Metaplanetary

by Tony Daniel

The human race has extended itself into the far reaches of our solar system -- and, in doing so, has developed into something remarkable. The inner system of the Met -- with its worlds connected by a vast living network of cables -- is supported by the repression and enslavement of humanity's progeny, nanotechnological artificial intelligences whom the tyrant Amés has declared non-human. But the longing for freedom cannot be denied. And now a line has been drawn at Neptune's moon Triton, where those who oppose Ame's and hisfearsome minions await the foretold return of a mysterious man of destiny and doom who has vanished into the backwater of the Met. But resistance will only ensure the unspeakable onslaught of the dictator's wrath -- a rage that will soon ravage the solar system and plunge all of humankind into the fury of total war.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy, Cyberpunk, Speculative Fiction, Ebooks

530 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Tony Daniel is an author of science fiction novels, short stories, and radio dramas.

For the comic book author, see Tony S. Daniel.

Reviews

[Kalin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Metaplanetary is an underappreciated gem on so many levels: from its depiction of AI love as solving systems of mathematical equations with transfinite values--that is, engaging the faculties of the AI to their fullest, leaving room for no "spare thought"--to extraordinary modes of traversing the Solar System via self-evolved nanotech-based strands full of a breathable, snot-like substance; from the wry remark that when we abandon our human form for an inorganic carrier, we lose some of our mental flexibility and intuition (I wish more SF writers delved into these issues; we already have plenty of science to tell us it's not nearly as simple as The Matrix had it), to a rumination about closure in the most unlikely of circumstances .... The book keeps flinging these nuggets at us, in rapid bursts (the chapters are usually three to five pages long). Occasionally, I found myself wishing it was a bit slower, more patient, less ADD-esque. Most of the time, however, I was thrilled by the pace and variety. Reminded me of Alfred Bester in that respect.

Metaplanetary was recommended to me when I was looking for something on a par with David Zindell's Requiem for Homo Sapiens. Zindell's trilogy (starting with The Broken God) feels more complete and well thought-out, as does The Golden Age by John C. Wright; I cannot recommend those two highly enough. However, I found Metaplanetary nearly as stimulating. Its revelations don't surge over you like tsunamis but rather pinch some dormant parts of your brain and scamper away laughing, to pinch the next ones, while you're still trying to readjust your mindscape.

What I didn't like--didn't ring true enough to me--was the choice of antagonist. If we are still that stupid in the 31st century to let a one-man (or one-whatever) tyranny rise to the top, then we shouldn't have made it there in the first place. Perhaps this part is better read as a parable, a reflection of our past follies and tendencies. (Director Ames is, for all intents and purposes, a variation on Hitler, Stalin, etc.--only less human, and thus, less convincing. His villainy is over-the-top ... yet deliciously so; he may not seem very authentic, but he's fun. ;) However, it annoys me no end to find such reflections projected into the far future. They go in the face of everything we've already built and learnt along the ladder of our social and humanitarian evolution.

...

The whole review is here:

https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Actual rating: 2.5 stars.

Metaplanetary is good old-fashioned space opera, scaled to the entire solar system and a bit beyond, taking place approximately 1,000 years from now. The inner system, led by evil dictator Ames, is at war with the freedom-loving rebels and cloudships of the outer system. Exciting stuff! Unfortunately it turns out to be the first of a two-book deal, and a lot of interesting characters are left hanging from cliffs at the end. Will I buy the second book to find out what happens? I don't know. Why don't I know, you ask?

Skimming other readers' reviews of Metaplanetary, I encounter one comment over and over again, a variation on the theme that the science behind Tony Daniel's future solar system is "solid." I'm not at all certain that is the case. Daniel writes of a solar system where all the planets and moons from Mercury out to Mars and some way into the Asteroid Belt are connected by organic snot-filled tubes made of nanotech material called "grist." Thoughts and intelligence travel from one end of the solar system to the other instantaneously, thanks to the pioneering work of 25th century scientist Merced, after whom the interplanetary communications network called the Merci is named.

