Jack Glass, by Adam Roberts

Sea Glass 1 ©2006 Akuppa John Wigham CC-BY

I was delighted when the organisers of The Kitschies asked me to review Adam Roberts’ Jack Glass, a 2012 finalist for the Red Tentacle. The Kitschies seek to reward fiction with speculative or fantastic elements that is progressive, intelligent and entertaining. With this in mind, I have looked for these three qualities in Jack Glass, and happily, have found them. Jack Glass is published by Gollancz, and the print edition is 382 pages. I read the kindle version, which includes extra content at the end which I don’t discuss here.

I began reading Jack Glass with an awareness of Adam Roberts’ broad knowledge of literature and fondness for playing with language, and I was not disappointed in my expectation that both would be in evidence. There was never any doubt in my mind that this book would be intelligent.

This is a wide-ranging, engaging tale that plays fast and loose with a number of conventions. It’s less Space Opera and more Chivalry in Orbit. The front cover tells us point-blank that this is “The Story of a Murderer”. So, not a page-turner then, you might think – we haven’t even opened the cover and he’s given it away! But what keeps you reading is not the who, but the why, and the how. Seemingly against the odds, a most improbable love story is beautifully rendered, and issues of politics, psychopharmacology and the nature of thought itself are raised.

Before we go any further, let me give the obligatory spoiler warning – I’d find it impossible to discuss the book fully without giving away some major plot points – look away now if you want to be surprised.

Jack Glass is a story told in three parts. Part I – In the Box is preceded by an introductory passage in which the unnamed narrator addresses the reader, telling us that ”This narrative, which I hereby doctorwatson for your benefit, o reader, concerns the greatest mystery of our time.” We get an inkling that, like doctorwatson, our narrator is full of admiration for her/his subject, in this case Jack Glass, that amalgam of seemingly irreconcilable personas, “detective, teacher, protector and murderer.” Into the ongoing debate about whether readers can enjoy a book if the protagonist isn’t likeable, Roberts throws down the literary equivalent of an FTL gauntlet: You will see this character doing horrid, gruesome things, and yet by the end, you will view him with some sympathy. Not everyone will agree that this is successful, but I’ll admit that in my case, I was largely won over. I particularly enjoyed the narrator’s voice, and was a bit sorry that she/he doesn’t address us directly again until the end of the story.

Did I mention? Horrid, gruesome things. Part I is incredibly bleak, and it is a brave authorial gambit to begin there, stuck on an asteroid with a group of male prisoners. If the “A Golden Age Story” on the title page makes one think of Arcadia and the pastoral, this is instead a lengthy excursion into the picaresque. It is not this choice, however, that gives me pause about this section, but some qualms I have about its length and the box conceit.

The novel is set in an age of space travel where humanity has spread throughout the solar system, now called the Ulanov System after its all-powerful ruling family. We watch as seven male prisoners are deposited on a distant asteroid to serve out an eleven-year sentence. Politics is one topic of discussion; we hear that the commercial firm responsible for imprisoning them makes a profit from their labour; the hollowed-out asteroid will ultimately be valuable real estate. Later conversations revolve around System economics and are, to my leftie ears, quite refreshingly clear-eyed  and a progressive assessment of How Things Tend to Work.

The concept of life in a sealed cavern inside an asteroid has a certain geeky fascination, and time is devoted to explaining how this might be possible. The sealed-in prisoners have been given only the bare necessities: a fusion cell, air scrubbers, a lightstick, spores that grow into a food called ghunk, drilling equipment for hollowing out the asteroid. The environment is hostile – rocky, dark and bitterly cold – and it is a constant worry that one error will cause them all to perish. A crisis ensues when they can’t locate a seam of ice in the rock and nearly run out of water.

