"I saw the John Carpenter film The Thing for the first time recently. That wasn't one of the VHS tapes they gave us, back then, to watch on the base. For obvious reasons. That's not what it was like for me at all. That doesn't capture it at all. They, or it, or whatever, were not thing-y. They are inhuman. But this is only my dream of them, I think."
Two men, alone together on an Antarctic research base. A killer. A sceptic. Alone for months on end. Separated by what they believe. Joined together by Fermi's Paradox. Are we, indeed, alone in the Universe? Could it be that we are not alone but that we cannot know it? Could we deal with the horror of either answer? Crossing the boundaries of time and space, the many threads of The Thing Itself weave both a terrifying adventure and a mind-blowing philosophical conundrum, reaffirming Adam Roberts' unique place in the SF canon.
***
At an Antarctic research station in the 1980s, two men at their end of their respective tethers, alone in this lovely if unlovable land but for one another and a copy of Emmanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, see something that cannot conceivably be:
There was a hint of—I'm going to say, claws, jaws, a clamping something. A maw. Not a tentacle, nothing so defined. Nor was it a darkness. It made a low, thrumming, chiming noise, like a muffled bell sounding underground, ding-ding, ding-ding. But this was not a sound-wave sort of sound. This was not a propagating expanding sphere of agitated air particles. It was a pulse in the mind. It was a shudder of the soul. (pp.25-26)
Sound familiar? Well, it is—for a fraction of a chapter.
Would you be surprised if I were to tell you that The Thing Itself is not—not even nearly—what it appears to be? If you answered yes to that question, I'd be given to guess you've never read an Adam Roberts novel. If you had, you'd know that this is not an author who likes to linger on any one thing for long, so though the first chapter has a handful of callbacks to John Carpenter's tentacular classic, the second is a short travelogue of sorts set in Germany almost a century earlier.
"Let me pick the threads of this story up again, rearrange the letters into a new form," (p.48) the next bit begins—which sentence, I'll confess, had me panicking preemptively at the prospect of a new narrative in every chapter. But although Roberts does repeatedly rewrite the rules of the tale he's telling, The Thing Itself is an easier and more coherent read than it appears.
It began when animal rights activists inserted AI chips in the brains of animals. The plan was to give animals speech. After all, if animals can talk we are bound to treat them more like us. A creature that can argue the case for its own intelligence, its own rights, is a much harder creature to use, to kill, surely. But where does artificial intelligence end and the animal begin? With speech and self-awareness, have these canny animals also gained souls? Would we choose to believe them if they told us they had? And would they forgive us?
***
Reading Adam Roberts is like participating in a literary lucky dip. It's a bit of a gamble, granted, but every one's a winner, and all of the prizes on offer are awesome.
Different sorts of awesome, I dare say. Always smart, and ever so sharp, but sometimes you get something scathing, and sometimes something sweet. Sometimes his stories are obscenely serious; sometimes they're ridiculously silly. Bête represents the best of both worlds—the coming together of all the aspects of Adam Roberts: the author, the professor and the satirist, alongside a number of others.
His fifteenth full-length fiction in fifteen years—including neither his punsome parodies nor his several collections—is a book about the rise of animals with intelligence to match man's, and it begins with a cutting conversation between a cattle farmer and the cow he had thought to slaughter.
"Won't you at least Turing-test me?" (p.11) it pleads as the bolt-gun is pressed against its head. One imagines many would, in that moment—indeed, making this beast into meat will be a matter of murder within weeks—but Graham Penhaligon is... somewhat set in his ways, shall we say. Also: a bit of a bastard. He pulls the trigger, a few pages later, in part because the cow—a farm animal made canny by activists with access to AI augmentations—makes the mistake of quoting a Morrissey song.
You dislike me for killing it. You're no vegetarian, though, hypocrite, reader, my image. My friend. You don't object to the killing as such. You object to my manner. When hunter-gatherers get angry it is hot and swift. When farmers get angry it is bone-deep and slow. (p.16)
And Graham, I'm afraid, has "spent decades perfecting anger as [his] being-in-the-world" (p.105)—so sayeth Cincinnatus the cat, a bête beloved by the cancer-ridden character our former farmer falls for in the novel's next section, which takes place fully five years after its provocative prologue. Brief and bleak as Graham's relationship with Anne is, it goes a long way toward humanising Roberts' immediately unappealing lead: a miserable man, as mean as he is maudlin, however he does, as it happens, have a heart.