Artificial intelligences called "converts" (there are enslaved converts and free converts, and strong societal prejudices against the free ones) can couple with humans (ditto strong societal prejudices) and produce human-plus offspring. What distinguishes free converts from Large Array Personalities? Ah, the LAPs, you see, are human, with no AI involved. You wouldn't mind a LAP moving in next door or taking your daughter out on a date.

But that's not all. Humans can transform themselves into AIs or free converts, and then, whenever they want to enjoy a cigar or the feel of grass beneath their feet, whip up a physical body out of free-floating grist. These temporary physical manifestations are called pellicles, as best I can make out. Some free converts operate several physical bodies at once, which act independently while staying part of the unifying mind. Want immortality? Convert yourself into an AI, then back into a younger body made of grist! While all this wonderful stuff is going on, simple humans as we know them today populate the moons and planets, content to inhabit one body and die after a short time. With all these other possibilities, why would anyone settle for that? We never find out, because regular humans are not really part of Tony Daniel's story.

Some free converts have migrated beyond the solar system and now live in the Oort Belt ... or perhaps it is the Carbuncle ... as giant cloudlike space ships. Of course they also slap together grist pellicle bodies from time to time in order to participate in and interfere with regular human affairs. Scraps of computer code, floating around since the end of the 20th century, have been made into rats and ferrets (they keep the snot tubes clean). Regular humans who live on Mercury are Mercury-adapted, yet can climb into the nearest tube and pop out on Mars, seemingly with no physical adjustment for gravity, atmosphere, or temperature. Or what the fuck, I guess if there's a problem they just turn themselves into spaceships and fly off to Alpha Centauri.

You see the problem I'm having with Tony Daniel's "solid science"? Right. Maybe it is solid, but as Arthur C. Clark famously said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Tony Daniel might as well be writing about Hogwarts and Harry Potter. Having a bit of a problem adapting to life in a methane atmosphere at 4.5 times the pull of earth gravity? Just wave your magic pellicle grist wand and say "adaptaramus!"

So, will I read Superluminary, the second book of the series? Probably. But I'm going to spend some time in the 21st century first. I'll get back to Tony Daniel's space opera in a few months.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

More like 4.5 stars, Metaplanetary starts and ends slowly and unevenly. That middle though, probably pages 100 to 450, is a tremendous blend of old-school sci-fi, new and improved technobabble, and philosophy of science on par with Neal Stephenson.

Metaplanetary is the first of several novels that essentially questions sentience. Daniel writes a highly evolved form of the solar system (similar to that of James S.A. Corey's Expanse) where everything inside the Kuiper Belt is connected by a fantastic reticulated system of tubes, much like a giant spiderweb. Mercury controls most of the wealth of the solar system, while Earth has essentially become a nature preserve for vacations. On the other side, Humans have adapted to live on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and on Pluto. But more than that, Humans have transcended flesh and become living ships that have gone even farther out, into the Oort Cloud. AI has also achieved sentience in a number of degrees such that there are non-corporeal computer programs that create and mother flesh children.

The conflict is with a human who wishes to stop all Large Array Personalities-- a flesh/AI hybrid that has evolved to exist in multiple places at multiple times in different aspects for different purposes. That he wishes to exploit this for his own gain goes without saying. Daniel's villain is a mustache twirler, but he doesn't give much in the way of justification that would make for any amount of sympathy. The story suffers, somewhat, for being so black and white.

The beginning takes a good long while to get into, not least because the first chapter is religious prophecy that doesn't much figure into the rest of the novel until the bitter end. It reminded me of nothing so much as the beginning of Anathem, where you just take things on faith knowing eventually it will all make sense. And it does. The end also slows down entirely too quickly, as if Daniel realized too late he'd be writing a series and had no good ideas about where to break the book to both maintain momentum for a series and conclude the book in a way that satisfied as a stand alone tale.

New (but old) and different (but emotional resonant same) and worth a shot!

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best hard SF books I've read in years. Not an easy read. Had to think. Had to think a lot. It was so much better than the mental mush so many SF authors are serving these days.

