Ada Hoffmann’s The Infinite completes the Outside Trilogy, revealing not only the future of the world of A.I. Gods and extradimensional powers, but also, its origins.
When last we left Yasira Shien and her allies and friends, they had staved off attempts by the AI Gods to reassert control over the planet where an eruption of Outside extra-dimensional energies has created a place where their power and authority have lost potency. With this heresy, this undeniable challenge to their authorities, The God Nemesis, in particular of the pantheon of Gods, has a plan to bring the rebellious, heretical humans to heel: Withdraw from the system entirely, leaving it to the mercies of those the Gods protect humanity from. Then the the alien Keres, perhaps an alien God themselves or with the power on a par with the Gods, can send forces in for a fiery cleansing. It would appear the Gods are going to let the enemies of humanity cauterize the wound Yasira has inflicted upon the humanity politic. What can they do against such an overwhelming threat that even fights the Gods to a draw?
Hoffmann’s talents are on display here as they are in the first two novels. We get a queer neurodivergent main character who has been severely shaped by the events of the first two books. The inclusion of neurodivergent characters who feel authentically three-dimensional and not just having their neurodivergence as a discarded quirk is still something that is a bit of a rara avis in science fiction and fantasy. Yasira is a strong and leading example of how to make such a character who is both complex on all axes and relatable to the audience.
There is, though, also an element, that is also present in this book, of “waiting for Yasira”. Yasira is a fascinating protagonist, one who is a bit hard to get a handle on through the series. Her connection to the Outside makes her an ever more complicated main character to relate to as the series progresses. And through the second and third books, there is a fair amount of trying to move Yasira into a position where she can and knows how to act. I wouldn’t dehumanize her to the point that Yasira is explicitly and only a weapon created by Dr. Talirr, but in some ways she comes across as that. This is something that some of the other characters in the series do in fact recognize and call Talirr out on. But there is an awful amount of “What can Yasira do and how can she do it” that we saw in The Fallen and again, here, in The Infinite. Time and again, in both books, characters act and have power, and struggle against vast forces, but even Yasira’s own Seven champions seem to be forever waiting for her and her vast power to take positive action.
Moving on from Yasira, we get Tiv, of course, her rock and her sanctuary. In the second novel The Fallen, Tiv awkwardly added on the role of Leader of the group of Yasira and the Seven in trying to, essentially, manage them, their powers, and the response to the Gods. Like that second novel, there is less active plot regarding Tiv and Yasira’s relationship here than in the first. However, the emotional core of this book IS their relationship, and their bond is a social catalyst for decisions made throughout the novel by the two of them.
Frankly, as far as The Seven go, they are at best secondary and supporting characters and they do not really have full arcs as the more primary protagonists do. They strictly are adjuncts to the main action, although some of their powers, fully unleashed in the final confrontations, are truly potent. Yasira, in the second novel, has in fact, created superheroes of the Outside with their power, in a way that makes me think of Marvel’s The Scarlet Witch.
And then there are the most fascinating characters: The rogue angels. Elu, Enga, and most importantly Akavi. In The Outside, they were the out-and-out opponents of Yasira and her crew, sent by the celestial chain of command to deal with the heresy. During The Fallen, they themselves have wound up on the outside of the Celestial Hierarchy. They have their own good reasons to pursue their vengeance against Yasira, but without the resources of Nemesis, they are in fact a rogue operation who are almost as much at odds with Nemesis in the process. As a result, they wind up becoming fascinatingly grey-area characters. They clearly oppose Yasira and plot to stop her actions, but they are no longer the official arm of Nemesis.
At this point, I want to bring in a different element to the novel. There is a famous very short story by Frederic Brown called “Answer”. You probably already know the punchline. However, I am going to reproduce it all anyway, because it is extremely relevant to the story of The Outside Trilogy, and the pull-quote most people take from the story is NOT the last line, but occurs prior:
Dwar Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe — ninety-six billion planets — into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.
Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment’s silence he said, “Now, Dwar Ev.”
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. “The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn.”
“Thank you,” said Dwar Reyn. “It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer.”
He turned to face the machine. “Is there a God?”
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
“Yes, now there is a God.”
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.
A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.
In addition to the denouement and the working out of the final conflict between Yasira and the Gods, between Humanity, the Outside and the A.I. deities and their angels, there is a different point of view in the book, and a different time frame. This timeframe gives us the origin of the Gods themselves. We meet the character of Giselle, who lives on earth seven centuries before the time frame of the book. When these events themselves take place is not entirely clear but it feels like the 21st century1. The problems that beset Giselle and the world are familiar and are our own: Climate change. Political insecurity. Militarism. Giselle’s building of an artificial intelligence, Nemesis-1, is an effort to combat these problems. Just how Nemesis-1 (along with its counterparts) becomes a God (and *why*) is, of course, in the telling of the tale, but the basic throughline is clear from the aforementioned Brown story: by means of creating a powerful enough computer, the foundations are laid down. And once a God is created, their desire and need to maintain themselves has a logic and narrative momentum all their own. While most people quote the “Now” line, the fact that this new God immediately acts to preserve its existence is important, and relevant to this time frame. Nemesis ensures its existence just as the machine in the Frederic Brown story does.
