Nate Dec 16, 2015

it was amazing bookshelves: sci-fi, deep-time

's review

Have you ever gotten the strange feeling that you’re being watched? Have you experienced Déjà vu or had the feeling that your life may be part of something much larger; or, you’re just waiting for something unique to happen? These may just be the psychological side effects experienced by a distant-future subject who is remotely experiencing your life/soul millions of years in the future.



For most of 2015 I’ve been on the hunt for the most obscure science fiction story and I can confidently state I have found it in “The Soul Consortium”. In short, the Soul Consortium is a digital archive housing billions of human souls who lived throughout numerous universes (post-collapse and re-birth, not multi-verse). The last human, Salem Ben, accompanied by his AI Super computer, QOD, administer this vast collection. The story begins as Salem’s quest for deep philosophical meaning of Man’s existence and it quickly morphs a noir detective story as Salem tries to track down an anomaly found within the archive; however, this aberration cannot be reconciled as a soul who lived within the known universes and recorded within the Soul Consortium’s files.



In short, Salem, along with the help of QOD, tries to track down this Ghost in the Machine by experiencing souls thought to have come in contact with the mysterious antagonist, in an attempt to learn who or what he is. Along our journey, we discover, not only how the Soul Consortium works, but how the anomaly infiltrated the Soul archives.



Because Salem Ben, our protagonist, exists in only a fraction of the story (or we only experience his real-time actions in a fraction of the story), you would assume he would be un-relatable. However, this is not the case .The reader has a vested interest in each sub-story as each builds towards the final crescendo and the case is solved.



The concepts explored in this book are mind-numbingly vast and there is no hand-holding. But, do not let that intimidate you from reading this book. The author of “The Soul Consortium”, Simon West-Bulford, takes a very ambitious leap by writing a fantastical story spanning billions and billions of years. Unlike many SF authors writing on such a niche subject, West-Bulford executes this original story in efficient, short bursts that propel the story forward by dialogue and tension amongst the characters. His execution is frustratingly near-flawless and as confusing as the plot may be, the techno-babble is minimal and believable. He doesn’t slow down the pace of the story by focusing on minute detail. The story structure could be compared to Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas” and just as brilliant. The endless twists and turns remind me of Philip K Dick; and the detail is described as if he actually had a basic understanding of many of the themes covered in contemporary SF, such as, consciousness and quantum computing.



I was thrilled to discover that west-Bulford has written a sequel to this story and it is certain to be the very next book I read.