That said, Daniel squeezed and awful lot of science and back story into 437 pages. Created a full, rich scientific and historical path from this world to his over the next several centuries. Some of it approaches fantasy, but he gave us hard--if fanciful--development for it.

The ending "felt" like the set up for a sequel.

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first volume of a duology. It was recommended for me as an underappreciated SF gem for the 2000s (it was first published in 2001). This is a story of megastructures and post-humanity, of a civil war and giant space battles as well as uplifted rodents, which is slightly reminiscent of Cordwainer Smith’s works.

The start throws readers to the piece of this (brave new?) world, describing a priest, who is (as the most people here): For most people, the tripartite division of the human personality into aspect, convert, and pellicle was a completely unconscious affair. People did not “talk” to their convert portion as Andre was able to do any more than the conceptual part of a single brain would talk to the logical part on a conscious level. - Aspect here is a selfhood, convert is an AI assistant and pellicle is the microscopic, algorithmic part of him that was spread through his body and spread out in the general vicinity. These updates to human nature were allowed by ‘grist’ – nano-particles, which can be used to create anything if one can allow the cost, e.g. The table pulsed, and two cups began forming on its surface. As the outsides hardened, a gel at their center thinned down to liquid. This was an expensive use of grist.

The whole internal Solar system, from Mercury to Mars, is linked by the Met (which is in the title), a giant web connecting all sizable objects. The kilometer-think threads with their own environment inside, strengthened by an upscaled ‘strong nuclear force’ and using ‘spooky action at a distance’ allowing for instantaneous (i.e. faster than light) communication. This is especially important for LAPs – Large Array Personas, people who live simultaneously in multiple bodies across the Solar system. There are also purely digital persons, able to live and love in both virtuality and reality…

And in this mind-blowing setting, a person captures the government within the Met, making ‘unnatural’ persons non-entities, sending them to concentration camps for experiments and attempts to occupy objects behind the asteroid belt. There is a diverse cast from a woman ‘made up’ from an uplifted ferret, which hunted uplifted rats in Carbuncle – a waste dump for grist; to a 11-years-old girl, a daughter of a man an a digital person, who tries to leave the Met through its kilometer-thick cables; multi-kilometer long cloud ships ‘living’ at Oort cloud… and a lot more!

There are a lot of ideas, a lot of characters. In a purely literary sense, the novel needs more polishing, but still a very interesting, if challenging read.

[Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

i've always had a soft spot for SF where the author has decided that as they're going to play fast and loose with the laws of physics, they might as well go *large*. Tony Daniel's /Metaplanetary/ is such. The "Met" of the title is a vast network of space elevators, cables, tethers and bolas made from a quantum nanotech stratum called "grist". And when I say vast, I mean VAST: stretching all the way from Mercury to beyond the orbit of Mars! Of course the various cables aren't actually permanently tied together or to the planets and satellites of the inner Solar System, but there are constantly changing temporary connections and conjunctions which make the Met effectively a subway network for the inner system. It's also a habitat in its own right too, and the nano-tech grist which makes the Met possible also, inter alia, provides an instantaneous (as in FTL instantaneous) communications network and a substrate for fully-immersive VR and AI. this last part is important: it's not just humans living in virtuality as much as actuality sometimes as "Large Arrays of Personas" inhabiting multiple clone or virtual bodies throughout the Met, there are also "free converts", AIs based originally on human personas who can nonetheless have children, even physical children with physical humans.

I suspect that Daniel gives us a nod to the total bonkersness of his creation by naming the Earth-Moon cable as "Aldiss" (what else?) but he does throw up some fairly detailed quantum mechanical / theory of everything explanations which pass this liberal-arts-graduate-turned-code-monkey's smell test at least. Good SF should require the willing suspension of disbelief, and after some initial "WTF?" on my behalf, I found myself doing so quite comfortably.

Mr Daniel sensibly eschews making his creation the star of the book, keeping it firmly as the setting, albeit retaining an important role. Unfortunately something is rotten in the state of the Met, the inner system having fallen into the clutches of the satisfyingly Orwellian-named Department of Immunity and its leader, the enigmatic and sadistic Director Amés. Amés is unequivocally a monster, but Daniel stops short just enough of rendering him as two-dimensional caricature, yet keeps him, for now, as something of a cipher - not even his closest confidants really know much about him.

