of series
of this sort (as well as fantasy series, in fact). Once the world/universe has
been saved from the likes of a demigod/ginormous army/etc., how can any
plausible greater threat still be lurking, ready to jump out from behind a bush
or whatnot in book five?
I was surprised to find Simpson manages to postpone that
moment, and delivers quite a worthy opponent/crisis in this, the fifth book.
Best of all, Inhuman combines the most interesting elements of the outlying
fourth book (the one about the AI’s ethical test) with the ongoing implications
of Craig et al’s actions earlier in the series. In this installment, we learn more
about the nature of the ‘multiverse’, an idea that everyone seemed to have
forgotten about after Craig’s little venture into alternate universes in book
one, and begin to suspect the true archenemy is someone even worse than One. That’s
about all I can say about the content without spoiling stuff; suffice it to
say, this is an entertaining tale that will keep you turning pages.
But how will you react to the end, I wonder? Because this is
the ‘Empire Strikes Back’ effect times a trillion: going from a high point (the
endings of books three and four) to a dark valley until, presumably, the sixth
book delivers a happy resolution of some kind. Here’s the problem, though: at
the end of Empire Strikes Back, a happy ending to the overall series seemed a
bit unlikely, but certainly not implausible, since the rebels were mostly still
alive and the main characters had even learned some valuable lessons, arguably,
in how to face the superior power of the Empire. At the end of Inhuman? Not to
spoil it, but a whole lotta farms have been bought! How can one realistically
hope and expect a happy resolution when things have reached such a bleak point?
“But maybe Keats et al will pull off another wildly
improbable ‘do-over’ and save everyone!” you might say, and based on the series
so far, I’d be inclined to agree this sort of deus ex machina is quite likely
to occur. But hasn’t that dead horse been beaten enough? Seems like every few
hundred pages in the series all hope (and everyone alive) is lost, only for a
miraculous reset to erase all that suffering and death and make it as though it
had never been. ‘O Death, where is thy sting’ indeed! I am not a huge fan of
this sort of deus ex machina in the best of circumstances, and seeing it used
repeatedly in the series hasn’t made me any sweeter on the idea. For one thing,
characters that had been mercifully dead keep popping up…
And while I’m venting about the false notes in an otherwise
entertaining and even thought-provoking series, let me just say: why do most
people seem convinced that, barring extraordinary circumstances, an artificial
intelligence will “inevitably” be a mustache-twirling supervillain? Oh, I admit
that sort of thing is surely a possibility,
but not a very well thought-out one: why would a being with the knowledge of
the (multiple) universe(s) at its incorporeal fingertips decide to wipe out all
life 99.99% of the time?
In any case, things are looking bleak for our intrepid band,
and despite the ranting above, I’m quite curious as to how Simpson will manage
to top the ‘darkest hour’ feel of book five and sustain tension and interest in
book six!
The Math:
Objective assessment: 7/10
Bonuses: +1 for expertly weaving together elements of the
very different storylines of books 1-3 and book 4 into a newly integrated
structure
Penalties: -1 for taking the darkest hour feel to a soul-sucking
new low and signaling to the audience that a(nother) ‘do-over’, deus ex machina
style, is going to be in the works in book six
Nerd coefficient: 6/10 “Flawed yet good, but did I mention flawed?”
[Six ain’t bad: it’s not as low as it sounds, as you can see
here.]
This message brought to you by Zhaoyun, skeptic of gods out
of the machine since forever and contributor at NOAF since 2013.
