Review - By the Pricking of her Thumb by Adam Roberts

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By the Pricking of her Thumb
Adam Roberts
Gollancz, 4 September 2018
HB, 260pp

I'm grateful to Gollancz for an advance copy of this book.

This review first appeared on the Shiny New Books blog here.

NB there is a potential mild spoiler below - I will flag it up when it gets close.

Roberts seems to have been very busy lately so I'm glad he managed to include a return to the world of The Real-Town Murders, one of my favourite books of 2017. R!-Town is a futuristic version of Reading (the town on the Thames, not the bookish activity) though the futuristicness is less embodied in what the town's like, but in the fact that almost no-one is around and about: all those who can spend their time hooked up to The Shine, an immersive virtual reality where lives are conducted while bodies gently decay, or at best, are exercised automatically by AI driven exoskeletons.

R!-Town is home to Alma, a down-at-heel PI, and to her partner Marguerite. Housebound by illness, Marguerite operates as part Watson, reporting Alma's cases, and part Mycroft, making links and connections that Alma can't. The connection between the two women is well, and gently, done - the strength of their love for one another conveyed in what they don't say, what they don't - can't - do. Marguerite's illness is a designer smart malady which strikes every 4 hours and 4 minutes with a mutated threat, requiring Alma's presence to diagnose and treat whatever new instance of it has arisen. It has to be Alma, that's coded into the virus, inducing a great degree of urgency to the life of an investigator - Alma simply has to be home when the time comes round or Marguerite will just die.

Of course this predicament doesn't come cheap. Alma is deep in debt, and when she is offered an impossible case by one of the four richest people in the world, she doesn't have many options... though the "crime" (one of the four has allegedly been murdered, but nobody knows who) is baffling and the authorities unhelpful.

Like its predecessor, this is in many ways (despite the desperate situation) a joyous book. Roberts is a good writer - make that a very good writer indeed - and his prose simply sparkles. It's a wonder to read, regardless of subject, plot or context. I think I'd happily read him if he were to draft the telephone directory or washing machine instructions. He really, really observes. Just look at this:

"A concrete wall disclosed a kind of derangement of detail: unsmooth greyness stippled with an astonishing variety of pointillist dots of slightly darker and slightly paler grey. It called to her not only to see, but to touch, so she ran a finger along the wall's five o'clock shadow"

or

"The surrounding trees had swapped their green livery for scarlet, like soldiers putting on dress uniform for a royal parade."

Roberts also brings too bear a vast range of references, whether from memory or knowing where the words are buried - I was pleased with myself for spotting some of them (Ron and Reg Kry, two recognisable criminal henchmen, " 'Search, search, search,' agreed Marguerite, 'searchability, that's the beauty of - me' " is a riff on a British Gas advert from the, 1970s or 80s) but I'm sure I will have missed many more.

The central reference here, which isn't concealed, is, though, the homage that the book pays to the films of Stanley Kubrick and in particular, to 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is explicit, for instance in that Alma is soon approached by "Stan", a self-confessed Kubrick fan (so perhaps a double reference there) who first urges her to "follow the money" (of course!) and then introduces her to a private in_shine 2001 sim which he uses to illustrate theories both about the film itself and about the crime she's investigating. It's also implicit, in ways which I won't disclose because they would be spoilers, other than to say that a key theme of 2001 turns out relevant to By the Pricking of her Thumb as well.

But this isn't just a clever book filled with knowing mentions (even if Roberts makes the title of the very first chapter a nod to one of his one earlier books). It's got some really hefty ideas behind it, from the nature of money and the consequences of "monetising" the Shine (that's what the wealthy "fab four" are about as part of their quest for "absolute wealth") to the limit of State power in the face of wealth to the transformational impact on society of all that virtual action.

