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Capacity by Tony Ballantyne
01/09/2007 . Source: Tomas L. Martin 
pub: TOR-UK. 438 page paperback. Price: £ 6.99 (UK). ISBN: 1-330-42700-8 pub: Bantam Spectra. 390 page paperback. Price: $ 6.99 (US), $ 8.99 (CAN). ISBN: 0-553-58929-0. Buy Capacity in the USA - or Buy Capacity in the UK  check out websites: www.panmacmillan.com www.bantamdell.com and www.tonyballantyne.com
I reviewed Tony Ballantyne's first novel 'Recursion' a while back and was under-whelmed. I found that there were some clever humorous asides and some neat scientific exposition, the overall style and feel was patchy and the characters weak.
'Capacity' is Ballantyne's second novel. Set on a future Earth where digital versions of people have almost as much rights as the real people, strange occurrences on a faraway planet have set a crisis in motion.
Fifty years or so before the main events of the novel, Justinian Sibelius arrives on the planet with his new-born son in an attempt to understand the bizarre 'Schrodinger boxes' that appear on the planet, moving only when a consciousness isn't looking at them. The Watcher AI of Earth has sent tens of AIs to the planet, only to see each one commit suicide and destroying its own brain.
As Justinian talks to the stupid remnants of each AI in an attempt to understand their deaths, the story flits back to the present time. Social Care operative Judy and her many virtual clones rescue Helen from a simulation where people can pay to degrade and break down her mind.
Together, Helen and the many Judys try to track down Kevin, the virus-like personality that runs these virtual torture chambers. In doing so, they encounter a super-strong robot called Chris and discover that both the Watcher and Justinian's experience on the faraway planet are linked to their investigation.
There's some really clever scientific reasoning and ideas in 'Capacity'. The Schrodinger boxes are particularly neat, as is the habitat running in a ring around the Earth. Some of the ideas about virtual reality and the morals that apply to beings that only inhabit computer space is very interesting and Ballantyne offers some good insights into that potential future pitfall.
Ballantyne's attempts to look at such a high and complicated topic is admirable but when so much of the action is dependent on the AI characters rather than the humans, the readability and enjoyment of reading the book take a hit. Ballantyne's prose is very dry and a lot of the intrigues and discussions with the many AI characters are stilted and difficult to follow. The inclusion of intelligences smart enough to predict what each character will do or so makes an author's job very difficult and this is proved here.
The AIs speak in riddles and the plot seems like an opaque wall for both the characters and the readers. I didn't particularly care for any of the rather lifeless human characters and the feeling that a lot of them were simply puppets for some incomprehensible computer controlling everyone's destiny completely destroyed any sense of free will or urgency to the characters and their desires.
Sadly, this book was a chore to read and a lot of the prose was dense and wordy, with some similarities to scientific writing. If you want a book with intriguing scientific reasoning and are prepared to sacrifice some of the lighter aspects of the book, this may interest you. If you're looking for a good story that's an enjoyable read, there's writers such as Neal Asher, Alastair Reynolds and Charles Stross writing about similar worlds to this one, with the exposition more subtly interlaced with a more dynamic plot and characters.
Tomas L. Martin
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