Book Review: Count to a Trillion

 

© 2011 by John C. Wright

 

Over the past two decades or so, as I meandered about the Catholic blogosphere on my journey to traditional Catholicism, I came across many references to the blog of one John C. Wright. Most, if not all, of the references were of the awestruck reverence variety. Those times I did come across those references of awestruck reverence I followed the links back to the source. And, lo, I too was struck with awe and reverence, and said I need to read this guy regularly. Oh he’s a Catholic and a science fiction writer, too? I gotta pick up some of his books.

Then, as always, life intervened.

And, just as always, I could punch myself for putting off my foray into the science fiction of Mr. Wright.

So back in November I spotted this novel on a used book shelf and immediately purchased it. After taking care of some other reading business first, I finally opened it about two weeks ago. Result? Right from the beginning I realized this novel is unlike any previous SF I’ve read.

How so?

The first thing that struck me was the presence of higher math. Higher math? In a novel meant for mass consumption? Now, we don’t go into strict detail, and there’s nary a formula to scare the gentle reader, but it’s there, and Wright undeniably knows what it is. Higher math is a secondary character in the novel, lurking always in the background, ready to pipe up at a moment’s notice. Whether to offer its insight into relativistic travel, the physics of antimatter energy consumption, artificial intelligence, global socio-politico-economics, or game theory on planetary levels, offer insight it does.

That alone intrigued me. Then I got to know the main character.

Menelaus Montrose, is the odd combination of gun slinging lawyer and mathematical prodigy in a post-apocalyptic Texas. Now, lawfare in the 25th century is conducted a bit different than it is today, most notably in the fact suits are settled Burr-Hamilton duel style. Only now there’s computerized armor, defensive flak and chaff, intelligent bullets that change direction, personal missiles that feint and jab. When Menelaus nearly loses to rival attorney Mike Nails, he realizes that it’s time to hang up the shingle and join that interstellar voyage to the Diamond Star, to decipher the Monument.

Now we slip into Arthur C. Clarke territory. The Monument initially reminded me of the Clarkian Monolith from 2001. However, instead of a one-story sized slab, it’s the size of a small, smooth moon. Writ upon it down to microscopic levels in alien hieroglyphs are equations to open up the universe. Can Man decipher them? And how was the Monument initially discovered? Orbiting the Diamond Star, a star of pure antimatter.

The mission is twofold: decipher the Monument (mapped off into Greek alphabet segments) and mine the star for its antimatter – the greatest, purest form of energy. En route, Menelaus decides to try something risky. Sensing something greater than Man – something Posthuman – would be required to understand the Monument, he injects himself with a brain altering drug –

And so the novel, which I could not put down and read dozens of pages at a sitting, unfolds.

Questions: What – or Who – would leave a Monument to a lesser species? Something good, or something, perhaps, evil? We always read, in these tales, of a benevolent alien civilization nudging us up the evolutionary ladder. But what if that wasn’t the case? And what if they can “see” us mining the Diamond Star? And what if our partial decipherment of the Monument leads us to be able to hoist our own selves up that ladder by our own bootstraps? And should we evolve ourselves into a race of heroes to defend against an invading force that is to us what we are to insects, or should we evolve into a race of – more efficient drones lest we be stomped out of existence?

I thoroughly enjoyed Count to a Trillion, which happens to be, thankfully, Book One of a series of six written to date. The next one, The Hermetic Millennia, is on deck for a mid-Spring reading.

Grade: A+