From Divergent Suns (SF) - Sam Peters ****

I really enjoyed the second in this series from Sam Peters, From Distant Stars, and was not disappointed by this book, which brings the trilogy to a close. As before, there's a satisfyingly well-portrayed colony world, set up by a mysterious race who turned up at Earth, transplanted humans (and killed many more), then disappeared, leaving their unmanned ships traversing the colony routes as lifelines.

On the storm-tossed world Magenta, central character Keon Rause, effectively a police officer, is trying to uncover a conspiracy that could wreck the colony while dealing with both his wife's apparent death (which by now he knows is faked) and an AI mockup of his wife that he created as a failed attempt to replace her. As before, one of the most interesting aspects is the built-in Servant, an all-purpose communication and information device which means there are quite often threaded conversations happening both verbally and mentally at the same time. Similarly the Tesseract, the AI that run's Keon's bureau is an interesting concept, which is explored far more in this volume than previous ones.

Although it's hard not to find Keon's obsession with finding his wife, which frequently gets in the way of logical action, irritating, there is once again a good mix of action and thoughtfulness, particularly in Keon's relationship with Liss, the AI substitute for his wife and the implications that arise about the nature and rights of artificial life.

My only real criticism of the book is that it feels rather less able to be read standalone than the previous volumes - I wouldn't read this one without at least reading From Distant Stars. This was particularly true for one (long gone) character (Gersh) who I can't for the life of me remember, but is clearly very significant.

From Divergent Suns pulls together the trilogy in a very satisfying manner. You do need to read the predecessor(s), but given that, it's an excellent book.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin Five Way Interview

Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin (born in 1999) is a distinguished composer, concert pianist, music theorist and researcher. Three of his piano CDs have been released in Germany. He started his undergraduate degree at the age of 13 in Kazakhstan, and having completed three musical doctorates in prominent Italian music institutions at the age of 20, he has mastered advanced composition techniques. In 2024 he completed a PhD in music at the University of St Andrews / Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (researching timbre-texture co-ordinate in avant- garde music), and was awarded The Silver Medal of The Worshipful Company of Musicians, London. He has held visiting affiliations at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and UCL, and has been lecturing and giving talks internationally since the age of 13. His latest book is Quantum Mechanics and Avant Garde Music . What links quantum physics and avant-garde music? The entire book is devoted to this question. To put it briefly, there are many different link...

Should we question science?

I was surprised recently by something Simon Singh put on X about Sabine Hossenfelder. I have huge admiration for Simon, but I also have a lot of respect for Sabine. She has written two excellent books and has been helpful to me with a number of physics queries - she also had a really interesting blog, and has now become particularly successful with her science videos. This is where I'm afraid she lost me as audience, as I find video a very unsatisfactory medium to take in information - but I know it has mass appeal. This meant I was concerned by Simon's tweet (or whatever we are supposed to call posts on X) saying 'The Problem With Sabine Hossenfelder: if you are a fan of SH... then this is worth watching.' He was referencing a video from 'Professor Dave Explains' - I'm not familiar with Professor Dave (aka Dave Farina, who apparently isn't a professor, which is perhaps a bit unfortunate for someone calling out fakes), but his videos are popular and he...

Everything is Predictable - Tom Chivers *****

There's a stereotype of computer users: Mac users are creative and cool, while PC users are businesslike and unimaginative. Less well-known is that the world of statistics has an equivalent division. Bayesians are the Mac users of the stats world, where frequentists are the PC people. This book sets out to show why Bayesians are not just cool, but also mostly right. Tom Chivers does an excellent job of giving us some historical background, then dives into two key aspects of the use of statistics. These are in science, where the standard approach is frequentist and Bayes only creeps into a few specific applications, such as the accuracy of medical tests, and in decision theory where Bayes is dominant. If this all sounds very dry and unexciting, it's quite the reverse. I admit, I love probability and statistics, and I am something of a closet Bayesian*), but Chivers' light and entertaining style means that what could have been the mathematical equivalent of debating angels on...

Search This Blog