/We/ learn, though, that Amés was originally a musical prodigy, and it is his desire to play all of humanity as his instrument. This means subjugating the last remaining free communities in outer Solar System, so an all-out blitzkrieg is underway before too long. There's also the cloudships, sentient starships (yes they can reach Centauri and other nearby stars) who were originally, centuries ago, flesh-and-blood human. How they decide to act may be what settles the fate of the human race.

Every good dictator needs a minority to scapegoat of course, and in Amés's case it's the AI "free converts" who are rounded up to be virtually worked to death (through not being given time to run daily garbage collection routines) in a virtual concentration camp on Mars. The ones so exhausted are perhaps the lucky ones, as some are selected for some truly horrific experiments, and sadly one such is one of the more compelling characters we encounter.

It is the strength of the characters that makes this novel worth reading - we really start to care what happens to them, and Mr Daniel takes care to ensure that even the antagonists are not straight out of central casting bad guys. The setting is both novel and well-conceived and both necessary yet not overly obtrusive. My main complaint is that this is not a self-contained member of a trilogy but rather the first part of a longer single work. I shall be proceeding onto the next part, /Superluminal/, forthwith, but I am really hoping for some resolution there as I understand the final part failed to find a publisher.

[Michael Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting. I read this book after I read the sequel, but I like this one better. The sequel assumes too much about this book.

Metaplanetary is about how a civil war occurred in the solar system. One side wanted to create a sort of hive mind, and the others wanted to stay individuals. Also, the first group didn't believe in the humanity of self-aware AIs, and the other felt that the were fully human.

The book doesn't quite work as an adventure story, or as space opera, but it has some big ideas that are worth thinking about.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, darn. This was very good, but I didn't realize until the end that it's only the first of an intended trilogy, one that will never be completed since the publisher didn't make enough money. So while ordinarily I'd be jumping gungho to the 2nd book, I'm going to stop now, it will just be too frustrating.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate cliffhangers. I don't mind them on TV series when I am watching the whole thing on DVD and can go straight to the next season. But even though I knew Metaplanetary was the first of a two part series, I expected some resolution at the end that would set the stage for what comes next. (For instance, I read Red Mars and was totally satisfied with "the story so far," and I may well read Mars Green and Blue because I know they will take the saga of colonization into new levels. Metaplanetary turns out to be a 437 page build up to another 500 page novel. Lots of things blow up, but no character arcs are resolved and ready to develop in new directions. In fact, characters that appear to be "major" disappear for 200 pages, and plot threads that on one level promised to drive the story get dropped until the last few pages where they reappear as welcome reminders, at least for me, because I had more or less forgotten them.

What is fully realized in Daniel's novel is the world humans inhabit in the year 3000. Human beings now come in three parts. There is the "aspect," which is you with all the squishy parts inside. Your "convert " is an algorithmic version of yourself that can take care of business in the virtuality. And the "pellicle" mediates between aspect and convert. Your pellicle is filled with "grist," a nanotechnological construct that allows for the immediate transfer of information wherever it exists, and since it has been dispersed essentially everywhere, you can access information and other people from anywhere. It's like you are your own iPhone. Grist is most abundant when you stay within the Met, a system of space cables that connect the inner planets and house most of the human population. Beyond the asteroid belt are the Outer Planets, where like pioneers everywhere the population tends to be a bit pluckier and not inclined to follow orders.

(I confess I could not have written any of the above without resorting to the Appendixes that come at the end of Superluminal, the second book in the series. Their presence there suggests that the author thought readers might need a refresher course after the three years that separated their publications. I could have used it very 20 pages or so in the first novel alone.)

