Voice of the Whirlwind

Voice of the Whirlwind is a science fiction novel by the American writer Walter Jon Williams, published in 1987 by Tor. It belongs with his earlier novel Hardwired and the later story Solip:System in the same future, though it stands on its own as a detective story told against that background.

Etienne Steward is a clone, what this future calls a beta. He comes awake with fifteen years missing, because the alpha he was copied from never renewed the recording, and the world he knew has moved on without him: the Orbital Policorp that employed him has broken up after a war over artifacts left by an alien species, and many of the people he remembers are dead.

The original Steward survived the war as a commander of reputation and afterwards joined humanity's alien diplomacy group. He has since been murdered, which is why his backup has been activated at all. The copy has to work out who killed the man whose memories and standing he inherited, and in the course of it he confronts what the alien influence has been quietly doing to human society around him. The result is a hard-boiled investigation in a cyberpunk setting.