Mild spoiler alert - skip the next paragraph if you care about these things

By the Pricking of Her Thumb  is also, in a couple of places, almost unbearably, rawly, moving and true. There is a point here where the story is bobbing along nicely, building to the conclusion - and then stops in its tracks where something truly awful happens. But rather than being something that annoys or detracts, this is a moment that enhances and deepens the story. Roberts makes the response very real, very raw and quite, quite true. I always expect a lot from his books, but here he far surpasses even what I'd expect.

End of mild spoiler alert

By the Pricking of Her Thumb is a sequel, something Roberts famously doesn't do. He has justified writing it by saying that a sequel is, for him, itself a first and therefore justifiable. I'm pleased that this argument is recursive so ought to permit more in this series (and could be extended to allow further series if required, who knows) so I'd like to think there can be more stories of R!-Town to come (the hidden internal war within the Government apparatus that we saw in the previous book continues here, we're told, though it doesn't feature centrally, so perhaps a burger book may be required to resolve that?)

Review - Haven by Adam Roberts

Cover by Sam Gretton

Haven (Tales of The Aftermath, 2)
Adam Roberts
Solaris, 9 August 2018
PB, 320pp

I'm grateful to the publishers for an advance copy of Haven via NetGalley.

Set in a shared post-apocalyptic world created by Dave Hutchinson and by Roberts, Haven is the followup to Hutchinson's Shelter (my review). It features a boy called Davy Forktongue - Shelter featured an Adam, so possibly there are author games going on here...

Davy (the character) is very much the crux of Haven. Decades after the Sisters - annihilating asteroids - impacted the Earth and destroyed civilisation, Davy lives with his mother and sisters farming on Shillingford Hill, above the swollen Thames south of Oxford.  In a rather nasty, dog-eat-dog world Davy is a threat to nobody, minding his own business and especially the farm's five cows. but suddenly, it seems everyone is after him - the militaristic authorities from Guz, the former naval base on the South coast which featured in Shelter; the footsoldiers of Father John, from the North, of whom we heard less; and the mysterious, women-only society based at High Wycombe, of which we heard almost nothing.

What do they all want? Can it be related to Davy's epilepsy? Will he survive to find out? As Davy is fought over by the factions, Haven escalates into a fast-paced thriller full of action and conflict. Some of this can be pretty grim - as in Hutchinson's Shelter, it's hard to find anyone here to like (beyond Davy himself).  The Sisters seemingly destroyed not only civilisation, but civilisation - the complex of values and empathy that prevents us all murdering each other. If you found Shelter - which featured an outbreak of such murders - bleak I think you'll feel the same way about Haven. Indeed, the parochial and random warfare that featured in Shelter is surpassed by a more ordered and deadly conflict in Haven (and I wish I could say that this conflict achieves something but I fear that it really doesn't).

Nevertheless there is a lot to like in Haven. Roberts tells a tight, well constructed story bringing together two quite different strands - the adventures of Davy, basically trying to get home (there and back again, perhaps...?) and a parallel series of trials listed on the rather stoic boatman, Hat, of whom I would like to have heard more. Nothing in either thread stray, nothing is lost, the most minor points proving relevant before the end.

Roberts' writing is excellent throughout, in particular his descriptions of the deep winter - puddles which "were saucers and half-moons of pure silver locked hard into the ground", "sharp blades of frost stiffened grass that broke under his feet like twigs", "Another wilderness of sedge, yellow as cream, brittle and sharp-edged as upended icicles". He can dip into a kind of Thick Of It mode (" 'Hark,' said Abigail, putting a hand to her ear, 'what is that I hear, ululating from afar? Is it the call for swear language? I do believe it fucking is! None other than the fucking shit-shouting call for sweary language!' ") He can evoke things almost poetically, beyond the literal meaning of the words ("Someone had sheathed a blade in his shoulder and by Christ it hurt. A paralallip rhythm. A paralallip. Rhythm of paralallip.") It's hard to convey by grabbing a few quotes just how much fun this book is to read for the language, the words themselves. 

Of course, in a book by Roberts you also expect puns and allusions and Haven doesn't disappoint. There's a rather intense degree of wordplay ("Because he's the new messiah? The new mess-his-pants-hire? Why?"). At times it rather takes over the characters - for example this exchange between Daniel and Davy. (Read the book to find out who Daniel is).