And then there is the plot. The solar system is about to enter a Civil War. --Wait, maybe I should mention the other human options that include Cloudships, humans who have transformed themselves into moon-sized spacecraft and float around beyond Pluto, and Free Converts, artificial intelligences that have never had a bodily source. It is the status of Free Converts that provides one excuse for the upcoming war, which of course is really just a power grab by one Ames, ex-composer turned ruler of the Met who has his eye on the entire solar systems. Ames had an abusive childhood and as an adolescent masturbated while sticking splinters under his fingernails. Just the type to someday want to control the solar system.

Having spent the last year or so reading mostly mid-century sf, Metaplanetary made me realize how little real action there had been in most of the books I read. As Philip K. Dick suggests, a science fiction story should ask a "what if?" question and then pursue it to its end, which is what people were doing between 1950 and 1970. Metaplanetary is a post Star Wars novel, filled with chases, battles, and narrow escapes. It's fun while it lasts, but I don't want to have read another 500 pages to find out what happens. But maybe that's what readers like now. After all, it took six films to tell the Star Wars story. The fact that they got progressively worse does not bode well for all multi-volume sf that is currently on the the market.

[Cary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. Let's just get that out of the way. I could hardly put it down. But, duty comes calling on all of us eventually, so I did force myself to. Reluctantly. And itched to pick it back up again. That five-star rating sorely tempted me, but... I will also be the first to admit it has some problems. Call it a 4.49. Let's dispense with those problem first so I can get on to gushing about the good stuff.

The first, and not everyone (me included) will necessarily agree this is a problem, is that it tosses you right in with zero exposition or explanation. But to be fair, Daniel created a big, complex world quite different from ours, and you are not going to understand a lot of the terminology he tosses around at the start. Understandably, this turned off more than a few readers, which is a shame (see "I loved this book" above).

What was weird in light of this utter absence of lexicography, was that in the middle of the book, he infodumps like a champ. I feel like, well, if you're going to do that sort of thing, you could help your readers at the start a bit too. Again, the beginning unfamiliarity didn't bother me, and if you stick with it and pay attention to the basic meanings of the terms he uses, you can sort things out eventually.

So, a matter of taste, though I sympathize easily with those who were turned off by it, especially given the level of exposition in the middle of the book. (That midway exposition, by the way, was nicely done, and I enjoyed it as much as I did sorting out what the hell was going on at the start.)

The bigger knock I have is the cartoonishly evil bad guys (not in every case, but most of them). A pack of sociopaths led by a megalomaniac, with the goal of take over everything and torture and kill the opposition or those you don't like. Kinda boring if you're looking for some moral complexity. I can't really excuse this as I can the choice to toss the reader in the deep end at the start, which I see as a matter of taste as much as anything else.

The writing is a bit uneven. At times great, at others, a bit cringe. I think this stems from Daniel having a shit ton of ideas in his head he wanted to pack into this book and maybe being a bit manic to give them all their due. I know I would have been. It might have benefited from a stronger editorial hand.

All that said, this book does indeed pack an amazingly cool set of ideas into it. Just fantastic stuff. And Daniel created characters equal to the coolness of the setting. Neither overshadows the other. I got into so many of them.

Sometimes synopses get things wrong or overstate to the point of obscurity. The synopsis (at least on Goodreads of the edition I read) has phrases such as "boundlessly inventive," "brilliantly dreams the future," and "reinvents humanity." None of these overstate if you ask me.

There is a plurality of humanity, real and virtual and a mix of the two, that I can't recall seeing elsewhere. Oh, and people are spaceships too, in case you were wondering. They can be arrays of personalities with presences spread across the solar system. Physical humans can marry purely virtual humans (and reproduce!).

The idea of the Met, the engineering feat of the linking the inner planets up via kilometer thick super-physics cables, staggers. I feel like it should be ridiculous. Okay, sure, maybe in a fantasy novel, you could get away with that, it wouldn't seem ridiculous. But Daniel pulls it off here, courtesy of some invented physics cleverly explained and millennium-distant descendants being vastly more advanced than us.

Because everyone has access to virtuality, few people travel far physically, and those who live on planets less friendly to human live have bodies adapted to the local environment. This includes space itself. Cool! Who wouldn't want to be adapted to survive (at least for a while) in space or live on Triton?

