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A review by kblincoln
Lockstep by Karl Schroeder
4.0
Don't be fooled by the Urban Fantasy-esque cover featuring a hero and a heroine likely to fall in love (they do) in an action-laden, straightforward plot where there's something valuable to get, or a person to save, or a place to get to (there is).
This is so totally NOT a pick-up-escapist novel.
It's an exacting, deeply-thought out rumination on one possible future of humanity in space with slower-than-light travel.
The story loosely revolves around Toby McGonigal, a young man from future Earth who has been lost in space for 14,000 years, cryogenically frozen in a "cicada bed."
He awakes to a different world...but one that still contains his family. How is that possible? Well here's where it gets mega-complicated. Apparently multiple worlds, and different cities on different worlds, have evolved a system to compensate for vast distances between those worlds coupled with scant resources. The solution: Lockstep, where these cities agree to "winter over" in cryogenic sleep for set amounts of time, and then waken for a short period (a day or a month or a week.)
So I could jump in my spaceship, sleep for a year, and on the other side of the galaxy the outpost where I'm going also is asleep. For both of us the journey takes but one day in our experienced time. While we're sleeping, robots continue to mine resources and stockpile goods we'll need when we awake.
Imagine a whole series of galaxies like that. But, and here's where I had to expand the mental effort equivalent to 3 bars of chocolate for each couple of pages: the frequency of the lockstep of the main "empire" that Toby's family is controlling is only one of many Locksteps. Some "winter over" for a year, some less or more time.
You see what I mean about this being complicated? And of course Toby has to get to the planet where his mother is still sleeping, and navigate through armies trying to stop him, and figure out his place in the new world (there's a lot of figuring out and less of action until the end.)
Enjoyable in the theoretical sense, I actually really enjoyed the last third of the book more than the first two thirds because that is where Toby starts to "game" the system as well as finally deal with his family. There's a small romance in this, but I was disappointed by the flimsy character of the heroine, who had a tendency to spout off informative lectures just like all the other minor characters.
Interesting concept, but be prepared for an education rather than escapist fun.
This is so totally NOT a pick-up-escapist novel.
It's an exacting, deeply-thought out rumination on one possible future of humanity in space with slower-than-light travel.
The story loosely revolves around Toby McGonigal, a young man from future Earth who has been lost in space for 14,000 years, cryogenically frozen in a "cicada bed."
He awakes to a different world...but one that still contains his family. How is that possible? Well here's where it gets mega-complicated. Apparently multiple worlds, and different cities on different worlds, have evolved a system to compensate for vast distances between those worlds coupled with scant resources. The solution: Lockstep, where these cities agree to "winter over" in cryogenic sleep for set amounts of time, and then waken for a short period (a day or a month or a week.)
So I could jump in my spaceship, sleep for a year, and on the other side of the galaxy the outpost where I'm going also is asleep. For both of us the journey takes but one day in our experienced time. While we're sleeping, robots continue to mine resources and stockpile goods we'll need when we awake.
Imagine a whole series of galaxies like that. But, and here's where I had to expand the mental effort equivalent to 3 bars of chocolate for each couple of pages: the frequency of the lockstep of the main "empire" that Toby's family is controlling is only one of many Locksteps. Some "winter over" for a year, some less or more time.
You see what I mean about this being complicated? And of course Toby has to get to the planet where his mother is still sleeping, and navigate through armies trying to stop him, and figure out his place in the new world (there's a lot of figuring out and less of action until the end.)
Enjoyable in the theoretical sense, I actually really enjoyed the last third of the book more than the first two thirds because that is where Toby starts to "game" the system as well as finally deal with his family. There's a small romance in this, but I was disappointed by the flimsy character of the heroine, who had a tendency to spout off informative lectures just like all the other minor characters.
Interesting concept, but be prepared for an education rather than escapist fun.