" 'And if they don't apprehend you on the way - which, incidentally, they will if you just go stumbling down the rive gauche of the river the way you have been - why then they'll pick up up neatly in Goring town itself.'

'Reeve goes?' Davy queried."

Or

" 'Boats are still our forte.'

'That is a lot of boats,' agreed Davy.

Daniel gave him another hard stare."

There is a sense of quick wittedness, of verbal mastery, here to Davy which Daniel seems to recognise. Davy seems to deploy some sophisticated quotes for a thirteen year old who can't read or write and has been brought up in what one might assume is an intellectually, as well as materially, impoverished culture

" 'It is a strange fate," said Davy, "that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.' Daniel looked at him oddly for a moment..."

Even when not quoting or playing with words, Davy can also show a maturer understanding of things than you might expect. ("I understand the emotional dynamic of my own family than a stranger." "Waste was the worst thing. The unfairness of it. The wealth of the world poured away into the dirt.")

What I think is going on here is that for most of the book, Davy acts as a kind of chorus, the representative of the author (or the reader) in this grim world. That works rather well, not least because, for much of the story, Davy is a rather passive character, done to and not doing, but mainly observing and commenting. He needs a good level of insight and language to make the experience bearable for us.

Similarly, Roberts freely employs (both in the speech of his characters and in the narration) metaphors and turns of phrase that only make sense to us but are unlikely to mean anything to the fourth, fifth or sixth post Sisters generation. One of these ("Senses working overtime") is highlighted at the start of the book - nobody understands the phrase and there are various theories about it - but most are not. So we have "You'll have to join the end of the queue" and 'Close enough... for government work", a "Morse-code under clack" to someone's speech, and so forth.

While this might seem incongruous, it really isn't. Roberts is not trying to develop post-apocalyptic language, something like Russell Hoban in Ridley Walker. he's not trying to represent how these people might really speak. Rather he's using language - even in the mouths of the protagonists - that works for us, the readers. I was reminded of Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings (perhaps one ought to assume a translation, as though Haven were derived from a kind of Red Book of the Southmarch. And indeed there is a lot of Tolkien here -  we do also have "Speak friend and enter", a Gollum like follower, a reference to the Moon as a fruit taken from a silver tree, and much more besides.) By using language this was, the impact of the Sisters on society becomes more apparent, not less. Via the disconnect between a language that assumes the existence of modern technology, modern luxuries and modern conveniences and the strange, wild and deeply dangerous world it is used to describe, we see how far things have really fallen.

A specific example of this might be Hat's (the boatman's) love of smoking, something shared by the customers at an inn and described by Robertson particularly sensuous terms. Roberts makes clear that at this point in history real tobacco is an expensive and hard to come by commodity - I wonder if in reality it would simply not exist at all, but at any rate it is so hard to come by that I suspect most people would be unaware of it and unlikely to enjoy Hat's second hand smoke in the way described. So, no, perhaps not realistic - but as a way to convey how far that world is from ours, this is simply genius. (Unless of course it's another Tolkien thing.)

This is just one of the respects in which Roberts' on the nose observation makes this an absorbing read. Another is the character - I won't name then because spoilers - who achieves incredible things despite being "old" - whatever that means in this world - "People simply stop noticing you. You become a background figure, a three-legged still or an old jug..." And there is the society of the High Wycombe women, marking one path a culture might take alongside others that become intensely patriarchal, very quickly.

So, what do we have? At one level this is a grim, even heartbreaking story of a society gone savage. But it's leavened, or lifted, by that sense of author-in-the-story, of shrewd commentary, by the sense of an authorial wink, that this may be a slightly different story to the one we think we're reading. In other words it's a clever book - which I mean as undiluted praise. And, as I have said, despite the darkness, it is also often a fun book. I would strongly recommend reading (with a bit of a content waring that if you found the darkness of Shelter a bit too much, this does go to similar places).

