Thanks

Go out to Mark Shea for linking to my blog, to John C. Wright for linking to my review of his Golden Age Trilogy (yes, I am pleased) and to Jeff Miller (better known as the Curt Jester) for being my first commentor.

The Golden Age - Part 2

So, after much deliberation, I am not going to walk you through the story of the second and third books of the trilogy. I greatly enjoyed the process of discovery along with Phaetheon, finding out why his memory was erased and who the enemy was who attacked him. Although to be fair, he really should have guessed the enemy sooner that he did given how smart he is. Therefore, I will discuss some of the themes prevalent in the trilogy.
The single biggest theme is the nature of truth. Given the ability to manipulate the senses and even memories that exists in Phaethon's world, it is certainly no wonder that many people think that truth is malleable and relative. Even, Helion, Phaethon's father and founder of the Silver-Gray school which adheres to ancient traditions and promotes an objective philosophy and morality does believe that his ideas are truly universal. In fact, at the crucial moment, it seems that only Phaethon, his wife Daphne and possibly the one man army (literally) Atkins maintain a faith in the objectivity and rationality of truth. And it is this faith in rationality and reason (yes, you read that right. Just chew on it for a bit) that in the end defeats the enemy and his philosophy of nihilism. Yes, in the end the enemy is not defeated through force of arms but through philosophy. And the enemy is not just defeated, he is converted.
Another theme explored in the book is the nature of free will. This is less explicit but still there. It comes out through the relationship of the Sophotech, super intelligent computers, capable of predicting virtually all events and even ordering those events in certain ways. In fact, the story largely hinges on a couple of small interventions on the part of one of the most intelligent Sophotechs.
If these machines are so intelligent and capable of controlling so much of human affairs, how can it be said that people are truly free? This argument, as well as an argument based on the lack of direct intervention on the part of the Sophotech to alleviate suffering are used by the enemy to paint these machines as evil and manipulative tyrants. The astute reader will recognize the arguments marshaled against the goodness of the Sophotechs as being the same arguments used against the goodness of God. The answers are of course fairly simple, the machines do not control our choices, they merely predict them. Even when they intervene, the do not force the choices made, they only make them possible. As to suffering, the only way to fully eliminate it would be to eliminate human free will. This is not explicit but rather implicit in the description of how the enemy's civilization came to collapse.
Other issues discussed are the nature of authority, law, and the ability of a free and peaceful society to deal with external military threats but as this is already a very long post, I will leave such discussions for the comment boxes.

The Golden Age - Part 1

Here's part one, which basically gives a brief description of the world of the Golden Age and the highlights of the first book.

The Golden Age is a highly speculative bit of science fiction by the intrepid John C. Wright. Set (I think) 100,000 years in the future, technology has continued to develop to the point that people are able to alter their bodies to pretty much any configuration, change, erase or add memories at will and transfer their minds into "mannequins" so that they never actually have to move in their real bodies (much like the movie Surrogates). As for society, there is unheard of wealth, it seems everyone has access to most of the fruits of the age save for those who choose not to make use of them.
That last actually brings me to one of the more interesting aspects of the trilogy, the fact that people are still people. There are still people who reject most technology, others who worship it; there is still pettiness and jealously, rebels, control freaks, etc.
Getting back to the story, we meet the main character, Phaethon, who is a an accomplished engineer and the "son" (a word that doesn't necessarily mean the same thing in Wright's world as ours) of Helion, another engineer whose claim to fame is that he rearranged the sun so that its "useful life" has been extended. In any case, he is confronted by two mysterious figures who both claim that he is not who and what he thinks he is. Essentially, he is informed that rather than the popular well-loved figure he believes himself to be, he is a pariah and his memory has been altered such that he cannot remember why this is. In fact, almost the entire society has also had its memory altered. Naturally, he starts asking questions and ultimately is attacked by an unknown enemy, which forces him to open up his memory casket, despite the risk of permanent exile.