The seven prisoners are a varied crew, serving sentences for a range of crimes. One of them, Jac, has no legs and is suspected of being a political prisoner. A friendship of sorts develops between Jac and the rotund Gordius, revered as a globe-shaped god by his people but convicted of murder following the traditional ritual killing of his father. There is endless arguing and hostile banter between the occupants as they struggle to set up their living arrangements, and soon there are regular sexual assaults on Gordius and “Legless Jac.”  As time passes, Jac seems obsessed with small bits of glass that occasionally form during the mining process. Gordius believes Jac is creating a window through which to signal a passing ship, and pleads with Jac to take him along. Jac clearly has something in mind for the pieces of glass: “he took a few likely looking shards: two handsome sicklemoons in brown-green…”

Eventually, the disgruntled in-fighting reaches a fever pitch; even Gordius and Jac have a vicious fight in which Gordius loses an eye. Then there is a coup. The plan was to kill E-d-C, but when the dust (and airborne blood droplets – no gravity) settles, Lwon, one of the ‘alphas’, is also dead. Finally, we learn why Jac was hoarding glass: in a quite astonishly violent rampage he uses the glass to kill the remaining prisoners, even Gordius, and after some demonically creative handiwork with the organic material to hand, fashions a primitive powered space-suit and escapes into space.

For all its imaginative virtues I did at points find Part I heavy going; I’m not sure that readers will be invested enough in this world or in Jac to sustain interest throughout the lengthy exposition. Also, I had trouble with the conceit of “the box” – I couldn’t set aside my nagging discomfort about this – is an asteroid that much like a box? Yes, the prisoners are enclosed in it, but beyond that… It didn’t resonate. But that is a minor quibble.

Part II – The FTL Murders, is a different animal all together, and it is very, very good. We are introduced to a new cast of characters (with the exception of Iago the Tutor aka Jack Glass) who have come down to a future earth from “the uplands” for a visit. There are some really delightful ideas to ponder here, and Roberts makes them convincing and entertaining. The high-born sisters, Diana and Eva, future leaders of the Argent Clan, along with their large entourage of bodyguards and handservants, struggle to adjust to gravity, sometimes to comic effect. Strangely, their tutor Iago seems to stoically resist making any concessions to the oppressive phenomenon. Only later do they learn that this is because of his high-tech artificial legs.

There are numerous little touches that tell us this is the future, technology has moved on – windows can be commanded to appear in previously opaque walls, there are smartfabrics, some people look up information on a device called a bId (Biolink iData) which is something like an internal data port. There is the Ideal Palace, or IP, a private worldtual that Diana and Eva use frequently for work and recreation. There are crawlipers, which help those unused to gravity walk more easily. One of the most interesting ideas, which resonates in our era of medications that influence affect, is the use of CRF, a drug administered to staff members of the elite households to ensure their loyalty and affection. It becomes significant later that Jack Glass, as the sisters’ tutor Iago (arch-villain) is not required to take CRF by the sisters’ parents, despite them being fully aware of his past life.

The sisters are MOHsisters, with two MOHmies (Mommies! Genius) – I didn’t read any of the glossary entries until I’d finished the book, but it was clear even without them that genetic tinkering had given these sisters abilities suited to their roles as future leaders of the Argent Clan, the information guild. Roberts does a better job than almost anyone I’ve read at making a feminine-centred society sound unremarkable; it isn’t forced, it’s just there. Diana has a crush on a girl from another clan, the concept of female-male relationships is seen as a bit out of the ordinary, and Diana exclaims ‘goddess’, not ‘god’.

The breezy, irreverent quality of Diana’s internal monologues is superb – she is the epitome of a lively, intelligent, entitled teenager – with added problem-solving abilities and attitude: “A problem to be solved! And who was better at solving problems than her? (Nobody! Her problem-solving is second-to-none: intutive, human, chaologic — it’s what she was bred and raised to.)” Roberts contrasts Diana and her intuitive abilities with her older sister Eva, the logical one, who is doing yet another PhD in astronomy. Interactions between the two sisters are like the bicameral mind imagined by Wodehouse. Throw in a healthy dash of the Mitford Sisters and the heroine of Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, and you’ll have some sense of the tone. Diana is constantly playing with words and people’s names: “Sisterissima Evissima,” “You love me, don’t you, Eye-ah-go?” and “No. Wavey. Way.”

