Paul Di Filippo Reviews Echo of Worlds by M.R. Carey

Echo of Worlds, M. R. Carey (Orbit 978-0316504690, trade paperback, 512pp, $19.99) June 2024

I pled for the author’s and publisher’s mercy in my review of the first captivating book in this series—Infinity Gate—begging for a quick sequel. Well, about fourteen months later, a reasonable interval, here we are. Prayers answered!

I also mentioned then that Infinity Gate was billed as the first book in a series. I expected a long run, of course, as seems de rigueur these days, but Echo of Worlds closes with such decisive finality that I feel this is manifestly a duology. If the series does go on, it can hardly continue to bear the subtitle of “The Pandominion,” since that multiverse-spanning empire is effectively dead by book’s end. This is a tiny, tiny spoiler for two reasons: we saw in the first book that the Pandominion was on the ropes, almost down and out already; and the method of its defeat—or, rather, its transmogrification into something else—remains unrevealed by me! You will still have a helluva wild ride getting there.

Just to recap slightly: the Pandominion controls a sheaf of universes through their Step technology and their enforcers, the Cielo troops, who are like Heinlein’s Starship Troopers times ten. Unfortunately, they have run up against an unstoppable foe, the Ansurrection. This is an artificially intelligent machine civilization with technology superior to that of the humans. And there is no possible communication with them.

Ranged against the Ansurrection is all the official might of the Pandominion, led by one half-mad bureaucrat, Meulusa Baxemides, who resembles Robert Oppenheimer with a larger uncontrolled ego. She has commissioned the creation of a weapon that just might stop the Ansurrection. Unfortunately it might also kill every human alive. Will she use it? What do you think?

But also, in the smartest Rogue One-style maneuver, there’s also a squad of unlikely misfits also trying to save everyone, both machines and humans alike. We met them all in the first book, but in this volume they really cohere into a team. Their separate personalities and interpersonal dealings reach new heights of complexity, and provide much enjoyment for the reader.

There’s Hadiz Tambuwal, a brilliant scientist who independently stumbled on Step tech. She currently exists only as an uploaded person. Her best friend is Rupshe, “a massively powerful untethered AI,” friendly and protective to humans. Next comes two ex-Cielo soldiers, the human Essien Nkanika, and the feline-o-form Moon Sostenti, who is a vile-mouthed, irreverent, hair-trigger-tempered sort. Lastly we have Paz, a young female “lagomorph,” her AI companion, Dulcie, an ex-spy for the Ansurrection, and the miserable low-level functionary Orso Vemmet, who has been shanghaied to help.

And by way of new characters, we meet the Mother Mass, a sentient godlike planet, and the Registry, a Pandominion AI superior even to Rupshe.

With his cast firmly delineated, Carey now alternates the sections of his rousing adventure—the race to stop multiversal doom—into two types: the cosmic, and the personal. Of course, the threads will converge in an intricate bow that wraps up a very beautiful package.

The cosmic stuff is as full of old-school Doc Smith sensawunda, keenly modernized, as you could wish.

At first glance the redoubt seemed to have the tapered shape of a battleship – a battleship that had welded itself to the surface of the ocean it sailed on. But the structure’s fixed position and colossal size meant it could carry more heavy weaponry than any battleship that was ever built. Cannons bristled on its surface, arranged in overlapping clusters so that every line of approach was covered…. Some of the guns fired rockets and self-propelling grenades, others propagated pressor or microwave fields or shear planes capable of slicing incoming ships into geometrically precise segments….

All the interior spaces in [the] redoubt are defended too. There are gun turrets at every corner commanding 360-degree views. Emergency bulkheads set to isolate any area where there’s a breach. An on-site rapid response team of about a thousand Cielo grunts, not to mention semi-autonomous strike units packing air-burst ordnance….

The initial plan of the team is to find the Mother Mass and convince it to help end the senseless war. The members break up into pairs (I always think this tactic was pioneered by the Justice Society comics of the 1940s) and go on various missions providing plenty of dangers and thrills: watching murderous Moon and merciful Essien in action should satisfy any fan of military SF. When Paz and Dulcie visit a previously unknown continuum and encounter some humans on the verge of going extinct, we even pause for a kind of touching First Contact interlude.

But Carey is not content to follow a linear schematic, where the team piles up plot coupons and wins easily. Many things go awry, until only a wild-eyed Plan B (shades of A. E. van Vogt!) offers any hope at all. And this scheme will demand immense sacrifices from everyone.

Ultimately, underneath all the suspenseful warfare and mind-blowing speculations about multiversal reality, Carey’s focus turns out to be some topics much more primal and non-technological: freedom, communication, responsibility, home, maturity, the destiny of sentience in an ambiguous creation.

In a way, this is almost the same template as The Wizard of Oz. Tossed willy-nilly into strangeness, one discerns how to return to the beloved home, but as if for the very first time, and now enchanted.

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