With the British Genre Fiction Focus on hiatus over the holidays, and most of the kids I teach in real life relaxing anywhere other than the education centre that employs me, I've had a fair bit of time to play with, lately. I don't want to tell you yet what I've been doing with it yet—I just don't want to jinx the thing before it's finished—but suffice to say this project has been as much of a time-suck as the columns I curate for Tor.com.
Long story short, I've been neglecting my inbox for a bit, so I spent a few hours picking through it this morning, in the course of which I came across a recent press release from the Institute of Art and Ideas, informing me of an event in which Jasper Fforde and Adam Robots—I mean, ah, Roberts—joined forces with Leaving Las Vegas director Mike Figgis to ask and answer questions about the imagination.
This is the pitch:
We believe reason is our best tool for acquiring true knowledge of the world. But Picasso said "art is a lie that tells the truth," and many others before him have made similar claims. Are they right? Can imagination lead us to truths hidden from the rational mind, or is this romantic hogwash?
And this is the video:
It's worth a watch.
If the embed above isn't working... well. That'd be because Blogger is being a bother. But what can it do to disrupt an old-fashioned link like this?
Now I'll be knee-deep in seekrits for the foreseeable, but I do solemnly swear to keep a closer eye on my inbox going forward, so if anyone needs me, that's how to make the magic happen.
It is 1958 and France's first nuclear submarine, Plongeur, leaves port for the first of its sea trials. On board, gathered together for the first time, one of the navy's most experienced captains and a tiny skeleton crew of sailors, engineers and scientists.
The Plongeur makes her first dive and goes down, and down and down... Out of control, the submarine plummets to a depth where the pressure will crush her hull, killing everyone on board, and beyond.
The pressure builds, the hull protests, the crew prepare for death, the boat reaches the bottom of the sea and finds... nothing.
Her final dive continues, the pressure begins to relent, but the depth gauge is useless. They have gone miles down. Hundreds of miles, thousands...
And so it goes on. And on board the crew succumb to madness, betrayal, religious mania and murder. Has the Plongeur left the limits of our world and gone elsewhere?
***
The Plongeur was a first for France: "an experimental vessel," verily, "powered by a new design of atomic pile, and boasting a number of innovative design features. Its very existence was a national top secret. Accordingly, its melancholy fate went entirely unreported." (p.2) Or it did till today, half a century since its mysterious disappearance. Now, though, its story can be told. And who better than Adam Roberts to do the reporting?
West of the continental shelf, the skeleton crew of the Plongeur—the plunger, if you must—set about stress testing what was then a particularly progressive vessel. In the process, its engineers expect to identify some small problems; instead, the submarine simply sinks.
Something has obviously gone catastrophically wrong, and as the Plongeur is drawn inexorably towards the ocean floor, a collision with which is apt to collapse it—though by that depth the immense water pressure will have long since spirited away the several souls aboard—its crew of courageous countrymen prepare themselves for the inevitable: the end.
But the end did not come. Instead, and gradually, the shaking calmed, and the deep buzz of vibration quietened. It was a very long drawn out diminuendo, the noise and the shaking withdrawing itself incrementally until both had almost disappeared. Impossible to believe that the implacable wrath of the ocean was diminishing—it was against all the laws of physics. (p.28)
Unbelievably, this is but the beginning of the Plongeur's story: the end is set in what seems to be a different dimension, and it's years ahead yet.
"I like the idea of writing at least one thing in all the myriad sub-genres and sub-sub-genres of SF — so the the first story here is a robot story, the second a story about immortality, the third a time-travel story, the fourth religious SF, the fifth philosophical SF, the sixth an exercise in classic Golden Age SF, the seventh a time-travel story, the eighth a story of SFnal genetics... but, look, this list is getting wearisome. "They're all different (apart from the one which isn't; you can work out which one I mean yourself). Even the ways in which they differ differs. So in fact the first story is an Adam-and-Eve tale, the second is a prison story, the third a tale of scientific hubris, the fourth military SF and so on. You'll see what I mean." — A. R. Gathered together here for the first time are 24 superb and varied glances into and out of the world of science fiction. Adam Robots is the first collection of short stories published in the UK from one of the genre's most exciting writers.
***
The title of the first major collection of short stories by the academic, critic and satirist Adam Roberts tells us almost everything we need to know about Adam Robots.