I haven't even touched on the environment of the Met itself, the 'grist' the nanotech substrate that functions as a pervasive network and cloud computing platform, Star Trek-esque replicator, and can be twisted into viral forms for both physical and cyber warfare.

The beginning of this will confuse the hell out of you, but stick with it, because the amazing ideas and engaging characters will kick in soon enough, and you won't want to put it down.

[Cliff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humanity, in the early years of the 3rd millennium, freely travels around the inner solar system via giant cables, a kilometre wide slung from the poles of the planets with the magma of the interior cores providing lubrication. Interesting idea! Humanity is diverse with some only existing as a piece of computer program, but they can appear in a bodily state, even have sex and have children. The outer planets, or their moons, are also inhabited some be humans genetically enhanced to be able to withstand cold and a lack of oxygen. The oort cloud and beyond is inhabited by cloud ships, enormous objects which are a physical manifestation of humans as computer programs. Into this comes one Ames bent on domination of the system. There's always one! The narrative deals with a number of individuals who come and go, sometimes with a chapter or more devoted to their back story. Every so often, the author gives us an excerpt from a supposed book which explains the science, or the history, to move the story along. I can't pretend to understand the supposed science and get my head around the free converts, just converts and the Large Array Personalities. Or the merci, grist, pellicles etc. I give 4* as the book is well written and is the product of a very fertile imagination. There is a second book in the series, Superluminal, which I'm going to start reading. From what I can gather, there should be a third which has never appeared, Superluminal having been published in 2004. Did the author's imagination run dry?

[Peter Goodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Metaplanetary,” by Tony Daniel (Eos, 2001). Dense, complex, intricate, hard SF, good and fun. I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected. Very far in the future. There are three sets of human civilization: the Met, the inner planets to the asteroid belt, connected by huge, semi-sentient cables, one large, swarming, unified society; the outer planets, more independent minded, not as wealthy, fractious and a bit ornery; the cloudships, immense craft that are living beings. Swarming through it all is the grist which, as far as I can figure, is quadrillions of bits of information that permeate the worlds. There are biological humans, humans with multiple personalities spread over great distances, virtual beings that can be part biological, part virtual, and free converts---being that exist entirely in cyberspace but capable of having fully connected lives with biological humans, and to have children with them. I think. Anyway, a genius in the Met, starting first as a brilliant composer, has decided that he knows what is best for existence and sets out first, to gain control of the Met, and then to conquer the outer worlds. They don’t even realize they are being attacked until they are. Lots and lots of interesting characters, a lot of science way beyond quantum theory. I look forward to reading the sequel, “Superluminal.”

https://wulfssaga.com/

[Mike Smoller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read SF for pleasure. I want to read a captivating story full of new places, concepts and ideas. It should have characters you care about and have a beginning, a middle and an end. A great story skillfully combines these elements to hold me spellbound. This book met most of those criteria, but failed miserably in one critical aspect. Like so many of its predecessors and contemporaries it failed in its ending. It left too many plots, subplots, characters and situations unfinished to satisfy my hunger for completion. Even though there is a follow-up novel ("Superluminary"), it only makes the matter worse by drawing out the story without giving the final satisfying feeling of completion. This story desperately needed a final installment to wrap up the plot lines, character stories and reach a conclusion. I hate a novel that fails to do that. I regret ever spending the time to get to that final frustrating lack of resolution.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great world building!

Lovely world building, detailed, with very reasonable use of buzzwords and hypothetical tech. The plot is uneven, first following a family, then other groups. Many, many loose ends. It wants to be a collection of short stories. There's no character development, and the characters tend to speak with the same voice. Also, the romances, such as they are, would not interest most women. It's also a little too picaresque, but that's my taste.

[Ellison · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the science ideas in this novel are often intriguing Daniel spends too much time explaining them, so much time that it seems he thinks they are as entertaining as the plot. As for the plot it is dribbled out between the info dumps. It's all made more frustrating because the writing is excellent.

[Jimmie Harris · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolute trash

[Scooby Doo]

I read about ten pages and was completely baffled by the unintelligible nonsense.

