The Folded Sky

This is the third book set in Elizabeth Bear’s White Space universe. Unlike her fantasy work, which seems to come neatly packages in trilogies, these books more or less stand on their own. I’m pretty sure that you could read The Folded Sky without having read the other two books. You’d soon pick up on how the universe works and the various bits of futuristic technology involved. At least I hope that’s the case, because I want Bear to produce more of these books. They are very fine Space Opera.

As is often the case with Space Opera, The Folded Sky is a first contact story. It also has a murder mystery. And of course there is a Big Dumb Object. Well, not so dumb in this case.

The central character in the book is Dr. Sunyata Song (Sunya to her friends). She is an archinformist – someone who studies ancient archives – and she has embarked on a mission to study the Baomind, a vast swarm of computing structures created by the now vanished Koregoi civilization. The Baomind is almost certainly intelligent, but it communicates only in mathematics and music. Sunya hopes to establish contact with it and thereby reignite her flagging academic career.

Naturally things are not that easy. To start with the Orbital on which she is going to have to live is old and ramshackle. Also the star around which the Baomind orbits is becoming increasingly unstable. Sunya’s mission is combined with an urgent need to rescue as much of the Baomind as possible before it is too late. And then there are the Freebooters.

If you have read the other White Space novels you will know that the Freebooters are fanatically xenophobic human pirates. As well as hating aliens, they also hate all forms of artificial intelligence. And the star around which the Baomind orbits is far from the usual shipping lanes. It is an easy target.

So poor Sunya is going to be stuck on a rickety space station orbiting a star that might be about to explode while being attacked by pirates, and with a murderer amongst the crew. And yes, Bear does ramp up and tension from there. An important thing about Space Opera is that it should be a thrilling ride. Bear absolutely knows how to achieve that.

Another reason that I love these books is the aliens. Those of you familiar with my presentations on worldbuilding with sex and gender (or the article in the Luna Press book, Worlds Apart), will know that I despair of the tendency of science fiction writers (and fantasy writers) to create new species that are just humans with a few superficial modifications. Why do lizard women have two breasts, when they presumably lay eggs? I don’t know if Bear has seen or read any of my work on this, but she has absolutely got the message. There’s an alien in The Folded Sky whose species has multiple biological genders, and one whose species dies when they give birth to provide their offspring with food.

Towards the end, The Folded Sky gets deep into the weeds about the nature of the universe and the origins of intelligent life. It is fairly abstruse stuff at times, which may be off-putting to some readers. I’m also unsure of the wisdom of Bear nailing her colours to the twin masts of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The more I think about them, the more I conclude that they are sticking plasters over the broken equations of astrophysics and that one day some clever physicist will render the need for them moot. But they are, of course, what science fiction writers are stuck with these days.

In summary, this is a very intelligent, and very big-hearted, book that rushes headlong from one extreme peril to a succession of ever greater ones. Also there are cats. They are mostly very unhappy cats, as they spend much of the book stuffed into spacesuits, but books are always better with cats.

Title: The Folded Sky
By: Elizabeth Bear
Publisher: Gollancz
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
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