The action in Part II revolves around the murder of Leron, one of the sisters’ handservants. It seems clear that the murderer must have been one of the other servants, since no one else could have entered or left their quarters. Diana, an avid consumer of virtual whodunits, is giddy with excitement and determined to solve the case herself. Such is her status that the local police agree to this. We learn that the sisters’ problem-solving ability is contingent on dreaming. “Dreams have utility. Dreaming was central to what the girls did, not because of what the dreams contained, but because of what the urge to interpret sparked inside them.”

Soon, rumours begin spreading (via ‘gossipoppers’) that someone has developed Fast Than Light technology. This is pooh-poohed on factual grounds by Eva, but it becomes clear that even rumours of such a thing will cause upheaval in the System and strife between the clans.

The sisters are then visited by a tough-as-nails agent of the Ulanovs, Ms Joad. She tells the girls that the murder IS in fact a much bigger deal than they realize; far from being a matter of one servant murdering another, it involves that infamous criminal Jack Glass, and, yes, FTL. Ms Joad relates how Jack Glass was sent to serve his sentence on a distant asteroid, but had (impossibly) escaped. Ms Joad stresses how evil he is. Even Diana is amazed: “The say he has hey-ho murdered more than a thousand people,’ said Diana, with a touch of awe in her voice.”

Diana continues her “investigation” and ultimately realizes that Leron was killed by Sapho, another handservant, after suffering abuse at his hands. What she doesn’t realize is that the stage for the crime had been set by (Jack Glass!) It becomes clear that this feat of problem-solving has marked Diana out as the chosen leader of the Argent Clan, pushing Eva to one side.

Events move rapidly from this point. Suffice it to say that Ms Joad returns and does some killing of her own, the island comes under heavy attack, and the two sisters flee separately. Iago and Sapho go with Diana, (who now knows Iago’s true identity) and what ensues is a trip through the System as they run from whatever forces are pursuing them. This is very well-drawn – we see a variety of settlements in floating spheres, some in poor shanty settlements, others in more desirable orbits. There are revolutionary gatherings, unfamiliar religions (the Hindu Christ) and more. There are RACdroids whose purpose is to provide a reliable account of events and contracts. Ms Joad reappears, employed now by Eva, who has betrayed Diana.

The climactic showdown that is the central action of Part III – The Impossible Gun involves an encounter between Jack/Iago and his one time comrade and now foe, the policeman Bar-le-Duc. The infamous policeman is killed, in and we have a third murder mystery, eventually unravelled with the help of a RACdroid. We learn that the revolutionary Jack Glass does not kill for fun but always in the service of a greater cause; he knows that FTL does exist, and fears that the entire system is in peril if it falls into the wrong hands. This is his motivation, always. The only exception is that he was willing to sacrifice himself (and his mission) to see Diana safe and free, because he loves her. When he tells Diana of his long-standing love for her (and it is a chivalric, noble love) it is beautifully judged: moving, funny, sad. He sends her to safety, and he and Sapho (who is our narrator) remain together.

I know there is much more to discover here – how could there not be? There are jokes I haven’t mentioned – Iago’s retreat named Dunronin, and more. I can’t do it justice, and I highly recommend that you read it yourself; it will be time well spent.

One sentence

And, to leave you on a more edifying note, I’ll share one of the most beautiful sentences I’ve ever read. It’s not long. It’s from Empty Space, by M. John Harrison:

“When we ask it about itself, it asks for you.”

Why is this so affecting? Maybe because is captures the very essence of love?

Not me. YOU. The Other. That is what is important.

What is your line in the sand?

This is a quote from China Miéville, in another context. But it is universally applicable: at what point do you say, Enough; This Far and No Fucking Further. For many in the UK, we are reaching that point with this abyssmal imitation of an enlightened democratic government. They are attacking people with disabilities and the most vulnerable in our society. There will be casualties; make no mistake about that – there is plenty of evidence. And do not give me your rationalisations about austerity. If we were in post-war Berlin, with meagre resources, I might listen to you. At least for a couple of minutes. We are not. We are in a wealthy industrialised Western nation with a crisis caused by greed and avarice. People are driving around in Land Rovers and eating in expensive restaurants. While this is the case, if we then say we cannot afford to offer a decent standard of living to those who are in dire need, we deserve to perish from the face of the earth, and the sooner the better. Mark the moment: if we go on as we are, future generations will wonder why nobody did anything when such obvious wrongs were committed; such grave injustices. It doesn’t have to play out this way.

