The star-faring crews (known as Ultras), have life-spans and value systems quite alien to planet- or sun-bound humans. Rather than nationalities or races we have tribal associations or factions (similar to the schema in Bruce Sterling’s landmark and comparably inventive Schismatrix). Humanity too has evolved in interesting ways.
Story time is bent intriguingly due to some characters journeying at relativistic speeds while others are planet-bound. In this future there is interstellar colonization, but not faster-than-light travel. In the midst of his hunt, he begins experiencing virus-induced flashbacks from the life of Sky Haussmann, the founder of his home world Sky's Edge, who is both revered and reviled for the crimes he committed for his people.įrom the depths of the gas plume at the heart of Chasm City, to the aristocratic canopy spanning what remains of the skyscrapers, Mirabel begins to unravel the mystery of the Melding Plague.Stunningly imaginative space opera set 5 centuries in the future.Ī truism of hard science fiction is that (baring collapse-of-civilization scenarios) the farther into the future one sets a story, the harder it is to make it convincing. In this chaos of plague and desolation, Tanner seeks his prey, only to discover that Reivich is more clever than he originally thought.
The Glitter Band, a sparkling diorama of ten thousand orbital habitats, has been reduced to a " Rust Belt" of a few hundred survivors, mostly primitive and pre-nanotech antiques.
Chasm City, a dense forest of mile-high shapeshifting skyscrapers, has melted into a slum. Tanner arrives to find that Yellowstone, the most advanced civilization in human history, has descended into squalor an alien nanotech virus known as the Melding Plague has wreaked havoc throughout the system. Chasm City is framed and largely written in the voice of Tanner Mirabel, a security expert who has come to Chasm City to avenge the death of his former client's wife at the hands of a "postmortal" noble named Argent Reivich.
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