Things begin in 2454, with the theft of one of the most important "who's who" articles in the world. Or maybe things begin in 2443, with the birth of a boy who can bring his toys to life. Or in 2131, when, during the height of the Church Wars, the people of the world renounce their nations. Or in 2073, when a small car circles the world in just over four hours.

Or perhaps it begins with the book's frontispiece, which gives us our first sample of this world, and the phrase "Certified nonproselytory by the Four-Hive Commission on Religion in Literature."

The world of Too Like The Lighting, a 2016 novel by Ada Palmer, is not our own. It thinks itself a utopia. It is not. But nor is it a dystopia. It is, in many ways, a world better than our own. In some, however, it is rather worse.

So what are the changes the world has undergone in the scant 430 years between then and now? We'll get to that, in time. But first, the plot.

The book is narrated (albeit extraordinarily unreliably) by one Mycroft Canner, a Servicer, and is done in a rather unusual style. Specifically, that of 18th century french Enlightenment works, with large segments being given as only a script. It is also written with the conceit that the main in-universe function of the writing is as a historical record for some even more distant future. A future personified by the Reader, who Mycroft addresses rather frequently. And who sometimes speaks back.

The main plot of the novel comes in two threads, concerning two events:

First, the theft of the Black Sakura newspaper's upcoming Seven-Ten List - a ranked list of the ten most powerful people in the world - and how that list came to be found crumpled up inside a trashcan in the home of the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash', which is a rather odd place for it to be, and a rather concerning one, given that the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash' controls the cars for six of the seven Hives, and almost all of the world's population.

Second, the discovery of the aforementioned miracle child, Bridger, by Carlyle Foster, the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash's new sensayer, and how they, along with Bridger's other (human) guardians - Mycroft Canner and Thisbe Saneer - try to work out how Bridger can be introduced to the world without being torn apart by it.

Yes, yes, thou describest all these various and sundry narratives this work contains, but thou hast peppered them with words, phrases and concepts that I have never heard before, and have no way of understanding! "Bash'"? "Hive"? "Sensayer"? Kindly explain thyself!

As you wish, Reader, though I shall do so under the cut, to save your precious screen-space.

That's enough of that, I think.

But when I said earlier that the world of Terra Ignota is different from our own, I meant it. So here are some of the most prominent of those changes, presented in no particular order.

As alluded to earlier, geographic states have been abolished. What has replaced them are Hives: non-geographic governments, membership in which is wholly voluntary, begin decided individually when a person passes their Adulthood Competency Exams. There are, at the time of the story, seven of these Hives, listed here by population: Masons, Cousins, Mitsubishi, European Union, Humanists, Gordian, Utopia. There are also those who choose no Hive, the Hiveless, who are divided into Blacklaw, Greylaw, and (presumably) Whitelaw. These Hives have different focuses, from the charity-focused Cousins and the individual-achievement-focused Humanists, to the Utopians, who, well, guess.

As a result of these focuses, it's easy to view these as personality-based, the kind of thing that one can imagine making an online quiz for; but this is to miss the point. The point is the choice, the choice in how one wants to be ruled. The Masons are ruled by an autocratic emperor, though the post is explicitly non-hereditary. The Mitsubishi practice "shareholder democracy," wherein one gets more votes the greater their land holdings (hence why the Mitsubishi own nearly two-thirds of the world's land). The Cousins' government is literally rule-by-suggestion-box. The Humanists dole out governmental power proportionally, based on how many votes a candidate receives (as long as that's at least 0.1%). The Utopians have their "constellations," which seem to be similar to ad-hocs, like something out Cory Doctorow. Ada Palmer writes more on this in an article (linked here), which, responding to other's analyses, also discusses some of the other changes.

Another of those great, big changes? Religion has been outlawed. In the aftermath of the Church Wars, the world came together and said "No more. Never again." And there went religion. No more preachers. No more parents stuffing their religion down their children's throats. No more religious wars, no more. And, of course, no more religious communities. Which is not to say that the world of Terra Ignota has no metaphysics, no theology. What replaced religion were sensayers. These people would act as personal priests, helping people come to their own conclusions about the true nature of reality, without making any attempt to convert them to one mode of belief or another.

