INFINITY GATE
M. R. Carey
Orbit (orbit-books.co.uk)
£18.99
Buy a copy from your favourite independent bookshop
The world is dying, a climate catastrophe doing its best to wipe all vestiges of humanity from the planet. Hadiz Tambuwal is the last person standing at Lagos’ Campus Cross research facility. At the last possible moment, and with the help of Rupshe – probably the most powerful AI in the world – Hadiz opens a door to another universe, where Earth is still habitable and where she meets Essien Nkanika, with whom she entrusts her secret. But Hadiz isn’t the first to discover this gateway to infinite worlds. There is an entire multiverse out there, an infinite number of Earths, many of which have joined forces to form the Pandominion. Hadiz’s discovery coincides with the rise of the Machine Hegemony, a group of AI-run worlds who believe they have as much right to self-hood as the organics of the Pandominion. With Hadiz incapacitated and Nkanika enlisted in the Cielo, the Pandominion’s cross-world army, the fate of the multiverse seems to lie in the hands of nineteen-year-old rabbit Topaz Tourmaline FiveHills, who just might be the only self alive who has what it takes to bridge the gap between organics and machines.
You can never be sure where – or when – a new M.R. Carey novel is going to take you. From the modern-day occult mysteries of Felix Castor, to the near-future post-apocalyptic world of The Girl With All the Gifts and the far-future world of Koli, they all have one thing in common: they are instantly captivating and fantastically-imagined stories designed to give us a break from the everyday. M. R. Carey – in whichever guise he writes – is a mark of quality that makes every book that bears the name simply unmissable. For his latest, Infinity Gate, Carey takes us to a research facility on the outskirts of Lagos, where he introduces us to Hadiz Tambuwal, a woman ignoring the rapid decline of the planet beyond the facility’s walls in order to finish the work to which she has dedicated so much of herself. What she discovers is a gateway to an infinity of parallel Earths, some more advanced than others, but all representing salvation, not only for Hadiz, but for anyone else who might be left on her version of the Earth.
You have to have been living under a rock for the past few years to have missed the fact that multiverses are the current “big thing.” But for anyone who has missed the news, Carey provides a quick primer for the uninitiated. Beyond the basics, every multiverse is different and Carey lays down a set of rules that define his own version. The technology that Hadiz discovers, and that the Pandominion has been using for several hundred years is known as Stepping, and it only moves in one dimension, meaning that it lands you in the exact same place, at the exact same time, on the target world. And there is seemingly no way of communicating between worlds short of recording a message and Stepping it to where it needs to go. Beyond that, it seems, everything else is fair game. With an infinity of worlds it stands to reason that some will be almost identical to Hadiz’s own (where she meets Essien Nkanika), while others may not even have started the whole evolutionary process and yet others where humanity didn’t turn out to be the dominant species (hence the intelligent, humanoid rabbit at the story’s core).
Amongst the science and the mind-blowing possibilities that are part and parcel of the multiverse conceit, Infinity Gate examines a number of important concepts, leaving the reader to decide for themselves which side of the argument they come down on. As the novel opens, we find ourselves on a world in its death throes, having been plundered of every resource by its inhabitants for years. This is a world facing a man-made climate catastrophe, and is a stark reminder from the author of where our own world could be heading. This is offset somewhat by the idea of infinite worlds, and we discover that the more advanced members of the Pandominion have been plundering other worlds in order to leave their own pristine. What would our world be like if we had infinite resources that could be harvested without consequences?
The other big question that Carey examines is the idea of selfhood in an age of artificial intelligences. The Machine Hegemony is a consortium of worlds where Als have complete control. On Topaz Tourmaline FiveHills’ world, Als play an important role in everyday life, acting as personal assistants and general factotums, with children receiving their first “anima” as young as five years old. When the machines view this as tantamount to slavery, Paz finds herself wondering, for the first time, if they might not be right. Through the young rabbit’s eyes, Carey asks us what exactly makes a “person” and whether, at some point in the future, we might not be facing the same dilemma. It’s not, by any means, a new concept in science fiction, but it is a very timely one, with the proliferation of Al-powered art applications and bots such as ChatGPT. The technology is still a long way off what Carey posits, but it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable question to ask.
Amongst these questions and philosophical arguments, M.R. Carey also does what he does best: writes a gripping, fast-paced story that is as exciting and fun as it is thought-provoking. Infinity Gate is the first of a two-parter and so spends a lot of time setting things up, introducing the concepts and the main players, both on an individual as well as a macroscopic scale. By the end of the story, the key players have gathered in preparation for whatever is to come next, but the journey to get to that point will keep you on the edge of your seat for the duration. Anyone who has already discovered the novels of M.R. Carey will be unsurprised that Infinity Gate is a winner. Anyone who hasn’t should take this opportunity to get acquainted with him. Infinity Gate is Carey on top form, and is not to be missed.
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