Blue Remembered Earth

[sawyl]

More than a little while ago, I read Alastair Reynolds' Blue Remembered Earth. Set in the middle of the 22nd century, it imagines a vibrant universe where artificial intelligences, space-faring, body modification and cities below the sea are all the stuff of everyday reality.

Following the death of his grandmother Eunice, Geoffrey Akinya reluctantly agrees to travel to the moon to examine the contents of an unimportant safe deposit box. Intrigued by the contents of the box, Geoffrey and his artistic sister Sunday decide to chase down the series of clue left for them by the wily Eunice. So while Geoffrey returns to Earth to pursue his research into animal consciousness and to put his acquisitive cousins off the scent, Sunday and her boyfriend travel to Mars to find the next link in the chain.

Although Blue Remembered Earth has a lot to recommend it, I particularly enjoyed the world building. Firstly, I liked the optimism — not something that one always associates with Reynolds — of a world where climate change has been contained with geo-engineering, where Africa, with its smart cities and strong tech sector, has become Earth's powerhouse, and where the solar system has been comprehensively colonised and cut down to size.

Secondly, I loved the subtle way the idea of the almost omnipotent Mechanism is handled. Objectively, the Surveilled World — Earth and the Moon — is a distopia. The World's people are psychologically adjusted to minimise their predisposition towards criminal behaviour. They are also monitored by the Mechanism at all times to ensure that, should they ever succumb to a violent impulse, the all-knowing AI can step in via their neural implants and lock them out of their bodies before they can harm to the fellow citizens. But subjectively, especially from the privileged point of view of the wealthy Akinyas, the Surveilled World looks pretty damned utopian.

Thirdly, I like the virtue that Reynolds makes of his constraint. In a world where the Mechanism can step in to prevent anyone from causing harm to another, can a person still be murdered? And if so how and by whom? Finally, while I enjoyed the old fashion solar system treasure hunt well enough, I thought the final resolution of plot was charmingly optimistic and conciliatory in a way that seemed absolutely consistent with the tenets of the Surveilled World and the characters of the principal protagonists.

Recommended.