Ada Palmer is a major new writer

I've just finished "Too Like the Lightning," a long science fiction novel by Ada Palmer that is the start of a series of four books. It's the best science fiction novel I've read in some months, and also one of the best novels.Palmer's novel, set in the 25th century, is an attempt to write about a utopia, to write a novel of ideas and to write an entertaining science fiction novel. In those ambitions, it is comparable to Iain Banks' Culture novels. That's not a comparison I often make, as I'm a huge Banks fan.A couple of Palmer's ideas: In her future world, people are not citizens of a local nation-state. Instead, they join a "hive," a kind of global nation with its own set of laws, corresponding to the lifestyle and ideas that provide the closest fit. Or they can choose not to join a hive at all, and to live under a minimum set of planet-wide laws.In Palmer's world, the ideal living unit is not the nuclear family, but a "bash'," a unit of somewhere between five and 25 friends (I can't give you Palmer's exact definition, because I couldn't find the reference), usually friends you met in college, who provide mutual support for child-rearing and your career and social life. So the problems of loneliness and having a support system are solved by a new social convention.Palmer's world also advocates certain kinds of censorship, and religion is banned, because religions are blamed for a huge world war that killed millions. People are allowed to discuss religious ideas with "sensayers" who are trained for the purpose, but they can't belong to a congregation. The world has succeeded in ending war, in part by constructing a more successful version of the Roman Empire.All of this is presented in the context of a mystery plot, in a novel that is the first book of a trilogy. The first book ends with a satisfying shock that partially resolves the mystery, but also leaves me eager to read the second book, "Seven Surrenders," which has just been published.[imageuncropped=adapalmer.jpgThe novel is largely inspired by the 18th century Enlightenment, particularly French writers such as Voltaire, Diderot, de Sade and Rousseau. It also is written in a self-consciously period style.In an afterword, Palmer says her top motivation for wanting to become a published novelist was that "I wanted to add my voice to the Great Conversation, to reply to Diderot, Voltaire, Osamu Tezuka and Alfred Bester, so people would read my books and think new things, and make new things from those thoughts, my little contribution to the path which flows from Gilgamesh and Homer to the stars."