![]() ![]() Political philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, began to think of government as emerging from the needs and wants of the people rather than being imposed upon them. ![]() It was an act that sent shockwaves throughout Europe, and prompted a radical reexamination of the relationship between governed and government. The Enlightenment can, perhaps, trace its origins back to that chilly morning at the end of January 1649, when the crowds on Whitehall witnessed the execution of the English king. The aspiration, made explicit within a text which makes constant reference to Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, and De Sade, is to imagine a world shaped and ruled by the ideals of the French Enlightenment. That, perhaps inevitably, it fails in this ambition leaves a book that is engaging, entertaining, and interesting, but that contains too many confusions and contradictions to be fully satisfying. Had Too Like the Lightning lived up to its aspirations, it would have been one of the most significant works of contemporary science fiction. ![]()
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