In the previous book of the Corporation Wars trilogy, Insurgence (2016, UK), the various factions all began to advance their own agendas. This was somewhat complicated by the assorted groups including sleeper agents from both the Rax and the Axle (capitalist and anti-capitalist factions from the war back on Earth), and even sleeper agents within each faction for the opposite faction.
In Emergence (2017, UK), the Axle defectors are now with the freebots on SH-17, a moon of the super-habitable world, SH-0. And the Locke Proviso sim populated by Axle has crash-landed on SH-0 in an effort to kickstart a colony, even though the Direction (the government on far distant Earth) has decreed SH-0 off-limits.
Rax white supremacist Mackenzie Dunt and his cronies have occupied SH-119 but the freebots there are resisting occupation – one even sends a call for help to the freebots on SH-17, the ones whose bootstrapping to sentience kicked off the story of the trilogy.
The station that crash-landed on SH-0 has discovered the local fauna is more dangerous, and much more clever, than they’d expected, and it begins to meld somehow with the mechanoids used by the downloaded humans in the sim.
And on SH-17, Carlos the Jackal, one of the core characters, has realised that by incorporating himself he gains far more legal rights and protections than he had as a downloaded human and, because he’s a downloaded human, his corporation has the legal right to manufacture and sell weaponry. Making Carlos Ltd, so to speak, in short order the richest and most powerful corporate entity in the planetary system.
A final section, set thousands of years later as Carlos is re-awakened on a terraformed H-0, the system’s sole habitable planet (but needs terraforming), adds a new spin on the story preceding it as it provides closure for the various narratives.
MacLeod plays all this out with an impressive degree of rigour and logic. Despite that, he keeps the story focused on human, and robot, characters with whom readers can sympathise. It’s a cleverly-done juggling act: so many agendas in play, and yet MacLeod keeps the narratives clear and distinct.
I originally bought these books as they were released in hardback, and only purchased the omnibus paperback after moving to Sweden because the hardbacks were in storage. I don’t actually like reading omnibuses in one go – I feel that if its constituent parts were published separately then that’s the best way to read them. Except that’s often not the case – some trilogies and series are conceived as a whole but split on publication for a variety of reasons. The Corporation Wars, I think, actually works better as an omnibus, because its plot is complex, the factions its characters represent evolve quickly as the trilogy progresses, and because its victories and reversals have strategic implications.
This is an excellent trilogy, superior science fiction, but I suspect it’s best consumed in the omnibus paperback as a single novel rather than the three original novels.
