A Noble Review

Hi,

So yesterday I burned through the rest of Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams. This was a book he put out in the early nineties, now being reprinted for the Kindle.

Basically, in the far future mankind lives well. Guiding the destiny of humanity are the Aristoi, people who have proven themselves to be capable of wielding the most advanced and powerful of technology. So they get a chunk of space to terraform and build to their whims and this attracts regular folks who want a shot at pioneering and better chances at reproduction. Gabriel is an Aristoi who's put together a nice collection of planets and is now pushing artistry and design as his specialty.

At the commencement ceremony for newly-minted Aristoi, Gabriel gets an odd request from a fellow Aristoi he barely knows. She fears that humanity's information network is being sabotaged and she wants Gabriel's help to look into things.

People soon begin dying.

I really like the world building that goes on here. Humanity is assisted, but not dominated by AI (indeed, it's not clear that there's any actual AI). However, many people make use of daimones which are the person's sub-conscious personalities brought forward and actualized to allow people to split their attention and be present in the real world and virtual reality.

It was a fun book with strong humanist overtones and a solid plot.

later
Tom