[Brian Kerr · Rating 3 out of 5]

read

[John May · Rating 4 out of 5]

This starts slow as all the details of the world building slot into place, but then it races from the 40% all the way to the abrupt ending. The next book went straight onto my tbr

[Christopher Muniec · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best

My mind is full. My soul is quenched of a thirst only slaked by Herbert. Ill be reading these for the rest of my days.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure how I feel about the tone and pacing - definitely a mix.

[Mike Sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rare that I like scifi that has a large military component, but this is so well done. Reading 2024, the specific outcomes of AI and nanotech read very relevant

[Alex Barrera · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was different. Lots of new ideas, many entertaining. I wouldn't call this hard sci fi at all but it has a lot to enjoy.

[Forrest · Rating 4 out of 5]

Metaplanetary and I have a bit of an odd history. I picked up a copy of the paperback in a tiny bookstore in Acadia National Park back in 2002. After reading the whole thing in basically two days, I desperately wanted to find the sequel, with the rear cover promised had come out already. Of course it hadn’t and it would be another there years before Superluminal would see the light of day, and in the meantime I forgot about the whole thing. Going back to Metaplanetary hasn’t quite lived up to my expectations, but the book is still a solid piece of soft science fiction/science fantasy with one of the most interesting core concepts I’ve come across.

Metaplanetary attempts to be told as a pseudo-scholarly war record assembled by an off-screen narrator. The chapters progress through the events leading up to a war between the Inner and Outer solar system regions, with each chapter containing the personal recollections of various involved individuals. These narratives are punctuated by scholarly documents attributed to various in-universe authors, describing the history, politics and technology of the setting.

There are too many narrating characters to summarize here, but the general shape of the story is that of a dictator, Amés, seizing control of the Met or Inner solar system through charisma and a vision of a greater human race. Amés’ true goal is a literal interpretation of Human Instrumentality, reducing the entire human race to instruments that he can then play. But the increasing population of the Met who lack a physical Aspect, the Free-Converts, are inadvertently preventing Amés from realizing his goals, so he starts rounding them up and dumping them into digital concentration camps. This breach of basic human rights riles up the Outer System governments and sets the stage for a system-wide war.

At the core of Metaplanetary’s appeal is the concept of ‘the Met.’ Rather than try to colonize planets, the humans of this future chose to inhabit the spaces between worlds by using a kind of elaborate space elevator. The advent of quantum computing nanotech, called Grist, allowed humanity to spin a web of flexible but functionally unbreakable cables between the inner planets, which were then expanded to allow habitation. There’s a lot of technobabble silliness involved in this explanation, and the whole concept seems a little under-thought, (whatcha gonna do about cables going through the sun?) but it is an interesting version of space expansion, and one that certainly has some merit on the small scale. Daniel also opts to have his future not terraform the inner planets, and instead use advanced nanotech to bioform humans to live in the extreme environments of Venus and Mercury, as well as naked vacuum. It’s a fascinating approach which conserves resources, as long as you assume that people only get adapted to their home planets.

Daniel does have a lot going for him in the creative science department, but he also commits some rather egregious crimes against common sensibility. While his explanation for the detection of Gravitons is both interesting and slightly plausible, his description of those elementary particles as both sentient and actively opposed to entropy shoves the whole novel off the hard science cliff and into the murky waters of science fantasy. His descriptions of AIs and quantum computing are also somewhat suspect. To his credit, he does reference some of the fundamental experiments that helped establish quantum mechanics and uses them correctly, or close enough not to matter.

Moving back to the narrative, I think there are a few too many characters floating around for the story to really get moving. A lot of time is spent with a typical family on Mercury to establish some of the socio-political aspects of Met life, but then Daniel pushes too far and starts making the 11-year-old daughter into an ad hoc freedom fighter. The book also seems to single a character named TB out as the core protagonist, but then he gets knocked unconscious about a third of the way in and we almost never hear from him again. Some of this is meant to be picked up in the sequel, but it still comes off as sloppy.