It's a joke, of course: a suggestive enmeshing of two created creatures delivered with a wink and a nod, if not a jarring slap across the back. "Adam" is either Adam Roberts the author, or Adam the first man — according to Christian theology, obviously — whilst "Robots" refers to the thinking things which feature in many of Roberts' shorts; most notably the titular tale, which happens to take place in a reconfigured Eden, and revolve around its own forbidden fruit.
The latter term could also be said to represent all of the twenty four stories, short or not, brought together in this exceedingly clever collection. For what are each of these if not machines — i.e. "apparatus using mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task" — capable of carrying out a series of complex tasks?
Be it a juxtaposition of the created man and the machines he creates or of the storyteller and the stories he tells, one way or the other, Adam Robots is a play on words. A pun! But is it funny?
"The person laughed at this. Laughter. See also: chuckles, clucking, percussive exhalations iterated. See also: tears, hiccoughs, car-alarm. Click, click." (p.3)
Well, it is, and it isn't. It is in the moment of many of these frequently fleeting fictions, when the reader realises what Roberts is about; what this or that idea is inspired by, what well-worn trope he's tipping his hat at. Yet it isn't when one grasps that the cost of this canniness is often character and narrative, the very building blocks of story as we know it.
The author acknowledges as much in his page-long preface. "Some of the pieces in this collection reflect the usual forms and rituals of 'short storytelling'; but quite a few don't. Textus disrespectus." (p.1) And that's the best explanation you're going to get.
Roberts also begins a list of the multitudinous ways the many and various tales which follow could potentially be read in this amusing introduction — "the first story here is 'a robot story'; the second a story about immortality, the third a time-travel story, the fourth religious SF," (p.1) and so on — before admitting how "wearisome" a business this is, and letting the stories speak for themselves. Inasmuch as they can be seen to... though some can't, or don't, or won't.
In any event, I'm going to take a different tack in this article. Rather than touching on each and every one of Adam Robots' twenty-four stories, I'll discuss a couple that I loved, and a couple that I loved less — like the closing story, 'Me:topia.'
The tale of four neanderthal astronauts who crash-land on a circular celestial body resembling "the map of Europe rendered in some impossible geographic form of photographic-negative," 'Me:topia' differs from Adam Robots' most disappointing shorts in that it has what they in large part lack: a plot, plus characters to carry us through it; characters I dare say we come to care about. Our protagonist, Vins, strikes out from the wreckage of his shattered shuttle to discover the nature of the strange, man-made place he has made landfall upon. In so doing, he attracts the attention of the space-coin's creator, who is less than pleased that his sanctuary has been trespassed upon. Vins proceeds to seek out the companions he had abandoned in order to alert them to this danger.
And then?
And then, 'Me:topia' simply ends, by way of an abrupt interruption courtesy the tale's unnamed narrator, who essentially says than what happens after that doesn't matter. Instead of resolving any of the elements we've become interested in, the narrator deigns to discuss the sunrise. "The light, the translucence of matter, the inflection of the photons, the grass singing. That's where it's at." (p.388) The end takes the shape of a playout groove as cruel as it is unusual.
I'm sure all this is in service of something significant that I'm simply missing, but whatever Roberts' point, 'Me:topia' left me glad that Adam Robots was over as opposed to wanting more.
That said, I certainly don't regret reading it. Some of the science fiction collected herein is stunning, as essential as it is eclectic, but perhaps an equal quantity of it can be summarised thusly: here's an idea. Isn't it interesting? Next! "What is not always a question that gets answered. Nor is why." (p.310)
Roberts is to my mind a much more satisfying author in the long form, where he's beholden to the same building blocks he's so cavalier about here, so it's no surprise that my favourite stories from Adam Robots were longer, largely, than those I liked least. 'Thrownness' a terrific riff on Groundhog Day in which a perfectly decent, albeit temporarily displaced human being finds himself behaving more and more badly when he realises that nothing he does has any measurable consequence. The novelette 'Anticopernicus' chronicles the first contact between humankind and the so-called Cygnics through the luckless lens of Ange Mlinko, an anti-social astronaut overlooked for the very visible mission mounted to meet these beings.
