Paradox

The setting is Nulapeiron, a many levelled world of exotic underground cities where the lower classes are literally kept below by a meritocracy of intellectual Lords. Change is forbidden, perhaps impossible: the barely human "Oracles", disconnected from time, provide snapshots from an unalterable, deterministic future. Chaos and uncertainty are dirty words and "I'll be heisenberged" a foul oath. Young hero Tom--brought up in a deep-down bazaar--loses his mother to an Oracle's whim, his father to a cruelly self-fulfilling prediction, and his arm to the Lords' cruel justice. He's primed with hatred and inspired by a biographical dat crystal given to him by an outlawed Pilot who's navigated the now forbidden fract complexities of mu-space. Tom has enough mathematical genius to storm the pyramid of Nulapeiron's high society and perhaps gain power to take revenge- he can also solve the paradox of how to kill an Oracle whose death date is fixe known, and far off in time. Change would become possible ... Meaney's sustained inventiveness continues to dazzle. Paradox may be a little heavy on martial-arts action for some tastes, but the roller-coaster plot is full o unexpected twists, revelations, biotechnological oddities, changes of course a unlikely alliances. Crackling tension continues to the very end.