Futuro Imperfeito

Review

Ken Macleod was recently one of the Guests of Honour at the Glasgow Worldcon, and not just because he’s a local writer. In a career spanning almost thirty years, he’s won the BFSA Award twice, and has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Clarke awards.

Just before the convention, he published the final volume of the Lightspeed trilogy (Beyond the Hallowed Sky (2021), Beyond the Reach of the Earth (2023), Beyond the Light Horizon (2024). The series serves as an excellent introduction to his work, but can also be seen as a career retrospective as well as an overview of almost the whole SF genre. 

In a near future, scientist Lakshmi Nayak discovers the secret to faster-than-light travel. But the discovery comes in a message from herself, from the future. And when a spacecraft is finally built with her engine, we find out that other governments from Earth already had their own FTL ships. A huge international/interplanetary conspiracy driven by an expansionist rivalry between the Earth’s geopolitical blocs unravels. And the explorers also find an alien artificial intelligence directly connected to life on several planets, including our own.

From that set-up, MacLeod examines several basic tropes of Science Fiction: space exploration, colonization of other planets, first contact, artificial intelligence, sociopathic robots, a bit of wars in space and future political conflict, even the origins of life.

It may seem too much, but MacLeod writes with a light and humorous touch which has been characteristic way back since his first novel, the dystopian The Star Fraction (1995). 

MacLeod also keeps his socialist views, which become clear in his portrayal of the three main economic/political blocs in this future. And the way in which he develops the relationships between the human explorers/colonizers and the species they encounter also serves as a criticism of a certain colonialist trend in SF’s past.

MacLeod is above all an author who thinks about Science Fiction, and for those who want more, here’s an excellent essay by him on the importance of the genre.