One closing point. I actually live near Davy! Here, then, is a picture of Shillingford Hill (to the left) from across the Thames (which is among the trees in the middle). You can see what a good place this would be for Davy and his family to farm, albeit in their world the effect of the Sisters has been to cause rain and cold, in contrast to the UK's current mini heatwave... I think the nearer field would have been under icy water, but I can imagine it as one of the places Davy might have crossed a frozen  river.

Shillingford Hill

Review - The Real Town Murders

Image from www.goodreads.com

The Real Town Murders
Adam Roberts
Gollancz, 24 August 2017
HB, 240pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book via NetGalley - it's always good to be approved for an advance copy, but particularly here as I always look forward to a new book from Adam Roberts.

And The Real Town Murders - which is both a science fiction and a crime story - didn't disappoint. It has that recognisably Robertsian tone - that is, serious in theme if slightly silly on the surface, packed with allusions so sly that you have to go back and check if you really read what you thought you did and glorying in puns and cheeky plays on words. So we have gems like "You're not the Mycroft. You're the Yourcroft"; phrases like "Man-hating transfer" or "gutter perches" shamelessly put into a character's mouth "for some reason" puns without the punning, pure puns with no object or reference.

All that, and the book is also recklessly, relentlessly inventive and beautifully written. Really, really well written: in places the language almost sparkles and glitters (especially when it's describing sparkling and glittering things). For example: "Sunlight sparkled grey off the dust coating every one of the building's hundreds of windows" or "A solitary bot moved very slowly over the weedy concrete". There is a whole series of descriptions of sky and water that caught my fancy, both original ("The sky was a lake of unlit petrol", "Sky the colour of an old man's hair", "Textured like hammered pewter. Grey like the steel from which Excalibur was forged", "...the Thames, all of its surface teeming eels of pure light and pure brightness in the afternoon sun") and nods elsewhere ("light fizzing off ten thousand wave peaks like a screen tuned to a dead channel").

The half quote from Neuromancer is particularly apposite because this book's background assumes a world where virtual reality is overtaking the real Real. The Shine is the place where all the fun is to be had, which is why Reading (or R!-Town as it's been renamed, in a lame marketing effort) is so empty (twelve people or so constitutes a crowd). Those who can, choose to spend their time indoors, dormant, plugged into the Shine: those who have no choice - prisoners, patients in hospital - are made to: it's easier to handle them that way.

Horrible, perhaps, but not a dystopia, not exactly. There hasn't been an apocalyptic event, the world is still complete, it's just that several decades of consequences and technological evolution have taken us in a troubling direction. The outcome is that familiar streets - I've walked along some of the road Roberts describes - have become strange and eerie, beautiful at times in their emptiness, observed only by the few who can't or won't go where the fun is.

The main character is one of these misfits. Alma is a private detective who at the start of the book has been retained to investigate a classic locked-room mystery - a murdered corpse in the boot of a new car, assembled before our eyes (or rather, before omnipresent CCTV) in a factory. A factory, which, incidentally, makes high end, "artisanally produced" cars - that is, they are lovingly assembled in the traditional manner by robots rather than merely being printed. That gives them a certain cachet in this world of the virtual Shine, of AIs, of empty streets and canteens - and a key role in the ideological struggle between the real and the virtual realms.

Alma has no religious objection or medical reason for resisting the Shine,  a fact she finds hard to explain to her prospective clients. Rather, she is bound to stay in the Real in order to tend to her beloved, her pearl Marguerite. Marguerite has been infected by a modded virus, which cases a crisis every four hours and four minutes. The malady is keyed to Alma's DNA so that only she can diagnose and treat it.

Ridiculous as this premise may sound put so baldly, Roberts makes it work. In his it becomes a touching vulnerability for Alma, the successive needs to get out of whatever scrape she's in and return home really piling on the tension. It also adds an intriguing question which is never answered - how did this happen to Marguerite, and why? I very quickly lost any doubt about this setup, so well is Alma's need conveyed. And Marguerite is a wonderful character, the Mycroft to Alma's Holmes, as hinted in the quote above. She's a full part of this investigation and spots not only the immediate solution to the crime, but the wider dangers, long before Alma catches on.

