Far-future far-distant post-human hard SF.
“In the beginning, before it was a Creator and a dragon, the server was alone. It was born like all servers were, from a tiny seed fired by a darkship exploring the Big Empty, expanding the reach of the Network.”
Rajaniemi is a clever guy, with a BSc thesis on Transcendental Numbers, and a PhD in String Theory (me, I barely got up to ‘hard sums’), and like fellow boffins like Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter, can give full rein to his scientific knowledge, and, like those authors, doesn’t overstep the mark too much in terms of the scientific concepts and language.
He gives his ‘server’ protagonist some degree of emotion, lonely out there in the deep dark, and we follow it as it takes on the role of a creator on a local, but galactic, level; and as it finally makes contact, a climactic relationship.
Clever stuff!