As Palmer writes in the above-linked article, "That kind of powerfully personalized, respectful, deep discourse, with no sides, no proselytizing secondary motives, only dialog and growth, a lot of people would find that exquisitely precious. Our society doesn’t offer us that. [The society of Terra Ignota] offers only that. A bi-weekly appointment with a professional Socrates to have a dialog on the nature of the Highest Good offers an examined life, intellectual exercise, and amazing humanistic enrichment of the self, but it does not offer community, a way of life, or any affirmation beyond Carlyle Foster’s kindly smile[...]"

One of the great tricks of Too Like The Lightning, is that by getting you to think about how Palmer's society of 2454 treats a certain topic, it gets you to think about how our society should treat it. It's a rather impressive slight-of-hand.

One of those things? Prison. In Terra Ignota, no-one is sentenced to life in prison, and the one time we hear of a prison sentence in the concrete, it is offered as an alternative to a fine. But what about the great thieves? The murderers? What about them? Presumably they are rehabilitated somehow, surely? They are; through what amounts to slavery.

Servicers, as these people are called, are not slaves of any one person, as in roman household slavery or american chattel slavery, but are public slaves, slaves to the world at large. Lifelong community service. They may not hold property, and may only eat food that is provided to them. An analogy is made to a justice system described by Sir Thomas More, better known as the author of Utopia, who describes a system in which criminal slaves, forbidden from owning property, will have no motive for crime, and serve their communities in peace. There are not a lot of Servicers ("a couple hundred thousand") and they seem to not be treated terribly, but slavery is slavery.

Our narrator, as you may recall, is one of these Servicers. They were a criminal, who commited crimes sharp enough that people no longer name their children 'Mycroft,' once one of the most common names in the world. What are those crimes? Read the book and find out; it's not disclosed until halfway through.

The last of what I'd call the "big three" changes (the others being Hives and religion) is the change in family structure. In the 2170s, it was discovered that raising children was best done not by groupings of their genetic relatives, but by groups of peers. These new groupings are referred to as bash's, singular bash', from the japanese term 居場所 (ibasho), meaning "a place where one belongs." As an example, the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash' has nine members: Ockham Saneer, their partner Lesley Saneer, their sibling Thibe Saneer, Ojiro Sniper (presumably Lesley's sibling), Cato Weeksbooth, their sibling Eureka Weeksbooth, the adopted Sidney Koons, and the Typer twins (Kat and Robin, though they don't appear).

You may have noticed that every character listed was referred to as 'they.' This is because, in the world of Terra Ignota, people are no longer publicly gendered, though likely not for the reasons you might think. By 2454, gendering people at all has come to be seen as a fairly sexual act. So it is not done (in public). Mycroft's narration, however, does gender people - though notably, this is not done through anatomy or self-identity, but through whether Mycroft thinks they better fulfill the gender roles of man or woman (as they existed in 18th century france). Save Carlyle, all Cousins are women, as they are stereotyped as caring and nurturing. The Masonic Emperor is always a man.

And speaking of the Emperor, it's getting time to wrap this post up, with a further discussion of plot. Mycroft, a lowly Servicer (though one who seems to know rather a lot of Hive leaders), is very quickly wrapped up in the Black Sakura affair, as the contents of the stolen list point to a series of underlying tensions in the world. The Mitsubishi Hive is shakier than it appears. The Saneer-Weeksbooth bash' was broken into. The enigmatic, almost robotic J.E.D.D. Mason walks the halls of power. An orphan returns from the Moon. There's only so long one can paper over cracks.

And all this is happening over just three days.

This book was nominated for the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and the series as a whole (four books in all) for the 2022 Hugo in that category, and it's clear to see why. I highly, highly recommend you read it. If nothing else, it'll explain why I'm using the term "superprosthesis" whenever I can get the chance.