Let’s presuppose two things. First, that life forms other than our own exist in this universe. Second, that we’ve been receiving undecipherable radio messages from them for ten years.

Factoring Humanity is, essentially, the story of Kyle and Heather, both professors at the University of Toronto. Kyle is a computer scientist working on artificial intelligence and quantum computing and Heather is in the Psychology department and has devoted her career to analyzing the alien messages and trying to translate them into something we can understand. When their youngest (and sole remaining) daughter drops a bombshell accusation, this already fractured family threatens to break apart completely.

Until, that is, Heather successfully deciphers the messages into a blueprint for some Alpha Centauri contraption (whilst Kyle tries to defend himself against his daughter’s shattering allegations). This device has the power to transcend space and time, and can somehow teach humanity more about themselves than about any creatures from the stars.

Sawyer tackles some pretty interesting science in this novel, particularly Kyle’s AI research project/confidante/comedian, Cheetah, a strangely contemporary version of HAL 9000 that provides an unlooked-for (and somewhat cliché) source of empathetic human emotion. The author’s use of Jungian ideas of the collective unconscious, and their application, are also quite intriguing, and they play a central part in the story’s dénouement, when the hive mind awakens and everyone suddenly becomes very polite.

What I got from this novel, and from the majority of Sawyer’s work, is a sense of optimism about the future. Some science fiction uses a kind of forward-thinking existential dread to propel its narrative, but not Sawyer. He shows us the extent to which we dread the present, and how the classic elements of sci-fi (aliens, technology, etc.) can provide a utopian, tree-lined avenue towards whatever lies in store for us as a species and a planet.

Many of the ethical conflicts that arise in the novel echo Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter’s The Light of Other Days, whereby people can surveil each other constantly, anonymously, and surreptitiously through the use of wormhole viewers. The surveillance in Factoring Humanity, though, is of a more emotional bent, and leads to greater understanding rather than greater paranoia.

One of the other, reasons I like this book, albeit a minor, tangential one, is that it’s set (like most of Sawyer’s novels) in and around the city of Toronto, where I live. There’s something about seeing streets and bookstores and cafés you know and like being echoed back at you in print. But whether you live here or not, Factoring Humanity makes a point of stating that we’re all, in a very real sense, connected, and that the sooner we realize it, the sooner we can get on with becoming a better species.

It’s just kind of sad that it takes a piece of alien machinery to enforce the golden rule.