Bloom

Bloom by Wil McCarthy

https://www.amazon.com/Bloom-Wil-McCarthy-ebook/dp/B006PV826W/ref=sr_1_1?crid=157TJSLA4XOIK&keywords=bloom+wil+mccarthy&qid=1695508183&s=digital-text&sprefix=Bloom+wil+%2Cdigital-text%2C157&sr=1-1


It is less than one hundred years into the future and humanity is in a very bad way. We've abandoned the Earth and are precariously ensconced on a few moons of Jupiter and some asteroids, waiting for the final shove toward extinction. There is a desperate plan to complete a starship and send some of the survivors to another system where they might be temporarily safe. The inner solar system up to around the asteroid belt has been taken over by something called the Mycosystem.

What happened?

That's not clear, but it appears that nano material was created, released, or arrived on Earth where it quickly used everything to replicate itself. Some humans evacuated to the Moon, but were shortly followed by the nanites that performed the same feat to the Moon. The Earth and the Moon have been turned into huge balls of nano material, except for the poles since the nanites – mycora – needs warmth and light.

The Jovian society has transformed into a society under siege – the Immunity – ready to react against any intrusion by mycora which could “bloom” like fungus into exponentially expanding fungus-like “technogenic life” that would reduce everything into more mycora. A bloom elicits a prompt response by counter-nanites, freezing devices called “witches tits,” and lasers.

The story opens when amateur “Berichter,” or reporter – Jovian English is heavily influenced by a German Swiss element - John Strasheim is recruited for a mission to return to Earth. Since this is deep in the Mycosystem where mycoran spores are being blown around by the solar winds. The ship Louis Pasteur has been built with material that might fool the mycora to allow it to pass without being converted into mycora. The accent is on “might.” The technology hasn't been tested and if it fails, the ship is spore fodder.

There is also a human threat. Some humans have become infatuated with a crypto-religious belief that the Mycosystem is intelligent and potentially godlike. These people have organized themselves into the Temple of Transcendent Evolution, which may be performing experiments to upgrade mycora in a way that would make it effective against the Immunity.

Strasheim's story involves a months long trip on a ship with six specialists and a living space that might be the size of a college dorm room.

Author McCarthy does a great job of baiting hooks of interest, tension, and adventure. There are questions about sabotage and espionage. There is a space battle of sorts. New facts are learned about the Mycosystem and the purpose of the mission as the story develops. Strasheim is very well developed as a character and we get to know a few other characters in a way that makes them likeable and sympathetic. I was pulled along by McCarthy's story.

I particularly liked the “big think” element of the story, which was not really the question of the Mycosystem's intelligence, but the idea of entire planets being consumed by a nanite plague. Venus swells up to the size of Neptune, for example. This is a far different setting than we commonly see in science fiction, although a similar disaster, involving “mataglap,” is the basis of the society that is presented in Walter Jon William's Aristoi.

This was a fun read in a vein that was almost a throw-back to the hard science of earlier science fiction.