These are superlative stories both, blending the incredible conceptual breakthroughs Roberts draws attention to elsewhere — in this instance regarding the multiverse and Einstein's discarded dark energy respectively — with adeptly-drawn characters and enough good old-fashioned narrative to manufacture measurable emotional investment in addition to the at best intellectual interest with which I responded to a number of others, like 'ReMorse®,' 'The Chrome Chromosome' and 'Godbombing'; fragmentary narratives which struggle to strike what is to my mind the right balance between playful experimentation and outright obscurity.
As best-in-class sf stories, 'Thrownness' and 'Anticopernicus' are far from alone in Adam Robots — the very finest "actually seemed to vibrate with joy, a pure, high, warbly sound like a finger running round the lip of a wine-glass" (p.125) — but there are as many of the other sort of short in this difficult, if intermittently excellent (and certainly representative) collection.
***
Adam Robots
by Adam Roberts
UK Publication: January 2013, Gollancz
US Publication: September 2013, Gollancz
It was only when I came to wonder which forthcoming books to blog about for my contribution to Smugglivus that I realised I had no notion whether or not there'd be new novels from some of my favourite authors.
China Mieville's minions have been frustratingly quiet since the release of Railsea, say. As have Orbit regarding the great K. J. Parker. Can we look forward to new books from either of the above in 2013?
Don't look at me! I haven't the foggiest, I'm afraid.
What I do know - and credit where it's due: I came across this nugget of news via Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews - is that Adam Roberts, esteemed author of Yellow Blue Tibia, By Light Alone and Jack Glass (which I'm currently considering for Top of the Scots 2012) will indeed have a new novel out in the coming year.
It's called Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea, and we already have cover art:
And a blurb to boot!
"It is 1955. Funded, in part, by a reclusive Swiss millionaire and working - it is claimed - from Nemo's actual blueprints discovered in India, the French Navy build a replica Nautilus. Crewed with sailors and scientists, and commanded by the short-tempered Captain Mason, it is launched in great secrecy from Bayonne. Almost as soon as it is underwater, however, and having passed beyond the Continental Shelf, an accident (or sabotage!) sends it plummeting towards the ocean floor. The crew desperately attempt repairs as the pressure builds, threatening to crush the entire craft. But then something very strange happens: despite the fact that they are still descending, the pressure equalises.
"The descent continues for days; soon passing the 5000m depth that ought to mark the bottom of the ocean. As days turn to weeks, the mystery of their plight only grows deeper: for they pass hundreds and soon thousands kilometres of 'depth' with no ill effects. Other constraints press upon them: particularly the need to find food, and conserve fuel. Pressures amongst the all-male crew intensify as well, approaching breaking point as weeks pass, and the depth becomes measurable in millions of kilometres. Are they dead, trapped in an eternal descent to Hell? Have they passed through some portal into a realm of infinite water? Or have they somehow stumbled upon - or been deliberately lead to, via the mysterious Indian blueprint - some truth about the world too profound even to be measured in trillions?
"Then, when they think all hope is lost, and as they approach the trillionth kilometre of depth, they see light below them..."
Doesn't that sound fantastic?
Gollancz are on track to publish Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea in October 2013 — a little later than usual vis-a-vis the pattern Adam Roberts has established. But the best things in life take time, and this book looks stupidly cool.
Or is that just me and my insatiable appetite for aquatic survival narratives?
Jack Glass is the murderer. That, at least, is quite transparent.
He has sliced a lethal swathe through known space. He is without pity or scruple. He is a killer.
Were the authorities ever to discover that it was actually Jack Glass that they had detained on a remote prison asteroid they would return and kill him immediately. And they will discover it. The murderer will have to escape. And that, of course, is impossible.
From a tiny asteroid in the far reaches of space, to a comfortable country house, to a sealed orbital habitat, Adam Roberts takes us on a spellbinding journey through a future that challenges all our notions of crime, punishment and freedom.
We know whodunnit. Now we must learn how and why.
***
When hours into the uncomfortably compelling story of survival in the extremes of space with which this masterful murder mystery begins, it dawns on you that you've been tricked into sympathising hook, line and sinker with a sociopathic serial killer, in that moment you know: you're in for something special. Adam Roberts' unabashedly smart new narrative, Jack Glass, is absolutely that. Incredibly, it's a whodunit so sure of itself that we're told who done it up front... if not how or why, or even what "it" is (or was) in one instance.
