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The Golden Age
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Product Description
Phaeton, of Radamanthus House, is attending a glorious party at his family mansion, celebrating the thousand year anniversary of the High Transcendence. There he first meets an old man who accuses him of being an imposter, then an alien from Neptune who claims to be an old friend. The alien tells him that essential parts of his memory were removed and stored by the very government Phaeton believes to be wholly honourable. It shakes his faith. He is an exile from himself. Phaeton embarks upon a quest across the transformed solar system. Jupiter is now a second sun, Mars and Venus have been terraformed, and humanity has become immortal. Phaeton must search among humans, intelligent machines and bizarre life forms to recover his memory, and to learn what crime he planned to warrant such a pre-emptive punishment. His quest is to regain his true identity.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #367007 in Books
- Published on: 2003-04-24
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Mass Market Paperback
- 416 pages
Customer Reviews
A Wonderful Book
(There should be no spoilers here. Most of the information revealed is presented in the first few pages of the book)
It is the time of the masquerade hosted this time by the electrophotonic self-aware entity Aurelian. A sophotech of the Golden Oecumene. All posthumans and nonhumans of the Golden Oecumene have come to participate. Actual, fictional, composition-assisted reconstructions, extrapolated demigoddesses from imagined superhuman futures, lamia from unrealized alternatives and on the active channels of the mentality, recidivists returned from high transhuman states of mind.
The Golden Age is full of ideas, mythological references and wondrous sights and scenes. In fact so much it can be a bit overwhelming sometimes. Especially the first part of the book can seem daunting but the pages turn faster and faster until it becomes impossible to stop. The story is about Phaethon Prime Rhadamanth Humodified (augment) Uncomposed, Indepconciousness, Base Neuroformed, Silver-Gray Manorial Schola, Era 7043 (the “Reawakening”) and a great mystery about his past that he cannot remember.
An absorbing tale is told of Phaethon’s one man struggle against society, posing interesting philosophical and moral questions. Although over dramatized at times it is an intelligent and beautiful look at a possible future of technological utopia. Foremost though it is a story about Phaethon.
I can’t wait to read the second part and then to read it all a second time.
Individual Vs Society part One
Phaeton is an ideally satisfied citizen and member of the Golden Transcendence Sun-System spanning Civilization. Oh, how it's all perfect, artistically enjoyable and fit for the most elevated sentient needs! Two encounters in a garden will persuade him otherwise. He, apparently, has a past not in accordance to the satisfied conformist that he's been led to believe to be. And the Illuminated Government of Utopia may not have the best interest of the citizens in mind.
Phaeton will undertake a search for its true identity that will reveal that all is not well in Utopia.
I love the baroque style and the inventiveness of situations. A well crafted series, that recalls something of Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time
Captivating ideas, prose and pace... which falls apart by the second sentance.
If you are considering buying this book, BROWSE THE SAMPLE PAGES and don't just rely on the glowing editorial books. You'll either love (as most do) this book or hate it and consider it a complete waste of time (as I did).
Wright cloaks his story behind long strings of almost meaningless words. "Noumeal" instead of "mental", for example. On top of this, the Author is Overly Fond of Using Capitals, which Lends a Presumptuous Air to his Work. This gets Very Irritiating, Very Quickly. As does his insistence on using very big numbers to lend a sense of grandiosity to the story. Using big numbers was impressive in the days of Doc E. E. Smith and the Galactic Lensmen. Nowdays it is just looks silly.
Some of the ideas in the book are interesting, perhaps even original. However, they are inconsistently mixed in with anachronisms that make no sense in a futuristic context. For example:
- Why does a society that is set in at least 5000AD (the protagonist is 3000 years old) still use the British legal system ? There is a court scene replete with barristers and case references. Surely any SF author worth his salt would not think that English case law is not the ultimate evolution in human legal history?
- Why are there still fashions based on geography (eg European clothing fashion) when most of the story is based in a virtual world and independent of location?
- Why does time move *faster* in the real world than the virtual? The main character decides to take a break from the virtual, and does so by unplugging. He has time to walk around before returing, to find that all the independent entities in the virtual world was exactly as he left them. If anything, the virutal world should move faster than the real world (due to processing power) and independent entities should not be "frozen" every time someone unplugs.
Perhaps answers to these questions appear later in the book. I could only read a third of it before giving up- I simply fould the inconsistencies and the prose too painful wade through to find out. Nor am I by any means an overly picky reader- I am a voracious consumer of science fiction, and revel in anything from grand (Ian M. Banks, Peter Hamilton) to classic (Asimov) to cheesy space opera (McMaster Bujold) to boys-own-adventure (Timothy Zahn).
This was in all seriousness the worst-written book I'd tried to read for years.
