C. J. Cherryh's best regarded books have been her two big novels, Downbelow Station and Cyteen, both of which won Hugo Awards. Twenty years later, she's come back to that universe with a third big novel set in the same universe—in fact, it's a sequel to Cyteen. These novels, and several shorter ones, are set in a future in which humanity has expanded through nearby solar systems, including Lalande 46650 and Tau Ceti. Cyteen, a planet of Lalande 46650, is the home of Union, a technologically advanced corporate state that has grown to become a great power; in reaction to this, and to the retreat of Earth, the large orbital colony of Downbelow, a planet of Tau Ceti, organized the Alliance, a mercantile republic organized for self-protection against Union and against Earth's former starfleet, now turned pirate. Regenesis comes back to Cyteen and to the internal politics of Union.

The most important of Union's technological advances are biological: rejuvenation drugs, cloning, and advanced educational techniques that amount virtually to programming the brain like a computer. Using this, its scientists have created the azi, mass-produced genetically human workers raised and educated in controlled environments. This will look very familiar to fans of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse: The azi are programmed not only with the skills they need to do their jobs, but with appropriate attitudes and ethics, and with a need to bond to their free human supervisors—and if necessary, they can be reprogrammed, a process in which their memories are erased. But unlike Whedon's Rossum Corporation, which operates secretively in a world much like our own, Union is an independent state whose entire culture is built on programmable workers. The azi in fact are Aristotle's ‘slaves by nature,’ not merely accepting external control but actively needing it, and less mentally flexible than free humans.

In Cyteen, one of Union’s greatest scientists, Ariane Emory, was murdered in a political conflict—and then recreated, via a clone deliberately raised in an environment as similar as possible to the original’s. The new Ariane Emory proved as brilliant as the original, and survived another deadly power struggle. This novel finds her, at age 18, being drawn into a further power struggle that grows to affect all of Union.

This book isn’t particularly about the struggle for freedom; one faction has outright despotic ambitions, but the other is in favor of a controlled society—just one that’s less abusive. A small faction wants to abolish azi slavery, but they seem to be regarded as lunatics; some of them have become terrorists. But the less authoritarian faction has one key political virtue: they have a constitution and regard it as essential to maintain its legal forms. And enough of the general population agrees to make an outright power grab untenable. This has obvious applicability to the recent history of the United States, but it also seems to recall the Roman Republic, with its elaborate legal rules, its government by a Senate recruited through elections, and its mixed population of citizens and slaves—and its rules for turning slaves into citizens, a process that also takes place in Union, many of whose citizens are descendants of azi.

And there are subtle parallels between the political and the psychological. As the constitutional power struggle goes on, several of the characters, including Ari, become involved in interventions in the programming of azi, made necessary partly by political events. Both processes require that everything be done in exactly the right sequence, step by step, taking care not to trigger a violent reaction that could destroy the azi being reprogrammed, or the government of Union. The parallels are striking, and more so because they’re more than simply parallel; they’re part of the same plot and both contribute to its climactic struggles.

I’m not actually a fan of Cherryh’s bigger books, for the most part; my favorites have been, on one hand, some of the smaller Alliance/Union novels, and on the other, the Chanur series, distantly tied to it, which I admire for its well portrayed aliens. But Regenesis was very satisfying to read: as tightly focused as The Pride of Chanur or Merchanter’s Luck, but larger in scope. The most nearly similar literary achievement I can think of in recent years was Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky, another story about conflict between a corporate state and a mercantile culture. Like Vinge, Cherryh is continuing to grow as a writer; her latest book is evidence of her growing literary power.