Another month, another last-minute book review, but don't let that fool you. Infinity Gate is a winner! It's also pure Carey—compelling characters, smart world-building, themes that drive at the heart of human experience, writing and story that just don't stop.
First of all, if you've seen the blurb for this book, you probably think it's about the potential benefits of parallel worlds to one devastated by climate change, or possibly that it's about people fighting sinister AI. This is, in fact, what hooked me. It's also fairly inaccurate.
This is a story about how we define "human", that gets more into the discussions we're having about fascism and dehumanization and xenophobia, than the discussions we're having about AI, algorithms, and where "tool" becomes "crutch" or "means for layoffs". Does a person have to look like you to be seen as an equal? Do they have to act like you? Think like you? If they don't, is it okay to oppress, enslave, or murder them? If you say no but your society or government says yes, what then?
(Unsurprisingly, this is also a novel about control—who has it, who doesn't, who wants it, and why.)
But! The parallel worlds and the fights about AI are no less interesting, exciting, inventive, or important. It's clear that Carey's thought through the usual parallel-world-story premise of "if every turning point sparks a new world, then anything could happen" with more creativity and more clarity than most other authors. Yes, there's a world of civilized rabbits, but it's not a happy, cute world because no matter the species, people still have wants and fears and assumptions. Yes, an interdimensional empire would be pretty great in a lot of ways, but it's also run by, you guessed it, people.
I'm making this sound like a thinking book, not one where things happen. So let me clarify: THINGS HAPPEN. So many things. A lot of happening. There's a physicist who cracks interdimensional travel, which doesn't go as she planned. There's a guy on the fringes of society who's faced with hard choices. There's a schoolgirl, and a government bureaucrat, and a military unit, and meaningful friendships, and a prison planet. There's a conspiracy that maybe isn't, and a conspiracy that definitely is, and a questionable war, and all sorts of AIs. It's frankly surprising how much Carey manages to fit in 500 pages, and how he gets it all flowing and making sense and never once losing track of his story and message.
Which is also not to say I thought this book was perfect. It's sometimes a bit too messagey. The characters, while rounded and believable, sometimes fit the themes a little too neatly. There were bits I read faster less because I wanted to know what happened and more because I didn't quite care about what was happening just then. I am, however, perfectly willing to believe a lot of that's because I can't divorce "reading-me" from "literary critic/editor-me" and that other readers will not have these problems, or these levels of them.
The important thing is, though, that this book was fun. Fun and smart and full of SF coolness and unpredictable and well-written—and pointed, angry, punchy, thought-provoking. Everything good science fiction should be, in other words, and I don't know if anyone could've done it better. The sequel went on my TBR as soon as I saw it announced.