On Friendship

24 years ago I experienced a severe depressive episode. I was reminded of this by a recent visit from a dear friend, who helped me at the time. There were no blogs then, but it now seems like a grave omission not to record the kindness she showed me. I’m recounting it as part of the In Good Company project.

In 1988, we were one year out of college, and trying, some more successfully than others, to find our way in the world. I was going to be a painter. I had battled bouts of severe depression since the spring of my sophomore year, and was back living with my parents in Maine. My friend, who is nothing if not determined, had been accepted into a fast-track program at a Boston-area corporation.

There was an arts-related event in Boston that spring that I wanted to attend. I figured I’d drive down for it, then stay at my friend’s place over the weekend. The morning I set out, I was beset with what I now realize was intense anxiety – I was petrified of making the trip. I somehow managed to get in the car and drive, fighting fear all the way.

I have a vague recollection of attending the event in Boston’s Back Bay. When it ended, I made my way to my friend’s shared apartment in the suburbs. As I drove there in heavy rain, I was confused by two traffic signals in rapid succession, and ran a red light. The police were watching, and I was stopped and cautioned. At this point, things got much worse. How to describe it? Fear with no obvious cause. Panic. Physical discomfort – severe enough that a visiting friend studying to be a doctor took me to the hospital emergency room and waited, uncomplaining, until I was seen. All these years later, I’m still grateful to her. This being the US, that visit alone racked up bills that would haunt me for a year or more.

Back to my friend’s place. Later, my then-boyfriend appeared; he accompanied me to my second emergency room visit when I didn’t seem to be getting any better. My friend, meanwhile, did what she could to make me comfortable. I remember gulping liquid antacids. (When I finally returned to Maine and saw our family doctor, I was diagnosed with an ulcer.)

It’s hard to explain the fear that stalked me. I was 20 years old, had a good degree and a seemingly bright future. But all this is as nothing when you are severely depressed. I was experiencing repetitive, frightening thoughts, so terrifying that irreversible mental decline seemed like a plausible explanation. I was frightened of myself, and desperate.

I don’t know how I communicated my distress to my friend. We sat in her shared kitchen that Monday morning – she was going to work, and I was going to drive home. What did I say? I honestly can’t remember. Somehow, I told her I needed help. She had an important meeting that day; believe me when I say that she doesn’t take such things lightly. For her to miss a meeting by choice was a big deal, but miss it she did.

How did she know who to call? No idea. She must have consulted the phone book, the go-to reference at the time. She drove me to the local crisis intervention service, where counselors talked to me and gave me some medication to take the edge off. My parents were called – could they come get me? I didn’t want to go home – some of the underlying issues had to do with my parents’ marriage ending – but without funds for an alternative arrangement, it was my only option. I was promised help when I got back to Maine.  My parents arrived the next morning, and back we went.

In retrospect, I recovered quickly after a short stay in hospital (more bills), but when you are living through depression, each day can seem like an eternity. My family doctor referred me to a psychiatrist, who in turn prescribed imipramine, a tricyclic (SSRI’s weren’t yet an option). I surprised myself by managing to hold down a waitressing job that summer, and slowly picked up the pieces. Very gradually, things improved.

If there is one thing I would tell teenagers, or in fact anyone in a similar situation, it is this: it can look as if nothing will ever improve. You can be as sure of this fact as you have been of anything in your life, and you will be wrong. If you think all hope is lost, that there is no way out, hang on. It’s easy to say, and unbelievably hard to do.

The postscript to this story is that this past weekend, I spent time with my friend and her family, who were visiting London. We stayed with her aunt, in the same house where I’d had a warm welcome 26 years ago as a college student. In the course of the evening, we discussed my friend’s grandmother, a formidable character and the subject of many family legends. But at some point, my friend’s aunt said Wait. She was funny, and difficult, but remember: without her courage, escaping with three small children from Poland in the run-up to the Second World War, none of us would be here. And it struck me – like her grandmother, my friend had left no one behind, and as long as I live, I will be grateful.

Editors sometimes go bananas.

