re:mote voices

Title: Sister Alice
Author: Robert Reed
Publisher:Orbit

Technically this novel by science fiction writer Robert Reed is a collection of short stories which have been published over a period of something like ten years. However this handful of stories link together to form a big picture following the same characters and scenario, with a little re-writing of the originals to make it fit together.

The book starts with the title part Sister Alice, parts of which are familiar, making me reasonably certain that of the selection of Reed’s work I have read before that this was one of them. The stories are set way in the future, where the human race has changed immensely and reality flows on more cosmic scales. Brought to the brink of cataclysm by endless wars and plagues, the governments have gotten together and decided that something must be done if the race is to survive. As a result one thousand people have been selected to form the families, the families to be imbued with all the power that technology can given them, and see them bring about a peace and prosperity. That was ten million years ago, the families have attained god like status, and peace has held.

That is until the return to Earth of Sister Alice, one of the Chamberlain family’s oldest sisters – each member has a numbered rank back to the first, the one – on that scale Alice is the twelve, and legendary. With her return to Earth she creates a stir, it is very rare for one so old to come home, and when she refuses to speak to any of the other family members except for the baby – Ord, only a mere few centuries old – the family starts to panic. The Chamberlains are terraformers, universe shapers, and it isn’t long before it becomes clear that Alice has been involved in a new project which has gone horribly wrong. One which will kill millions and destroy worlds.

This is the set up for the stories that follow, the demise of the peace and families involved in these events. Through which Ord journeys, having inherited Alice’s power he is a god child – desperate to make amends, or to at least understand Alice’s intentions, while at the same time he has become the most feared and hunted Chamberlain. Through the books the stories of the families and the jiggery pokery which got them their position in the first place become clear, the squabbles and old wounds. With that providing some understanding as to how events have gone the way they have.

Sister Alice sees Robert Reed in that truly cosmic branch of science fiction, where the human race has become so alien to what we are now, where they have evolved to the point where everything seems possible and humans now seem like gods. With that the book is scattered with science fiction theories and jargon, but compared to the likes of Iain M. Banks, who also could be said to work in the same kind of territory to some degrees, this remains a considerably more readable and enjoyable piece.