The Cassini Division [Paperback]

This isn't a preview-type review. *SPOILER ALERT*
You really shouldn't read past here if you
haven't read the book. And much of what follows won't make sense
if you do.

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"A brilliant novel of ideas" -- front-cover blurb by Vernor Vinge.

The central anarcho-socialist idea -- the "True Knowledge" -- is,
well.... "Might Makes Right". Ugh. I've always thought the best way
to judge a person's character is to watch how they treat someone
who has no power over them -- think back to good & bad bosses
you've had. Fortunately, the "comrades" don't seem to apply this
principle in their everyday lives. But the protagonist, Ellen May
Ngewthu, is an appalling individual, a close analog to Gen. Curtis
"Bomb 'em back to the Stone Age" LeMay. Unlike LeMay, she has
the freedom to act, and completely destroys the "post-human"
Jovian civilization for the offense of hijacking a third-party
spaceship. Even the crudest SF carnography trots out a stronger casus
belli to trigger mass genocide (at least for human aggressors).

Ellen has a remarkable ability to dehumanize her opponents --
bluntly, she's a violently paranoid racist. Even after personal contact
with legally-human "robots" on New Mars has, kind of sort of, made
her accept them as "part of *us*, whereas the Jovians --
'You mean you would contemplate a union -- with *them*?'...."

".... Time for Plan B," Ellen decides, disregarding a direct order from
the Solar Council delegate -- Plan B being genocide by comet
bombardment. Worked, too. And the Jovies *were* baddies, through
& through, in the pat, weak & rather disappointing ending. Feh.

Post-socialism (or anarcho-socialism) in MacLeod's Solar Union
adopts the form, but little content, from present-day socialism and
communism -- irony? (At least, I hope the character who says that
Lenin was "just misunderstood" is intended as irony.) The Union
economy isn't described in enough detail to judge whether it might
actually work (though with enough to succeed as a fictional device).
Perhaps there's more detail elsewhere -- this is the first MacLeod
book I've read (but it won't be the last).

MacLeod has clearly read his Vinge -- though, curiously, the Union's
policy is to avoid a Vingean singularity at almost any cost, and to
destroy any culture that reaches it. For a more convincing (IMO)
snapshot of a successful democratic anarchy, read Vinge's "The
Ungoverned." Another sfnal predecessor that likely influenced
MacLeod is Ursula K. LeGuin's wonderful "The Dispossessed" and
related works. And read Hans Moravec's recent "Robots" for another
view of the coming post-human era.

Humans as aliens: the MacLeod future history has encountered no
aliens, so they've made their own -- the "fast folk" or post-humans
are the most dramatic example, but all three societies here -- the
post-socialists, the anarcho-capitalists and the fast folk -- are quite
different from today's cultures, and quite strange to each other, a
welcome relief from the more usual "futures" that are today with
tailfins stuck on. And it's a pleasure to read a lean, non-bloated
novel.

Not that there aren't some future-anachronisms here: helicopters,
elevator attendants(!), brass-&-steel(!) mechanical computers....
Memo to MacLeod: brush up on your Drexlerian molecular rod-logic
nanocomputers. Or if those won't work -- DNA-based
biocomputation. Or if you *have* to go macro-mechanical, you'd
use lightweight composites & light metals -- inertia in the gear
trains, y'know? And anyway -- how likely is it that non-networked
electronic computers would be crippled -- or taken over -- by "radio
viruses" from Jupiter?

Tin Ear Dept: ".... I weren't that worried. Had you lot figured.... Just
gosh-darn lucky...." (p. 168, US hc ed). Umm. Mebbe this rancher
emigrated to Texas from the lil ol' UK?

Enough of this grumbling & nit-picking -- I had a great time reading
"Cassini Division", which you might not have guessed, I just
realized, from reading this far. I found myself deliberately slowing
down to savor the book, something I last did for Phyllis Gotlieb's
lapidary "Flesh & Gold". And it makes you think. A definite keeper,
highly recommended despite the appalling genocidal "heroine."

Hey, it could be worse. Consider, for example, Barnes'
"Kaleidoscope Century", or Barton's "When Heaven Fell." At least
Ellen has self-doubts...

Happy reading!
Pete Tillman
(review written 10-99)

There is debate as to whether or not the posthumans are conscious at all, and Macleod illustrates a racism here that one day may actually take place to our detriment and shame: is posthuman life conscious or just a computer program emulation of consciousness? Also discussed is the question of identity when a mind is uploaded into a computer, is the person the same as the original, or just a copy, with the original alive or dead giving added debate. This is a very complex topic and Macleod touches on it briefly as he presents to us a far ranging philosophical view of what it means to be human in this future he has spun, several hundred years from now, a future after the 'Singularity' in which science and technology has very nearly totally transformed life as we know it and how we live, great reading indeed. Plot and character development were good, and this novel is full of many interesting ideas, not necessarily original, including nano-fabrication of food and almost anything else, mind viruses, wormholes (most unlikely part of the book), anti-aging pills for eternal youth, mind back-ups in computers (with it's ensuing questions of identity), cloning, artificial people, smart suits (the book is worth reading just for this).

The book was a page turner for me, and I loved it's no-nonsense forward looking philosophy.