The first section, "Once Upon a Matter Crushed," was originally published as a novella in SF Age, in 1999. In this section Bruno is summoned by his Queen back to the inner Solar System to solve a problem with the Ring Collapsiter, a ring of collapsium which his rival Marlon Sykes is building around the Sun. This ring will allow faster than light travel and communications, improving on the current system of "faxes," by which people travel at light speed anywhere there is a receiving station, making copies of themselves, copies which retain their memories, and which also can be "edited" to correct internal problems. Thus, humans may have also become immortal.

This first section sets up the conflict that will be repeated in all three of the book's sections. Bruno is called in-system to solve a problem with the Ring Collapsiter that endangers the Sun, and hence all humanity. He needs to deal with Marlon Sykes' jealousy, with the technical problem causing the danger to the Sun, and with the human problem motivating someone to so endanger the Ring Collapsiter and the Sun. Thus, to some extent the three sections are a bit repetitive. In addition, McCarthy keeps on multiplying his weird scientific speculations, adding in such ideas as "true vacuum," elimination of inertia, electromagnetic grapples, and so on. All this is, on the one hand, pretty fun, but on the other hand not wholly believable. It's not so much the science itself that is unbelievable -- sure, it's all speculative, and probably mostly not very likely to be true, but that's all part of the game, and all the weird stuff is pretty well explained in a series of appendices. Rather, Bruno's Tom Swift-like ability to whip up new gadgets based on the new science in quick time becomes somewhat implausible.

That said, given the rather light tone of the whole book (albeit a tone which is at odds with any thought for the millions of innocents who die), it all ends up being quite entertaining. The science is larger-than-life, and so are the characters. Neither is quite believable in a realistic fashion, but both are acceptable within the conventions of this book. It's baroque, super-scientific, stuff: kind of like bad 30s pulp SF rewritten to be a pretty good new millennium take on those old tropes. It's not great SF, but it's good fun, and full of neat and wild ideas.