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.