![]() ![]() ![]() What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labeling all public writing and speech. The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer–a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. The result is The Iliad meets I, Claudius mixed with the enthusiasm of The Stars My Destination and Gene Wolfe style world building. ![]() Palmer’s unique vision mixes Enlightenment-era philosophy with traditional science fiction speculation to bring to life the year 2454, not a perfect future, but a utopian one, described by a narrator writing in an antiquated form to catalog the birth of a revolution. In May 2016, Tor Books launched the first novel in a new political science fiction series, Too Like The Lightning by debut novelist Ada Palmer. ![]()
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