Gridlinked - Neal Asher

Gridlinked is the first of Neal Asher’s novels I read, and I immediately fell in love with the his sci-fi world. The story is set in the future, in a human empire called the Polity. The Polity is run by artificially intelligent machines who have intellects that are vastly more powerful than that of normal humans, and they are responsible for both running society and also operating the runcible network, which is this universe’s method of instantaneous space travel. The plot follows a Polity Agent called Ian Cormac as he investigates the explosion of a runcible on a distant planet in the network. I do not want to go into too much detail and ruin the ...  Read the complete review

Gridlinked is mostly set in 2432AD, in and around an expanding sphere of human settlement. The inhabitants can travel about their galaxy using the wonderfully named 'runcibles' -- very big teleportation devices. Their society, homes, transportation, food, water, commerce -- even the runcibles -- are controlled by some very clever AIs. To be 'gridlinked' in this amazing world means to be remotely connected to all these AI intelligences, to have the equivalent of an insanely high-speed Internet link continually open in your mind. One such gridlinked person (and they are quite rare, although other types of augmentation are not) is Ian ...  Read the complete review