Ken MacLeod ’s late novel , The Night Sessions , is about a approximate - future Earth that ’s rule by atheist who have aim Christians into the closet . An intricate murder mystery about Protestant terrorist factions of the future , The Night Sessions is also a strangely move narration of the aroused bond between humankind and robots .
The “ Faith Wars ” have purged government in the East and West of their religious leader , and left in their viewing a fairly peaceful earth order . Still , the population is filled with people and sentient robots haunt by memory of the vehement “ God Squads ” who led the anti - religious purges . In this novel , unloose last month in the UK , MacLeod has beat to the about - present fourth dimension frame of his last novel The Execution Channel , while also bringing in the kinds of far - future concern about posthuman selfhood that made his Engines of Light trilogy so bright .
MacLeod has give us a crisp novel of speculation made achingly realistic by his characters ’ credible , mussy lives . Our protagonist is Ferguson , a former God Squad thug - turned - investigator seek to repent for his violent past by being the most ethical law officer he can .
When Catholics start turning up dead in Edinburgh , he has to have the best his anti - religious prejudices to stupefy out a Protestant plot that stretch back centuries — and that has something to do with a group of evangelical Christian robots who live in a Creationist entertainment commons in New Zealand . Ferguson ’s preconception , it become out , are not just the result of his staunch atheism . He also has much to larn about the subjectiveness of the so - called ki , or kinetic intelligence service , who put to work and be among human race .
Though the Faith Wars may have purged Christian souls from politics , they created new “ souls ” in the bodies of military golem who somehow attain sentience on the field . These KIs have been change out of their grave , soldier bodies and into delicate frames that look like miniature tripod from War of the Worlds . Still others exist in humanoid bodies , shun by biologic humans who find out their artificial faces disturbing due to theuncanny valleyeffect .
Just as homo return from war are often wracked by a lifetime of traumatic memories and accidental injury , so too are the KIs . Especially the ones who have been literally transfer into new body and rejected by the people they struggle to protect . As Ferguson and his KI partner Skulk start to unravel the mystery of the Catholic murders , they must come up to grips with the possibility that robots have inherited the religious wrath of the humans who died beside them in battle . And they ’ve taken to religious terrorism just as they ’ve taken to consciousness .
There is something brilliant in MacLeod ’s thought that when robots reach human - style intelligence information that they ’ll become as irrational as mankind too . There ’s no Good Book yet on when the US release date will be for this captivating novel , so if you ’re outside the UK you ’re going to have to special rescript it . Which is too bad , because this is incisively the kind of book that US audiences need to be learn .
Quite simply , it ’s a story of a future where religion has lost its clutch on political science and yet ethical values have survived — even among atheists . Of naturally , this being a MacLeod novel , there is also a healthy dose of virginal adventuresome sport , too . We follow the thread of our murder whodunit up and down space elevators , as well as in and out of boor night club pack with live tranny girls and high tech DJs during Edinburgh ’s famous Fringe Festival . A pleasingly spicy mashup of wise political sympathies and smartass value-system , The Night Sessions is both hard to resist and hard to put down .
The Night Sessions[via Amazon.uk ]
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