Waking Hell

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Waking Hell
Al Robertson
Gollancz, 27 October 2016
PB, 336pp
I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy via Netgalley

This is a return to the universe of Station, which Robertson introduced in Crashing Heaven last year.

Hundreds or thousands of years in the future, the Earth has been ruined by conflict and what's left of humanity shelters in Station, a giant habitat in orbit, ruled over the "gods" - AI entities which operate on strictly corporate lines.

Crashing Heaven described how the Totality - a collective of rogue AIs which had freed themselves from the gods and defeated them in war - came to an accord with Station, saving it from internal tyranny.

Waking Hell takes up the story soon after. We don't see much of the previous viewpoint characters (I was disappointed not to get more of Hugo Fist - though apparently he now has a popular chatshow) - instead this story is about Leila. Leila is already dead and has been resurrected as a "fetch", an AI given substance by Station's ubiquitous "weave" of processors and projectors, which modifies the reality of the place (depending on one's ability to pay). She suffered in the Blood and Flesh plague and has no desire to return to the Coffin Drives, but lives instead with her brother, geeky Dieter.

The story really gets moving after Dieter receives a very nasty artifact from the past and disappears from Station. he turns out to have been well insured - but Leila knows he wasn't and sets out to find him, against all good advice. Something is off. Who are the repellent "pressure men" who are hanging around? What is Deodatus? Why is the Totality interested?

I really liked Leila, she's a clever and determined character who would do anything to save her brother and she very much drives events, giving this book a very different feel than the noirish Crashing Heaven - although she has some support from the mysterious Caretaker (more Caretaker please!) and a Totality fraud investigator. She is also self confident and as resentful of attempts by friends to "look after" her as she is of Deodatus's trying to swat her away like a fly.

The book also has a somewhat simpler, more quest based plot than Crashing Heaven: save Dieter, stop Deodatus. (despite some red herrings).

When it comes to the setting you need, I think, to go with the flow to a degree. The idea of a fetch depends on there being processing power, comms and hardware to host the entity. Similarly the reality of Station (and of some of the other locations in this book) has to be created. As Roberston leads us on a frenzied dance though the forgotten corners of Station and beyond, it becomes difficult at times to remember what is "real" - whether we are in a physical "place" or a virtual construct - and therefore to know what may reasonably happen next.

As I said, you have to go with the flow. But what a flow it is. It's a conspiracy thriller. There is a true "war in Heaven". There are walking cities, and the ruins of human civilization, sketched poignantly as Leila pursues her brother. Most of all, the book transcends the setting of the previous story, revealing the original purpose and perhaps the ultimate origin of Station.

I don't know if Robertson has any plans for further Station books but if he has, I'll be reading them.

Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson

Crashing Heaven
Al Roberstons
Gollancz, 2015
HB, 359 pp

I'm grateful to Gollancz for sending me a copy of the book to review.

At first sight, grimy, jaded detective noir and far future, virtual-this, AI-that, seemed to me unlikely as common elements in a novel. However Robertson pulls off the combination with great aplomb, building a fascinating and rich world along the way (a world I want to read more about, too).

Jack Forster is home from the war, with his "puppet". Hugo Fist is a weapon, a militarised piece of software designed to unravel and kill the rogue AIs of the Totality. He is hosted on hardware fused to Jack's nervous system - but Jack's licence to Hugo is running out and when it does, Hugo will be entitled to seize control of Jack's body, killing him for ever. There won't even be anything of Jack stored on the Coffin Servers...

This a world of fantastic imagination, a truly chilling society. There are sentient corporations, which call themselves gods as they "guide" and "protect" a dependent humanity. There is the all pervasive virtual reality of the Weave, masking the plastic reality of Station, an orbital habitat where the remnants of humanity live. It's a world where everything is bought and sold: kids in a school have to stop playing their game because it can't afford the licence fees for more than a few minutes a day. Food loses its savour when the terms of the contract say it will. The dead - or AI simulacra of them - are brought back for the comfort of the living, before being despatched again to the Coffin Servers.

Amidst all this, Jack, who just wants a bit of peace before he dies, and Hugo, who just wants Jack's body left intact, are drawn back into an investigation he dropped seven years before, when his god fell and he, a cyber accountant and unlikely soldier, was shipped out to fight the Totality.

Robertson has fun with the usual tropes of the hard boiled PI: rain lashed streets, deadly dames, sleazy nightspots - and it's a mark of how utterly convincing his writing is that all of this makes sense and works, despite being set on a space station orbiting a ravaged and war stricken Earth (We never hear what happened on Earth - I hope Robertson follows this up with more books that tell us about that war, about the "gods", about the original of the Totality). The characters are perhaps less arresting, with Jack as the man-who-is-not-himself-mean, walking those streets, and the others either helpers or foes (though it's hard to tell which is which for most of the book).

An exception though is Hugo Fist, who is a magnificent creation, visually a wooden mannequin, ontologically a raging, foul mouthed swine whose mission is to destroy, programmed for hatred and revenge. His relationship with Jack is at the heart of the story: the two of them bicker and rage their way along, bound together, marching towards Jack's final doom, with Hugo gradually coming to realise how much he depends on his host.

I think that besides having more to tell us about this world, there must be more to learn about Hugo. In "Crashing heaven" we see him step in and control Jack when the latter is unconscious - Hugo's baby steps, literally learning to steer Jack's body and "be" him, are both funny and touching and I'd like to see him grow more.

Excellent SF, highly recommended.