Been a while since I've been back to this trilogy to finish it off. Here we go!
Gunn's first book in the Transcendental trilogy spent a lot of time describing a lot of alien races and their home planets. It was actually one of the main things I appreciated about the first book. In this third and final installment of the trilogy, Transformation, Gunn returns to that model by delving more deeply into the history and evolution of sentient life on the planets Riley and Asha visit while trying to discover the malevolent force making worlds fall silent. Again, it was one of the main things that kept me invested in this book as well.
It has been three years since the events of Transgalactic in which Riley and Asha returned to Earth with the Transcendental Machine and the Red Sphere ship. They have been working with a mad scientist to replication the machine, and it appears to be functioning the same as the original by making the users "better". Eventually they hear about the 'silent invasion' by some unknown alien force that is causing Federation planets to stop communicating with Fed Central. Riley and Asha already know that the Federation needs the machine in order to survive, transcend and evolve, so they decide to get involved with whatever is going on with the 'silent invasion'.
The Federation however, still bitter about the war with Earth, takes A LOT of convincing to even believe there is something to be done about the invasion, and OF COURSE, Riley and Asha, with their Red Sphere ship, insist they are the ones to go out investigating the galaxy to find out what is going on. As a trade off, Riley and Asha kind of con the Federation into using the replicated TM, touting it as an "instant comms device" that will allow them more constant communication. They, of course, do not tell them what it actually does, but there are a few on the Fed Council that do know, yet they also don't speak up because they also see the logic behind the Federation's need to 'transcend' in order to survive.
The basis of the Transcendental Machine in the novels is very similar to the transporter in Star Trek, except that in Gunn's narrative the stakes are explicit in that the person that comes out on the other side of the machine is 'better', not an 'exact' replica—their flaws are fixed. Sheldon Cooper has this same discussion in an episode of The Big Bang Theory regarding Star Trek. He is concerned that he, the original Sheldon, is destroyed and a different Sheldon is the one who appears on the other end of the transporter, and therefore would be hesitant to use the device. Riley and Asha have a similar conversation in Transformation about the TM but they explicitly know they are different and better on the other side. The same theoretical conclusion results with the use of either the Transcendental Machine or Star Trek's transporter: the person who enters is destroyed and then recreated; they are not the same, but with the TM, they are better. Star Trek's transporter results after use are a little vague on if that is the same outcome—are they 'better' or just the same re-created?
I know science fiction is typically about how humans will fare/do fare in the exploration of space, results of furthering science on earth, creating robots, first encounters with aliens, or a combination of all of the above. But, the one thing that annoyed me with Gunn's texts is how—even after all the time spent developing the alien races—it is still the humans that are the saviours of the galaxy. Like, I get it, but I think it would have been refreshing to have a little variance to mankind coming out on top for once.
Anyway, the alien invaders of the 'silent invasion' are located and turn out to just be a really sophisticated extra-galactic sentient AI that "just wants to help". Obviously, this is not going to fly because it doesn't understand the damage it is doing. This results in Asha discovering that her hypothesis about the Red Sphere ship is true: the ship is actually made up of the consciousness of the many of the TM makers, and it was actually designed to destroy this invader because the makers had encountered it before! So, maybe the humans aren't the defacto saviours in this case, but they still played a big part...
AND THEN THE BOOK JUST ENDS.
There is no wrap-up, no epilogue; just left open ended. They just get randomly rescued after sacrificing the Red Sphere to destroy the alien AI invasion. Like, what?! That's it?! So disappointing.
Otherwise, the Transcendental Machine trilogy was a decent sci-fi narrative. The highlight was the development of all the aliens and alien-world descriptions across all three books.
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