But before (and after) we get ahead of ourselves — readers, meet the monster:
“The one, the only Jack Glass: detective, teacher, protector and murderer, and individual gifted with extraordinary interpretive powers when it comes to murder because he was so well acquainted with murder. A quantity of blood is spilled in this story, I'm sorry to say; and a good many people die; and there is some politics too. There is danger and fear. Accordingly I have told his tale in the form of a murder mystery; or to be more precise (and at all costs we must be precise) three, connected murder mysteries.
“But I intend to play fair with you, reader, right from the start, or I'm no true Watson. So let me tell everything now, at the beginning, before the story gets going.
“One of these mysteries is a prison story. One is a regular whodunit. One is a locked-room mystery. I can't promise that they're necessarily presented to you in that order; but it should be easy for you to work out which is which, and to sort them out accordingly. Unless you find that each of them is all three at once, in which case I'm not sure I can help you.
“In each case the murderer is the same individual — of course, Jack Glass himself. How could it be otherwise?” (pp.1-2)
How indeed.
Well, as I said a second ago, the how's half the fun; a key piece of the puzzle, alongside the unpacking of the what and the why, the unpicking of the where and the when. At some stage, all of these "wh" words come into play... excepting the obvious, the who of this howdunnit, because obviously Jack did it, didn't he?
Actually, Jack Glass isn't as simple as that, especially when it appears to be. Strictly speaking. All in the spirit of this most magnificent thing, then!
As our as-yet unnamed narrator acknowledges, Roberts' latest greatness is in fact a sequence of three intertwined tales, each of which revolves around a death. In "In the Box," seven convicted criminals are, ingeniously I might add, imprisoned by a canny contractor on a tiny asteroid. It will be eleven years before anyone comes to get them, and in the interim, they can either work together, or die apart.
They've been furnished with a sparse selection of terraforming tools, including an air scrubber, a small space heater, several digging implements, and some lovely mould spores for supper. If they dedicate themselves to the task, the prisoners might be able to eke out the time till their release in some modicum of comfort by excavating a home for themselves — and in so doing creating valuable real estate for the Gongsi to sell at the end of their sentences. Inevitably, however, power struggles occur from the offing, and finally, like sunlight after a long night, death takes its terrible toll. As "In the Box" approaches its irrevocable ending - though the whole book, in truth, has hardly begun - sudden, shocking, even sickening violence is visited upon these prisoners.
And we all know who's responsible.
(Or are taking too much on trust?)
Certainly, we are rather less convinced of our killer's culpability in the next narrative. "The FTL Murders" is the longest of Jack Glass' three parts, and - though the particulars differ - "The Impossible Gun" follows hot on its heels, thus we can discuss them as one, avoiding spoilers.
Our protagonist in this instance, if not necessarily our narrator - whose identity, incidentally, is among the simplest and most satisfying mysteries of Roberts new' novel - our protagonist, in any event, is Diana Argent. Just shy of sweet sixteen when we meet, she becomes obsessed by the seemingly inexplicable slaying of a servant just feet from her and her sister's secret retreat on Earth: the better to keep their bones finely honed, but also because the girls stand to inherit the solar system, so powerful and ambitious are their MOHmies... which is to say their parents, to a point.
Then, essentially the second this awful event is settled, another man is massacred in perilous proximity to Diana and her companion. And on this occasion, the circumstances - recorded as plain as day for any and all parties to examine - truly beggar belief.
Death, then, is omnipresent in Jack Glass, yet it is far from a bleak piece. On the contrary, at times, Roberts' prose and tone is blindingly bright, so don't let some presumption of doom and gloom dissuade you from this fantastically imagined and remarkably wrought trinity of science fiction, murder and mystery. As one of our major players puts it:
"Individually speaking, death is always a rupture, a violence. But taking a total view, death is the bell curve upon which the cosmos is balanced. Without it, nothing would work, everything would collapse, clogged and stagnant. Death is flow. It is the necessary lubrication of universal motion. It is, in itself, neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy." (p.337)
In a sense, reading Jack Glass is like going back to a book you remember very well. After all, we already know the ending. The solution to this puzzle is, fittingly, predictable. But that gets to the heart of what makes Robert's novel so impressive, for the less time we spend humming and hawing over the name and nature of the killer, the more there is to revel in the pure pleasure of the overarching enigma. Why fixate on the destination, anyway, when the journey is so sublimely satisfying in and of and outwith itself? It's freeing, even.