The action sequences are handled well, except for some minor unrealistic space combat elements. The book also seems to be assuming that the outer planets are in near-perfect alignment, which doesn’t really happen that often, but there’s no other explanation for the utter disregard for travel times. And when the second book explicitly establishes the non-existence of superluminal travel, all of Metaplanetary’s time tables start to break down a bit.

In spite of my nit-picking, I really do recommend Metaplanetary as a stand-alone novel. Yes, you’re going to have some loose ends because of the sequel lead-in cliffhanger, but as you’ll see when I get to my review of Superluminal next week, you’re really better off just making up your own ending. Just ooh and aah at the interesting concepts and try to enjoy the ride.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like I've been burned, badly, by this book. After a disastrous encounter with Peter F Hamilton's Pandora's Star, which I thought was standalone until the last few pages when I realized it couldn't possibly be finished in the book remaining, I swore to never again read a book that I didn't *know* was standalone, or part of a series. I kept that up for a decade but Metaplanetary just ruined it. I'm 90% of the way through the book, there's NO WAY he can finish it in time...check the internet, oh, no, there's a sequel! Well, at least Superluminal (the sequel) exists and I can buy it...OH NOOOO! It's an unfinished series! I guess I'll finish the last 10% of this one, but it will be ashes in my mouth. In fact, the very top thing on the author's web page at the time of this review is a defense of why the series is unfinished (basically, publishing houses are boring dinosaurs but the author can't financially risk self-publishing it).

The book itself is quite good. The author plays riiiight out on the edge of how disjointedly he can write it (in terms of skipping around in time and with characters) without going over the edge. I love his vision of the future - it's extremely well developed, although there are places where it could use being better explained. (By that I mean places where an explanation is given too succinctly, not places where we should just assume future tech is magic). The plot is very believable and interesting, the characters are all quite likable, and the action is exciting.

[Jesse Toldness · Rating 4 out of 5]

See those stars at the beginning of this review? Yeah, those are provisional. The thing you should know, that I did not know upon picking this book up, is that this is the first book in a series. Or at least in a diptych. There is a sequel and how many of those stars it keeps are going to depend on how well the author develops the things he has set up in this volume in the next book.

That particular little niggle aside, Metaplanetary is a hell of a ride. Adventure, drama and particularly compelling fictional cultural and political history make for a truly engrossing setting and an epic tale of war and identity. Tony Daniel even manages to write a tale of post-human mentalities and transhuman technologies (all of which are present from the word 'go' and integral to the setting) without losing the 'human' parts of those. Even the 'converts', the AI's, are relatable characters. I hope to hell that everything pays off, because there's quite a few Chekov's guns on the wall...

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

The library had this book and its sequel Superluminal, but had delisted this one and insisted that if I wanted it I had to buy it for 50c. Because turfing the first book in the series makes so much sense... Not an encouraging sign either.

Still, I wanted to read it so I ponied up 50 little ones and I'm glad I did. This is an underappreciated book. About 12 years old, but exploring some high concept stuff involving a world with pervasive nanotechnology ("grist"), sentient AI and theory of mind.

Recommend it and its sequel but fair warning: the series is incomplete and leaves off a little abruptly. The author's promise of finishing the series has so far taken second place to his desire to keep the lights on...

[Jeffrey Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a good book. I especially like/ remember the concept of a rail system between the planets. The idea was a web of tubes extending from a planet out into space. As an example, the rail line to the Moon. As the Moon revolved around the Earth, the tube/ rail line moved around the planet, constantly being reconnected by nano-bots. Same for the tubes extending to other planets. One way or another, you could always find a connection from one inner planet to another. Pretty cool.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a very good book. It should probably be a single volume (with its sequel, "Superluminary"). It's main goal seems to be interrogating what defines a human, in a world with humans, AI's, and people in between.

Unfortunately, the bad guys are very static characters, and are primarily described as just being greedy, immoral people, but they do gain depth as the novels progress.

[Scythan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be refreshing. There are many ideas in this book that I haven't found developed as well elsewhere. The characters are believable and the issues relevant; the only problem that I have found is that the author didn't develop the character of Ames enough for my liking. But that is a small quibble- I highly recommend this book!