Karl Schroeder joins a long list of authors whose speculative fiction explores our relationship with reality and our own perceptions. Lady of Mazes takes you deep into a society that is based on the ability to choose the reality in which you will live. Nanomachines in your body and garments, in communication with an ubiquitous net of powerful computer equipment, work together with your will to place you, experientially, in a "shared reality" of your own making.
Then what happens if the system on which this society is based begins to break down, or is attacked? What is the result of a post-human, machine-based species that sets up a portion of the planetary system as its own turf, keeping humans out...at least most of them?
This satisfying meld of hard and soft SF is full of interesting ideas. The ability to be anywhere, virtually, in full-sensory experience becomes the ability to have a simulation of your personality running one or more agents that gather experience and interact with your acquaintances, much as you would, with the ability to replay their memories at high speed back into your own. Semisentient clothing could have the power to be doctor and protector, and even to become a temporary vacuum suit. Spinning cylinders, strung out along an orbit of their own, so oriented that an object released from the edge of one comes close enough to the next to provide an efficient means of intra-system transport.
In the end, technology produces virtual godhood for a few, who may or may not be in cahoots with the posthumans. They compete to save, or perhaps contain, the human societies. It's a little hard to tell.
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