And thus, we come back to the plot where, seven centuries later, Yasira, Ev, Tiv and the others are seeking to, in essence, overthrow that order. By waiting until this point in the trilogy to reveal how this world came about, we’ve had an aura of mystery as to what the Gods really are and how humanity got itself into this situation in the first place. Having Gods show up and take control of humanity is not a new concept. The Fred Saberhagen Swords ‘verse has that happen too, although Saberhagen never really explained how the world of the Empire of the East became the Gods-ruled world of the Book of Swords series. But, like The Infinite, the Book of Swords series is about the ending of Gods, the changing of an old order, a revolution against a deiocracy2.
Does Humanity, in fact, still need the Gods that arguably saved it seven hundred years ago? Are the Gods a net good for humanity, or not? These are questions that Hoffmann has the reader engage with on levels that all the characters, past and present, cannot. The story of Giselle and the creation of Nemesis and the other Gods is not something that Yasira and the others, not even the Rogue angels, seem to know. This is a culture which has been strongly shaped by pedagogy that tells of how the Gods are a good thing, full stop. There are more quotes from “Theodicy stories for children.” The storyline in the past makes it clear, though, that such methods of social control are literally baked into the nature of the Gods. This is what they do.
But it is the reader who gets to weigh everything in their mind ultimately, especially reconciling the events of the two time-frames: The perspective and point of view that no one, not even Yasira, can manage. The origin of the Gods and why they came to be. What the rule of the Gods is truly like, warts and all. The secrets that Nemesis and the other Gods are keeping. The only person who can see clearly in the end through all of this is the reader themself. It is up to us to decide whether Yasira and her cause are just and justified. I think that Hoffmann does have a hand on the scales, given our protagonist and some revelations made in the novel, but it is a question worth considering. I also think that she pulls a punch or two that could have made it more ambiguous and more of a mixed blessing. If I could point to a weakness in the novel that kept niggling at me even now, it would be that. She does go there in some extent with the Chaos Zone in the previous novel, a realm where the Gods’ essential services are just not there and people need to find new ways of doing things, but it is possible that trying to remold society entirely, and its challenges, would take a whole other novel to fully explore in its consequences.
So where does The Infinite leave us as readers of the Outside Trilogy? While I’ve seen more treatments lately of AI Gods, its fusion of that with cosmic horror, and its pointed questions, especially in this third book, about their need, use, and ultimate worth elevate the story. The middle book, The Fallen, does now feel less like treading water and instead trying to foreshadow and show what a world without Gods — the ultimate aim of the series — is going to be like, with all of the joys and sorrows of that new and frightening world.
So, we go back to the original book, The Outside and its opening with Yasira’s exploration of what is frankly forbidden technology, and how that launches her into eventually opposing Nemesis and the other Gods3. Acts of rebellion become acts of heresy, and the reactions to that, on all sides, is what makes the entire throughline of the trilogy possible. Not only does this propel Yasira, Tiv, Dr. Talirr and The Seven, but it also propels their antagonists as well. The angels would not be set on their divergent path from the Gods if not for Yasira’s incitement (even as it itself was set in motion by Dr. Talirr). From small seeds of action, great changes eventually can come. At cost, yes. But change, with all its good and bad faults, can happen. No society, no system must last forever.
And that brings us back and the whole thesis of the series running through here at the conclusion. The restrictions and constrictions and boundaries set by the Gods upon the humanity they control — are they in fact, a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Is their rule a net benefit? While Hoffmann, as mentioned before, clearly has an opinion on the cost-benefit analysis of the Gods and what they do and why, there is enough ambiguity in the world and its setup (and a lot unexplored) to make it a question that is worth having4. Will the world of the humans be better on the far end of the last page of this novel? I am not sure, and that is a space that I, in the end, like.
1The explicit “700 years ago” that these chapters get tagged with also partially answered a worldbuilding question I had since the beginning of the series that was never answered before: Just how far in the future IS the world of The Outside, anyway?
2Deiocracy is a neologism I’ve seen around here and there meaning rule directly by the Gods Themselves. While Theocracy in actual definition means that, in practice it means and is thought to mean rule by people representing God, rather than a God issuing commands directly to a populace.
3This book, especially in the 700-years-ago time period, makes it much clearer that Nemesis really is a first among equals, the primary God of the Pantheon created, or at least is the most powerful, and has the most godly fingers in various pies.
4Numerous references suggest themselves, such as the ending to the Star Trek episode “The Apple” where the destruction of a supercomputer who is a God to its people is played off mostly for laughs by the crew (except Spock who has a nuanced take on the matter). But, if you stop and think about it, Kirk has caused a whole lot of unintended consequences and perhaps suffering for the former children of Vaal.
