THE LANGUAGE OF CORPSES

Three individuals in a spacefaring future—where people fluidly inhabit successive bodies—participate in a desperate rescue mission near Neptune.

Linse’s Mechalum Space series begins with this auspicious SF novel, initially a triptych that comes together in the fourth act. The 28th-century setting encompasses a space-straddling era of Homo mutatis. Humankind has mastered the technique of inserting a consciousness into a seemingly endless variety of prepared bodies, whether organically grown flesh-and-blood hosts or special-purpose mechs. Virtual immortality, artificial intelligence companions, and perpetual attachment to the descendant of the internet (“the mesh”) are part of this revolution. But the real payoff is the invention of “Faison Gates.” These allow inquisitive, adventurous, or just plain desperate minds to teleport instantaneously throughout 300 remotely settled planets and environments in deep space. But it’s hardly idyllic. A religious war (traditional religion lost, apparently) raged early in this new era, and a backward-looking Earth has been largely cut off and neglected ever since. And two “essents” trying to occupy the same body will result in the death of one of them, a known method of assassination. In such a nest of polymorphic intrigue, Jazari is a somewhat naïve student of “xenolinguistics” (trained to communicate with advanced alien races even though such direct contact has not yet happened). She was forced by circumstance into joining the talented and diverse crew of crime kingpin Zosi, a choice she ultimately regrets. On another distant world, scientist Eala studies a gentle amphibious species called the taktak, whose ability to communicate telepathically represents another possible breakthrough. And, on the rim of humanity’s original, now-obscure solar system, a biologically generated body, code-named ZD777, is revived, nurtured, and educated by an AI guardian only to be informed of his predicament: He is the lone man aboard a hollowed-out asteroid, formerly a teeming space base for the Kuiper belt, now a forgotten, derelict habitat slowly failing in orbit around Neptune.

The potential to rescue ZD777 from his apparently hopeless fate is the climax of the multiheaded narrative stream, and quite a nail-biter it becomes. (Whether those nails are human or metallic alloy is up for discussion.) Wyoming-based author Linse previously published books set in the hardscrabble American West of today and yesteryear but adapts to the final frontier of far-future space with no rocky trails or cowboy atavisms whatsoever. Some of the speculations here (especially concerning the nature of intelligence, biologically native or artificial) could have taught Isaac Asimov a thing or two. That said, tenderfeet to this universe will have to struggle initially with a density of imaginative futurespeak jargon and para-human traits (including the near-universal use of the pronoun sheto designate everyone; complete genderfluidity evidently does that to a society). Linse only provides the expected information downloads and history lesson expositions every 100 pages or so. But readers who can think on their feet and adapt to the altered paradigm of what it means to be human—or sentient—are in for an exciting and provocative expedition to a new realm of ideas that’s particularly strong in the characterization department. The novel ends with every indication that more riches remain to be tapped from Mechalum Space.

A powerful launch to a fresh SF series that promises a wealth of ingenious concepts.