![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/saturn-returns.jpg\" "\\"saturn-returns\\"")
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Sean Williams \u2013 Saturn Returns Ex-galactic mercenary Imre Bergamasc was stored in machine-readable form, encoded in a groove running around the inside of a giant iron cylinder that was subsequently destroyed by a nuclear explosion. He was resurrected when some aliens kindly reconstructed the cylinder, having tracked down its composite atoms in the depths of space. It\u2019s understandable that there are gaps in his memory and various other quirks, such as the fact that he is now a woman. He sets off into the blue yonder, occasionally stumbling across old friends or enemies to help or impede his progress. Bit by bit he tracks down clues, finds out what happened to the vast galactic empire he remembers so fondly, and begins to suspect sneakingly that maybe he \u2013 or at least the original Imre who created the backup \u2013 is the one who brought it down.<\/p>\n We\u2019re encouraged to think Big. Big, big, big. The empire \u2013 the Continuum \u2013 was strung together like a giant Internet where the servers are quasars, artificially manipulated to encode information in their pulses. Imre\u2019s ship tells him that a journey will take 1200 years and he doesn’t bat an eyelid. The story is set 800,000 years from now, Imre\u2019s career spans half of that and some characters go back to the twentieth century. Big.<\/p>\n Pointlessly big, perhaps; the story often feels smaller. The Continuum fell centuries ago, but thanks to science where your personal time rate can be juggled and death is only a relative term, it only seems like a few years. Everyone remembers it like it was only a few years, acts as if it was only a few years … So why not make it a few years? Nor are these the frightened people of Clarke\u2019s Diaspar, still haunted after thousands of years by the echoes of Mankind\u2019s lost empire. The folk here seem to have got over the Continuum like we\u2019ve got over the Romans. And as the standard of living is still pretty high, armies of galactigoths singularly fail to swarm over the borders, even a small surviving fragment of the Continuum consists of several suns and planets shunted together into one big supersystem … you can\u2019t help wondering exactly what difference the Continuum made while it was still around, or what loss it is to anyone now living, or whether a similar story couldn\u2019t have been told within a much smaller setting.<\/p>\n Imre\u2019s sex change seems like the good idea that sparked off the story \u2013 but then the story grew legs of its own and the idea could have been discarded. On a couple of occasions, Imre\u2019s old acquaintances refuse to believe it\u2019s him, as he\u2019s suddenly a she. This in a universe of full body backups, routine dividing of consciousness between different bodies in different time periods, duplicates of the same person trying to kill each other so as to be the only one again … changing one teeny chromosome shouldn\u2019t be much of a challenge.<\/p>\n Quibbles. We have a vast galactic backdrop, against which individuals are scuttling whose life stories tell the story of the galaxy. Questions are raised of identity and guilt. Imre is a corrupted backup. Is he the same man as the original? He\u2019s pretty certain he wouldn\u2019t do what the original did. There again, he doesn\u2019t know all the circumstances that the original faced. And the original is still out there. Keep reading because it\u2019s worth it. And if you\u2019re a Gary Numan fan \u2013 I\u2019m not, so needed the explanatory appendix \u2013 there\u2019s extra value added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sean Williams \u2013 Saturn Returns Orbit, 2007, 292, \u00a310.99, ISBN 978-1-84149-518-7 Ex-galactic mercenary Imre Bergamasc was stored in machine-readable form, encoded in a groove running around the inside of a giant iron cylinder that was subsequently destroyed by a nuclear … Continue reading
\nOrbit, 2007, 292, \u00a310.99, ISBN 978-1-84149-518-7
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