The Prefect

[sawyl]

Taking a short break from War and Peace, I decided to read Alistair Reynolds' latest novel The Prefect. As ever, here are a few quick thoughts.

Elections are taken seriously in the Yellowstone Demarchy. The freedom of citizens to vote is ultimate, regardless of their other lifestyle choices. The system of computerised voting is administered and maintained, in the Glitter Band at least, is administered by the iron hand of Panoply and its prefects, amongst whom, Tom Dreyfus stands paramount.

Following the completion of a investigation into a bug into the polling software, Dreyfus is ordered to investigate the destruction of an orbiting habitat and the deaths of a thousand people. Leaving his team to resolve the outstanding polling bug, Dreyfus soon realises that attack could only have been the work of a group of Ultras and begins to question the only survivors — beta-level simulations of three of the victims. One of them, Delphine, reveals that at the habitat had been attempting to negotiate the sale of artworks to the captain of the Ultra vessel Accompaniment of Shadows, but that the deal had gone south after an anonymous tip that the captain had been trying to rip them off.

So far, so simple. But following a necessarily brief interview with the captain, Dreyfus is able to satisfy himself that the Utras have been played for patsies and the real blame lies elsewhere. Just as he starts to knuckle down to this, a set of four habitats — all of them recently visited by one of Dreyfus' deputies with a software patch for the polling bug — vanish from the Glitter Band's normal communication channels and start sending out ominous signs of construction activity.

The Prefect is an a return to Reynolds' stamping grounds of old, but this time 125 years before the events of Revelation Space. Calvin Sylveste and the Eighty have already uploaded themselves and Dan Sylveste has disappeared on his archaeological expedition to Resurgam, but the Melding Plague has yet to strike, the Belle Epoch is at its peak and Yellowstone is a place of technological miracles. The Glitter Band consists of ten thousand orbiting habitats, some packed with material marvels, some with dreaming minds and some with people in states of voluntary tyranny, all participating in the virtual reality of Abstraction and participating in the vote.

Not all is sweetness and light, however. From the outset there are unexplained hints that something is Very Wrong with some of Panoply's inhabitants. One of Dreyfus' deputies is trying to live down a father with a shady past, Dreyfus himself seems to have some unresolved personal issues, and his boss, for whom he clearly has feelings, seems worrying emotionally and physically closed off. Even when the plot finally resolves itself, you're left with the nasty, nagging feeling of a demise not so much averted as merely deferred, awaiting the arrival of the melding plague...