Review: Railsea, by China Miéville

It says something about a book when one of its central conceits becomes an obsession before you’ve even read it. My long-suffering twitter followers will know that China Miéville has written a book involving moles. Now Railsea (2012) is here, & on the mole front, it more than delivers. Take it from me; this is epic, insectivore mammalpunk. It undertakes an elaborate, affectionate dance with Melville’s Moby-Dick (of which more later). And it is adorned with some quite scary illustrations of railsea fauna by Miéville himself.

Is Railsea without flaws? Here, I poke my critical snout above the dirt, sniff the air, & report – not quite. If I had to distill my criticism of Railsea into one sentence, it would be this: Not every book needs to contain ALL THE THINGS. This is an ambitious, audacious book; it aims to address a wide variety of readers on multiple levels. In it, I find myself more conscious of political points being made than in any of Miéville’s previous novels. Part of me suspects that there are in fact two books trying to burrow their way out of Railsea, one YA and one adult.

And yet…

Miéville readers will be wondering: are there more weird, unforgettable ideas in Railsea, ones that I’ll think about for a long time? The answer to this is an unqualified Yes. Bizarre assemblages of rubbish? Tick. Puns aplenty? Yep. & I for one will never look at a mole-hill in quite the same way. In addition, Railsea contains, to my mind, some of Miéville’s very best writing, particularly in those passages where he steps back from conventional narrative structures to address the reader directly.

Railsea is about quests. The young protagonist, Sham, seeks an authentic purpose in life. His moletrain captain pursues her nemesis, the elusive white moldywarpe (Miéville uses this evocative old English name for mole throughout). As Ahab hunted the white whale, Captain Naphi stalks Mocker-Jack across the railsea. The railsea is, I’ll wager, one of the coolest damn things you’ll encounter in fiction for a very long time. Take the ocean, but imagine that instead of water, it’s covered in a crazy, byzantine network of railway lines. Instead of fish, dolphins & whales frolicking below its surface, imagine moles, worms & other subterranean creatures. Some of them are huge; many of them are downright dangerous.

The world of Railsea is a future earth in which our current levels of consumption are no longer possible. Beneath & on the surface of the railsea rests salvage of varied provenance – earth’s past (arche-salvage), earth’s present (nu-salvage) & off-planet (alt-salvage). One of the central narratives is the longing of Shamus Yes ap Soorap, a school-leaver from the moling nation of Streggeye, to be a salvager. Various factors conspire to make this impossible: he’s been raised by two cousins, & partly on their behalf, he feels unable to refuse a position as an apprentice moletrain doctor.

The prologue is the first instance of the author/narrator stepping out of the story to speak to the reader. In a memorable first line, we’re told that

This is the story of a bloodstained boy.

We are given some context, learn more about the boy’s surroundings. And then, a change of mind, a rethink:

We’re here too soon.

Our first inkling that, among other things, the railsea represents story itself.

Into reverse: let this engine go back. Just to before the boy was bloodied, there to pause & go forward again to see how we got here…

Turn the page & board the moletrain in Chapter One. More choices must be made. We begin with a closeup, but then zoom out:

A MEAT ISLAND!
No. Back a bit.
A looming carcase?
Bit more.
Here. Weeks out, back when it was colder.

And we’re underway, in the thick of the action, at the moment a mole is sighted in the distance:

“There she blows!”

We then experience the excitement of the subsequent mole hunt, & the bloody work that follows.

Is it time to talk about Moby-Dick yet?

No. Let’s deal with the the Marx quote first.

The Marx quote?

“Well grubbed, old mole.” From Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

Captain Naphi utters the above in response to the hunted mole’s attempt to lead the moletrain into a catastrophic sudden change of gauge, & we learn that it is the “traditional praise for such quarry cunning.”

You do know Marx is riffing on a quotation from Hamlet, right? -  “Well said, old mole.”

Yes. & Hegel talked about moles too. I’m on it. But we should probably get back to the story, & leave some of this for the scholars.