Doubly incredible, then, that though we are given definitive answers to the customary questions at the outset, Jack Glass keeps one guessing till the last second. Perfectly plotted, winningly worded, and as rewarding, despite everything, as anything you’re apt to read this year, this trifecta of golden age goodness is yet another example of Adam Roberts' tremendous talents. Bravo!
So I did my best to make it last - here's to two weeks of Halloween every year - but October, alas... October's over.
And you all know what that means, don't you? It's November now. Which is to say - there's no getting around it - the month before December is officially upon us, and in December I have to tell you all which of the year's new books were in my humble opinion the best of the bunch.
That means I've a whole heck of a lot of catching up to do, and I began, not least because I'd heard such great things about it, with the new Adam Roberts. That's the same Adam Roberts who wrote New Model Army, as challenging a novel as it was rewarding, which I read and reviewed here on TSS in early 2010.
By Light Alone was... well, brilliant. Brilliant in such a way as to move me to think about all sorts of things differently. For instance history:
"Historians have hitherto worked from the premise that poverty is not as significant as wealth. But they don't mean that. What they mean is that poverty does not make for diverting narratives the way wealth does. They mean young people would rather watch a book with a sexy actress representing Anne Boleyn in a splendid dress, than watch a book about ill-clad peasants grubbing in the dirt. They mean poverty is dreary. And so it is! They mean that poverty is boring. And so it is! So, only understand this: historians look to history for entertainment, not for the truth. They go to be diverted and titillated, not to see how things really are. History [...] is like a study of a mighty forest of fir trees that only ever talks about some primroses growing on the extreme edge. History that talks about rich people is a lie. Taken as a whole, mankind has never been rich." (p.172)
A fascinating way of thinking about history that I'm afraid to say simply hadn't occurred to me before I began By Light Alone. Admittedly I've never been one to pay history much mind - in my experience, what is is difficult enough to pick a path through, never mind what was as well - but now that there's this whole other side to it? Now you never know.
Anyway, if ever I needed reminding, this - this right here - is why I read. To wit, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the latest to come from the great and terrible Adam Roberts figured into Top of the Scots somehow, come the reckoning.
For the time being, it just so happens that my review of By Light Alone went up yesterday as a guest post on the inimitable SF Signal. Do click on through to read the thing; I'm really rather pleased with how it turned out.
Next up on this Johnny come lately journey through some of the year's most overlooked (by me) books: I expect either The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht or The Wise Man's Fear by he of the beard. And I know which of the pair I'd rather read. On the other hand, I have a sneaking suspicion you guys would rather hear what I have (or have not) to say about the other one. Correct me if I'm wrong.
That sound you hear? Or rather, the sound you don't; the absence, let us say, of the one-man hubbub-band you'll find here on The Speculative Scotsman most days - well. It isn't radio silence. It's the sound of me being published.
Can I hear a hell yeah? :D
Now the canny amongst you may have spotted my review of The Way of Kings already. It went up yesterday, over at Strange Horizons, an online magazine I've been reading for years. Years! The notion that one day the esteemed editors might see fit to publish a review of mine alongside criticism from the likes of Yellow Blue Tibia author Adam Roberts and fiction from (this week alone) Lavie Tidhar... well, it was an idle one at best.
But there I am, right there on the front page of Strange Horizons, and damn it all, I couldn't be happier. So it's a pleasure to break the news to those of you who've been tolerating my burbling since I kicked TSS off on new year's day, eight months ago. The latecomers, too. I couldn't - I wouldn't - have thought to submit a thing to professional forum I hold in such high regard (and I'm hardly alone in that) were it not for your support. So thank you.
Now then. Clicky here, if you will, and see what I had to say about Brandon Sanderson's designs on The Wheel of Time. You might need snacks; it's a long 'un.
"A giant has brought war to England's heartland. He stalks across the fields and towns to the west of London. The British army has tried to destroy him but each time he has beaten them. When they bring in air support and deploy heavy weapons he simply melts away, only to form again somewhere else and deliver another devastating blow. He is called Pantegral. And he is you and me.
Pantegral is a New Model Army. A giant whose thoughts flow through countless wireless communications, whose intelligence comes from the internet and real-time camera updates, whose mind is made up of thousands of minds, each deciding what Pantegral will choose to do.
And Pantegral has chosen the joy of the fight. His fury is truly democratic.
