Some of you may know that I’ve been a fan of ‘M’s for a while. From Felix Castor (back in 2007) to The Girl With all the Gifts and The Boy On the Bridge (back in 2017), not to mention his script writing for the comics of XMen and Wolverine, ‘M’ (aka Mike) seems to be able to turn his hand to anything.
Infinity Gate is his latest – a Space Opera that clearly acknowledges the past whilst being steadfastly contemporary and original. It is a story with a number of key science-fictional features – alternate worlds, multiverse travel, interdimensional war and evolutionary diverse creatures.
Hadiz Tambuwal is a Nigerian scientist who, when looking at dark matter as a means of solving Earth’s imminent environmental collapse, instead discovers by accident interdimensional travel.
She meets Essien Nkanika, a self-confessed rogue, and together they move to a cleaner, sparser, better Earth to continue her research. Unbeknownst to Hadiz, her test runs draw attention from the Pandominion, a dictatorship existing across thousands of alternate Earths.
Monitoring her actions is Watchmaster Orso Vemmet, a bureaucrat for the Pandominion. Or rather, he isn’t – Hadiz’s drones on their initial journeys, known as Steps, are noted, but dismissed as unimportant by him. This is something Strategic Coordinator Baxemides is quick to punish for and Vemmet is quickly demoted and exiled to a planet where life expectancy is very short.
However, before the Pandominion reach Hadiz, Essien tries to take advantage of her discovery. As a result, he ends up as one of the Cielo, the elite fighting force created by the Pandominion. They are physically and mentally enhanced (Think of Starship Troopers’s Johnny Rico and the Terminator) and after training Essien finds himself part of a group on many assignments with Moon Sostenti, who becomes a mentor. With proclamations like “Order is what we want. Order is what we stand for.” life as a soldier seems fairly straightforward, although as part of a firing squad, Essien soon realises that the life of a soldier is not without its downside.
Essien is disconcerted by the number of non-human species he meets. It seems that humans are a very small part of this bigger universe. This is emphasised when we also find out that the Pandominion is fighting a war between itself and the Ansurrection, a group of AI who, through a major misunderstanding, have staged a revolt and are now actively attacking the Pandominion’s planets across many multiverses.
At this point we also meet Topaz Tourmaline FiveHills, a sentient rabbit (really!) from an alternate Earth named Ut where evolution has created a dominant sentient species evolved from rabbits – not to mention hedgehogs and other mammals. (This is not the first time lately an SF novel has had sentient animals in their story – Paul McAuley did something similar with racoons and bears in Beyond the Burn Line.) Here Topaz made me think of Rocket Racoon from Guardians of the Galaxy, although Topaz is a much kinder, gentler sort of character.
She’s also rather young and naïve, as she is still at school. There she makes friends with Dulcimer Standfast Coronal, a new pupil. Unbeknownst to Paz, Dulcie is actually a covert agent for the Ansurrection. When an attempt to arrest Dulcie is made, she is able to covertly download etself (notice the pronoun!) to Paz’s anima, Tricity – which made me rather think of a sophisticated Furby! – and the two go on the run, chased by the Cielo.
At this point a chance communication means that Vemmet realises that he has a chance to make good of a bad lot and improve his demoted status in the Pandominion. He creates a plan to escape his place of exile with disgruntled trooper Moon Sostenti, Essien and a group of equally disgraced convicts to get to Paz and Dulcie first. The race is on..
That’s quite a complicated plot to explain – you cannot accuse Mike here of keeping it simple! However, in short, I think that Infinity Gate is as good a Space Opera as you can get. Big ideas, epic scale, complex plot, some philosophy, social commentary, big fight scenes and enough original ideas to up the ‘Wow’ factor. The worlds we visit are varied, the characterisation is great, and I found myself caring a lot for many of these creatures – not to mention mentally hissing at the bad guys!
It takes some nerve to combine multiple universes with artificial intelligence, interdimensional warfare and sentient rabbits, a mix that reads quite bizarrely when you write it in text. There’s a lot of plates spinning here. But it is to Mike’s credit that it works. Bold, imaginative, and downright exciting – Infinity Gate is a barnstormer of a Space Opera – but with a cliffhanger ending that will make you want the next book NOW. I think that it is up there with Artifact Space as one of my favourite SF novels of recent years.
Highly recommended.
INFINITY GATE by M. R. Carey
Published by Gollancz, March 2023
527 pages
ISBN: 978 035 651 801 5
Review by Mark Yon
