The Stone Canal by Ken MacLeod (First US edition)

Clones are not supposed to recall the memories of their genetic host, but a newcomer to the frontier Mars colony can remember his past as the anarchist who tipped the scales in World War III. 20,000 first printing.

British author MacLeod's second novel to be published in the U.S. (after The Cassini Division) opens on New Mars, a distant planet discovered on the other side of a wormhole, where humans resettled after Earth was decimated by World War III. While New Mars is populated by Earthlings, the planet's real labor is done by the "fast folk," nanotech-based artificial intelligence machines that evolve much more quickly than humans. This stratified world was built unwittingly by Jon Wilde and Dave Reid, who met as socialist-minded university students in Glasgow and became two corners of a romantic triangle that later influenced history in myriad ways. MacLeod weaves the story of the two men's complex relationship along two tracks, past and present. In the past, Wilde and Reid both fell for the same woman; Wilde eventually married her and raised a family. In the meantime, Reid built a powerful high-tech company that could grow no further without some changes in the political climate--changes that Wilde is hired to help create. The fallout from this alliance and from Reid's own hidden agenda ultimately lead to the world war and to a reliance on machine intelligence, as well as to the creation of a world where death is impossible as long as you have a waiting clone and a recent brain backup. Thanks to that resurrection technology, Wilde and Reid face each other as enemies again on New Mars. MacLeod's writing is smooth and sure, full of striking images and breathtaking extrapolations of current technology. It's a pleasure and a challenge to read a book where human potential and human foibles are dealt with as thoroughly as is scientific advancement. Fans of William Gibson and of Iain Banks, in particular, will enjoy this visionary novel. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It's understandable that Tor chose to make The Cassini Division, this Scottish writer's splendidly direct, uncluttered, and action-packed third novel, into MacLeod's 1999 US debut (p. 840); but it's also annoyinginasmuch as The Stone Canal (his second novel, UK publication 1996) is a direct precursor. Dave Reid and Jon Wilde meet at Glasgow University in the 1970s, and their fates entwine: They become friends, political foes, rivals for the same woman's affections, and movers and shakers in a 21st-century world of fragmented, polarized societies and incessant wars. Wilde, eventually shot dead (he blames Reid), reawakens 50 years laterdeath is no longer permanentin a robot body in space. Bossed by Reid, Jon and others are building a universe-spanning wormhole near Jupiterbut they're slaves of the ``macros,'' agglomerations of computerized post-human mentalities living thousands of times faster than ordinary humans. Fortunately, the macros soon destroy themselves, though some survive on Jupiter. In the second narrative strand, four centuries hence, Reid is gangster-in-chief of distant, capitalist-anarchist New Mars. Robot Jay Dub (Wilde, still in his hardware body) clones a copy of his own flesh then liberates Reid's computer/android sex-slave, Dee Model, whose body is a clone of Wilde's wifethus precipitating a struggle between abolitionists (freedom for intelligent machines!) and Reid's status quo. Another wonderfully knotty, inventive, intelligent yarn, if top-heavy with political minutiae that even dyed-in-the-wool Anglophiles will have a hard time deciphering. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Filled with memories of his past, the clone Jonathan Wilde arrives on New Mars, where he rediscovers old loves and older enemies. Set in a distant future filled with intelligent machines, cloned humans, and little regard for life or death, this high-impact sf adventure by the author of The Cassini Division delivers a strong dose of violence and graphic sex. First published in Britain, MacLeod's tale of one man's grim journey toward knowledge should appeal to fans of high-tech action and hard-core science. For large sf collections.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

MacLeod's second novel is set earlier than, and in the same future as, The Cassini Division. It concentrates on the centuries-long rivalry between Jonathan Wilde and David Reid, begun when they were student political activists in 1970s Glasgow, and spans the years and the stars to wind up in the anarchist utopia of New Mars. By far the strongest parts of the book concern Wilde's and Reid's early careers; these are full of telling comments on politics and society, and they project an offbeat but not implausible near future. After the story moves off Earth, much of the journey to New Mars seems rushed, and the continuation of the Wilde-Reid rivalry is episodic to the point of disjunction. On the other hand, immortality through cloning, cryogenic suspension, and preserving minds in electronic data banks probably would create just as much confusion as MacLeod envisions and induces. Whatever his lapses in narrative technique, Scotsman MacLeod gratifies with many fine scenes and a vivid, non-American take on the future. Roland Green