***
One of my particular quirks is that when reading a novel with the intent of reviewing it, I keep a few packets of Post-It Note page markers at the ready. When I arrive at a passage or a phrase that I feel encapsulates some vital aspect of whatever narrative I'm in the grips of, I highlight it with one of these multi-coloured sticky plastic slices so that I might return to it come the time I sit down to organise my thoughts and impressions into a coherent argument. Usually, there'll be no more than four or five of these markers in any given novel, and they're often clumped together towards the mid-point and beyond, when I begin to see the path and purpose of a narrative.
With New Model Army, a modest novel by physical proportions - less than 300 pages from beginning to end, and set, at that, in large typescript - I hadn't been reading for more than an hour and my packet of sky-blue page markers ran out. Dutifully, I cracked open another colour - neon green - finding them no less in demand as I progressed. And so it was that, by the time I'd turned the last page of multiple Arthur C. Clarke award-nominated Brit author Adam Robert's latest, and very likely greatest, the edge of New Model Army was a rainbow frill of sticky plastic like the hindquarters of some sub-tropical creature in heat.
This is a novel of ideas, great and small - a line of shots of concentrated speculation - and though many of its myriad concepts are carefully constructed studies in the complexity of human enterprise, that at the core of New Model Army can be iterated simply enough. War has long been an institution unto itself, an endless, self-propagating spiral of destruction for destruction's own sake, but in a future not too far from our own, a new sort of soldier has arisen from the ashes of the pyres that conflicts through the ages have lit. These men and women are soldiers who "exist to fight, because we are soldiers and that's what we do"; soldiers, such as our protagonist and narrator Tony Block, who fight not for ideals or oil or the bottom-dollar, but "for our army because it's home."
They are New Model Armies, spontaneous, mercenary giants of the battlefield; groups of independent citizens who believe the Regular army, "an army of slaves," are going about warfare the wrong way, stubbornly stuck in a rut of hierarchy and tradition. The NMAs are founded on a radical species of democracy, governed by all and none in the same pivotal instant. And when Scotland, which "had once sold oil on the world market but was now reduced to that international dole, tourist income, supplemented by sales of a type of sulfur-coloured alcohol," contracts Pantegral to reclaim from the English the country's independence, the so-called Midlothian mafia go to war against their own.
The Regular army are of course no match for the here-today, gone-tomorrow force of the NMA, and soon the UK, and then all of Europe, are in the grip of pure democracy. But democracies are nothing without individuals, and so it is from the perspective of one such sort that we learn of the Battle of Basingstoke and the other guerilla campaigns Pantegral wage across the heartland of England. Tony's experiences form the larger part of the narrative of New Model Army, and though he is quick to dismiss his part - the novel itself begins with his declaration that "I am not the hero of this story" - it is through his eyes that we come to frame the revolution. In point of fact, it is Tony, and not the NMA he is a part of, that is haunted by the spectre of a dead child he glimpses in the conflict's first real skirmish: a boy with a key embedded in his forehead. The key, "an old-style piece of ironmongery: a metal ring and shaft at the end of which was fused an abbreviated row of metal tetris blocks," is but one instance of the penetrating imagery that serves to make a more relatable affair of the otherwise grand concerns of New Model Army.
The cutting humour throughout functions similarly, as well as anthropomorphising the "body militic" that is Pantegral. Of the British police force, Roberts asserts that they "are supposed to enforce the law using, as I understand it, the moral force of their example and personality, as well as a piece of wooden broomhandle," while he fashions an unforgettable allegory taking to task the part love plays in human existence: "I enjoy eating beefsteaks, and because beefsteaks serve the useful purpose of keeping me alive, I therefore declared the universe to be beefsteak, God a beefsteak, and beefsteak the universal core value of everything." Furthermore, New Model Army is self-aware speculative fiction, grounded in a cultural consciousness we can share and shot full of disparate references ranging from The Terminator to Tolkein and The Cranberries. Such touches leave the distance between our world and the world whose axis Pantegral helps to invert that much closer.
At times, New Model Army is a challenging novel, but rise to the task and you'll find it a revelatory one. A short, sharp shock of a narrative: masterfully composed, rich in ideas and dangerously daring. Adam Roberts is truly a giant of British speculative fiction. From Yellow Blue Tibia to this, one can only wonder, breathlessly, what glorious horrors the man might enact upon us next.
