Annalee Newitz: Autonomous

Annalee Newitz’s novel Autonomous gives us a terrifying picture of a future where patent laws protecting drugs, and the reward of exorbitant pharmaceutical profits, have created a two-tiered society where only the wealthy can afford medical care, and the benefits of performance enhancing drugs, because the cost of those drugs, from vaccines to longevity treatments, is far beyond anything the typical person can afford.

In this world, there are people, like Jack Chen, who reverse engineer essential medicines and distribute them illegally at a fraction of the price charged by the pharmas. They subsidise their work by also distributing other drugs, mood and performance enhancers. They are called pirates, drug-runners, even terrorists by the authorities for whom the pharma companies are major drivers of the economy and supporters of the governments that enforce the abusive patent laws via an international organisation, the International Property Coalition, or IPC.

This is also a world where intelligent robots and cyborgs can become legally autonomous, and where humans can spend their entire life as indentured servants.

Jack has been distributing a generic copy of a drug that’s nit even officially on the market yet - Zacuity. It’s supposed to give the user an enhanced feeling of reward for work accomplished, a kind of performance enhancer. But people using it are developing addictive obsessions and working themselves to death. At first, Jack is afraid that she screwed up when she reverse engineered the drug. But then she realises that the drug itself is deadly, and Xaxy, the company that made, it has hidden the proof. One way or another, Jack knows she’s responsible for the deaths, and she wants to develop a therapy to treat the problem - and make sure everyone knows that the company was prepared to market a potentially additive, deadly drug. Along the way, she teams up with Threezed, a young man who was an indentured servant - until she had to kill his owner - and Med (short for Medea), an autonomous humanoid bot who is a biochemical engineer.

But she’s working against time. Agents of the IPC are after her - a human intelligence officer named Eliasz, and an indentured military bot designated Paladin. They’re authorised to kill drug-runners, and Jack knows she has to work fast to get the cure, and the truth, out before they find and kill her.

In addition to exploring the nightmare of drug patent laws gone wild, Newitz examines issues of identity and autonomy through the robots Paladin and Med, one indentured, one autonomous, and through Threezed, who moves from slavery to freedom thanks to Jack and Med.

This is a strong science fiction debut, well-written, with memorable characters and a fast-moving plot. It drew me in almost from the beginning and held my interest through to the end.

John Scalzi: The Collapsing Empire

You have to admit, John Scalzi writes a damn good story. Certainly, The Collapsing Empire, the first volume in his new space opera series, The Interdependency, starts off with an adrenaline-drenched bang. A mutiny about a merchant ship suddenly derailed by a near-catastrophic failure of the Flow - an interdimensional current that subs in for FTL in this fictional universe.

The Interdependency is a galaxy-spanning trade empire comprising planets and space stations located near exit and entry points to the Flow. Without access to the Flow, these locations are isolated, light years away from each other. Humans are cut off from Earth, which is no longer accessible by Flow, and most of the other habitats of humanity depend on trade to survive, they are not fully self-sustaining ecologies.

The Interdependency has survived for centuries, during which time the Flow has been relatively stable. Sometimes it shifts, and a planet falls out of the web, or a new one is brought into reach and colonised, but the changes have always been small enough not to affect the Interdependancy as a whole. But now that is changing, and all of humanity’s planets are at risk of isolation and eventual collapse.

There are some great good guys - Cardenia, styled Emperox Grayland II, the newly crowned head of the Interdependency, the unexpected heir following her older half-brother’s accidental death in a racing accident, and Mance Clermont, son of the late emperox’s old friend and, like his father, a theoretical physicist, and the somewhat morally ambiguous, profane, and pragmatic Kiva Lagos, daughter of a major noble house which, like all the great trading houses, depends on trade for its wealth and power. And some fantastic bad guys - the ambitious, scheming, and greedy scions of house Nohamapetan, Ghreni, Amit, and Nadashe.

This is a nicely political space opera, with internal struggles between ruling houses and intrigues and all those nice twisty things that make for interesting reading. And it is worth noting that many of the key characters, good guys or bad, are intelligent, competent, and very interesting women. Scalzi is good at being simultaneously entertaining and thoughtful, which makes this novel a superior read.