Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder

The way we live is tied to the level of our technology. This is a key differentiator in our world today. But what happens in the future, if humans have access to very advanced technology, including computer technology that makes it possible for people to transcend or to live in virtual realities that give them access to anything at anytime? In the Teven Coronol, an artificial world, virtual worlds at different levels co-exist, the level of technology that works within their realities controlled by the tech locks. Thus, the advances world of the Westhaven manifold, where people can are surrounded by high tech marvels and can create avatars of themselves so that they can actually interact in multiple situations at the same time, exits next to the world of Raven, a back-to-nature, primitive society, invisible (over the horizon) for most of those from Westhaven and where Westhaven’s technology will not work.

Livia Kodaly lives in Westerhaven, but she is one of the few who can interact with other manifolds and cultures. As such, she is in the right place – and of the right mindset – to be able to escape from Teven (in a house! -- surely the strangest space-faring vehicle since Poul Anderson’s beer-powered, bicycle-derived spaceship) when they are invaded by what appears to be outsiders under the control of an entity called 3340. She and two others flee to other habitats within the solar system, seeking aid, but finding a complex group of cultures – and finding out more about what really is going on and what their world and the other worlds in the solar system are like and who the main players really are – including the reasons behind the invasion of our habitat as well as the motives of that habitat’s founders.

This is a marvelously complex, richly detailed book. The society – or societies – and technologies Schroeder sets up are convincing – at times both enticing and frightening. There is infinite promise in the way people can seemingly do anything and interact in intricate ways, but at the same time the possibility that the ways they interact could be controlled, in ways that are almost unnoticeable and in fact seem like just manifestations of the desires and free will of the participants can be a bit scary.

This is a wonderful SF adventure that also is a novel rich in ideas. The main characters – particularly Livia and the few friends she’s closest to – are well drawn (though a few of the others she meets along the way and who tag along for a while seem a bit interchangeable) and the story is both exiting and rich in interesting, though provoking SF ideas about the nature of reality, how we interact with technology, and ultimately what gives meaning to our lives. There is also an interesting thread related to how we use narrative and story to structure our lives (an idea Pratchett is fond of exploring though which Schroeder comes at from a very different angle) that I – and I think anyone who is interested in the importance of story and how it relates to our lives – found very interesting.

This is Schroeder’s third novel (after Ventus and Permanence) and is his best yet (and I just bought his latest and should read it in the next few weeks). There is often talk about the major impact of the British SF in recent years, but Canadian SF also has been very important, with not only Sawyer, but Robert Charles Wilson, Robert Sawyer, Cory Doctorow and others (and of course on the fantasy side Charles de Lint). I’m looking forward to more from Schroeder.