And there are dangers. In essence this book is one long chase. Alma is engaged for a case, warned off, threatened, contacted by a mysterious inside source, arrested, escapes, is pursued, shot at, and so on - for all the world like the hero of a Hitchcock film (and, in one mysterious scene, there is even an appearance by a mysterious fat man...) Even without the need to care for Marguerite, her chances of survival look small. But she's resourceful and won't give up so we have the setup for a classic action thriller. Yet if it's Adam Roberts does Alfred Hitchcock it could as easily be Adam Roberts does Julius Caesar (I think - given the politics, and some of the speeches) or several other genres (did the scenes with the argumentative lift AI echo Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Of course they did.)

In other words, it's clever, well thought out, many layered, allusive and tricksy, something else I've come to expect from Roberts' books. With some authors that might seem a little show-offy, a bit look-at-me, but I never get that feeling from Roberts' books. If you get these references they add to the enjoyment, but understanding the book doesn't depend on getting them, and there's lots of fun to be had here anyway.

The book ends with many open questions for both Alma and the reader, and I'm really hoping that Roberts will return to R!-town again, with some answers (and more questions).

Review: The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts

The Thing Itself
Adam Roberts
Gollancz, December 2015
PB, 358pp

I bought my copy of this book from Wallingford Bookshop

Adam Roberts isn't a writer who takes the easy path. In The Thing Itself, that means his readers have to put in a fair amount of effort tool, but it's well worth it.

This is the story of Charles Gardner. We first meet Charles in the 1980s, in a remote Antarctic base. He and his colleague Roy are part of the search for extra terrestrial life: lurking behind this first part of the story is the Fermi Paradox, the idea that the sheer scale of the Universe should guarantee life - so why have we not seen it? Roy comes up with an answer, rooted in Kantian philosophy, which makes a surprising amount of sense. I'm not going to explain it because spoilers, but it's based on the true nature of the Universe - "The Thing Itself" of the title, a theme on which Roberts plays many variations in the book (he's fond of puns).

Many authors might pick up a theme or idea as Roberts does Kant and simply use it for window dressing. Roberts goes further. He actually structures the book around Kant's categories (see the table of contents) and goes to great lengths to explain the underlying ideas (but it's OK, this never reads like an info dump!)  The story is told in 12 parts, with alternating sections following Gardner's story back from the Antarctic to Bracknell, Reading, Swindon and points North. he doesn't have a happy life: he and Roy experienced something in Antarctica that left Charles with a mega case of PTSD and Roy in Broadmoor (near Bracknell, which turns out to be handy). Here we actually have a rather hoary trope - if we knew the true nature of the Universe we'd go mad - turned around, justified and presented in an intriguing and logically plausible setting. But that's not half of it. Or rather it is, because the other 6 sections - the even numbered ones - explore related themes to the main story but in rather different ways.

There's a story about two gentlemen (English? Irish?) taking a leisurely holiday on the Rhine in the early 20th century. What are they missing? There's a Joycean piece (which I found very challenging - I've never read any Joyce - but stick with it). There are a couple of out-and-out SF pieces ("The Fansoc for Catching Oldfashioned Diseases" and "The Last Three days of the Time War") which could almost stand alone. There's one written in 17th or 18th century English from the perspective of a servant boy.

Certain themes, certain names, recur. Across time, the story is evolving. It's a mystery story; it's a logical puzzle; it's a philosophy tutorial. And it's glorious, beautiful SF, made more so because Roberts treats the subject with the seriousness it deserves. If you're going to think about ultimate reality, time, space and creation, he seems to be saying, you really ought to do so in the company of the most brilliant thinkers who have gone before.

You owe it that, at least.

Strongly recommended (and the cover's pretty too).