Implied Spaces

May 5, 2008
In this grandly scaled space opera from bestseller Williams (Hardwired
), swashbuckling computer scientist Aristide explores pretechnological “pocket” universes in search of interesting “implied spaces,” the unintended regions that come into existence between deliberately designed structures. Then he uncovers evidence of a dark collective that’s kidnapping people and sending them to pockets where a virus co-opts their minds and turns them into willing spies and assassins. Evidence implicates one of the Eleven planet-sized quantum computers, somehow corrupted in spite of its “Asimovian safeguards.” Armed with a wormhole-edged broadsword and accompanied by his sidekick, Bitsy, an avatar of one of the Eleven in the form of a talking cat, Aristide finds himself hunted, brainwashed, killed and resurrected more than once before he learns the truth. Williams tells the tale with enthusiasm and a crisp, dry wit well suited to this entertaining blend of high adventure, intrigue and postsingularity technology.

May 15, 2008
In a distant future where artificial intelligences care for humans' needs and death is curable, computer scientist-turned-swordsman Aristide, along with his talking AI cat, Bitsy, explores the pocket universes created by machine intelligences, searching for the implied spacespieces of sculpted reality created out of necessity to support these worlds' architecture. On a primitive pocket world called Midgarth, he encounters evidence of a plot that could destroy civilization, and his travels suddenly take on a desperate importance. The versatile author of "Voice of the Whirlwind" and other hard sf and cyberpunk novels now uses the trappings of fantasy to explore some of science's most sophisticated ideas. Ever surprising, ever provocative, Williams's latest sf adventure belongs in most sf collections.

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2008
Computer scientist turned wandering swords-man Aristide travels the accidental spaces in the artificial universes of a postsingularity existence in which memory backups are standard and a matrioshka cluster of computers runs the worlds workings. On Midgarth, where he has been traversing a desert full of common spiders and ants, he discovers a group of priests involved in a plot that could take down all civilization because of one mans existential crisis. Williams takes on the artificial-world topos with great style and characterization, enlivening it with spectacular philosophical conversations between Bitsy, avatar of one of the matrioshka brains, and Aristide. Between the implications of living in a world in which death is a minor inconvenience but the loss of time can change relationships forever, and the implications of the theory upon which the yarns impending doom depends (a take on the nested multiple universe concept) and the ways in which different experiences can change a person, even starting from exactly the same baseline, Implied Spaces is a thoughtful work of world building and an engaging mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)