We learn more about Sham (his nickname a good fit with his nagging feelings of inauthenticity), and watch his reaction to cruel animal fights arranged by other members of the crew. Then Sham’s moletrain, the Medes, encounters the wreck of a another train, & everything changes. Sham discovers an artifact that sets him on a new quest, ultimately leading him (& the reader) to the eccentric Shroake family of Manihiki . He also gains an animal companion that he nurses back to health, having accidentally injured it while fighting off naked mole rats – Daybe the daybat.

What Sham found in the wreckage was a memory card containing pictures or “flatographs.” One is of two serious-looking children beneath a strange archway;  another is of something Sham can’t quite comprehend – an unheard-of single rail line making its solitary way into the distance. His reaction to both these images is an unquenchable desire to find both the children & the impossible rail line, & I must admit that his determination did strike me as slightly implausible.

OK. Now it’s time to talk about Moby-Dick.

The narrator of Melville’s Moby-Dick introduces himself by putting us on notice that he is telling a story, not relating fact. Is his name really Ishmael? No matter – that is what he asks us to call him. How long ago was this journey? Not important. But there is more to be said about the relationship of Railsea to Moby-Dick than I could hope to cover here.

I can’t help but mention, however, two relevant passages from Chapter One of Moby-Dick. The first is a description of Manhattan:

Its extreme down-town is the Battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes…

Well that is just a Miévillian vision ripe for the picking, the island of Manhattan as giant mole, burrowing in the earth of the sea. Then, this:

Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it?

Land & sea – reversed. Railsea seems, in part an attempt to answer this question: if the ocean were filled with dirt instead of water, would you want to read about it?

So. Where were we?

The Shroakes. Two of the Shroakes’ three parents perished the train that Sham found wrecked. Sham eventually gets to Manihiki, bringing Caldera and Caledero “Dero” Shroake confirmation that their two absent parents have met an untimely end. They, in turn, relay this sad news to their reclusive third parent, Dad Byro, & begin making plans to complete the interrupted journey.

Here, I wanted more information about what the two Shroakes were looking for, to hold my interest over what is a lengthy trip. The Shroake family did remind me (pleasingly) of Madeleine L’Engle’s Murry family in A Wrinkle in Time (1962) & also characters created by Joan Aiken, who is mentioned by Miéville in the acknowledgements.

The pace of the plot increases as the story goes on, with trains racing across the vast railsea, seeking secrets and prey. There is an episode where Sham is rescued & cared for by the nomadic Bajjer people, sailors on the railsea; they become important later, & the role their expertise plays could be a nod to Queequeg’s useful coffin in Moby-Dick.

To reveal much more about the ultimate destination of Sham, Captain Naphi, the Shroakes & their companions, would be to give away too much, so I will just say that the conclusion is at once surprising & quite satisfying. There are battles along the way – menacing Angel maintenance trains & the Manihiki navy are involved, & at the close, we are left in little doubt that Sham has at last found his calling.

Perhaps a few words about politics here?

The first thing to say is that, if I am not singing from the exact same political hymn sheet as China Miéville, I am certainly sitting in an adjacent pew, so when I object to what I see as political point-scoring, it’s usually not that I disagree with the point being made, but more with the fact of it being there at all, or being made less subtly than I’d like.

The best example I can give of this in Railsea is the use of “defoliant” by the Manihiki navy to blight swathes of the Bajjer’s railsea habitat. Encountering this took me out of the story; immediately I was thinking ah, I get it, that is the US military in Vietnam, using Agent Orange. I am old enough that I watched reports from the Vietnam War on the nightly news, so my reaction is necessarily different than that of YA readers. Do they know about Agent Orange? If not, shouldn’t they? I think there is an argument to be had about whether this works well or not.

Another plot point, I initially saw as a one-liner, but, on reflection, viewed as more appropriate and nuanced. It is to do with the very existence of the railsea – how it came into being, what motivated the tangle of tracks. The more I look at current events, the more I feel that it is something that needs saying. I will have to wait to find out how it strikes others.

Gentler hints are dropped: the captain of the Medes is a woman, the figurehead on the train’s “prow” is male, the Shroake family has three parents. All of this was deftly handled.

Shall we close with a few words about, well, words? This is Miéville, after all.

I’ll leave you with some examples of delightul phrases encountered in Railsea (I won’t spoil my favourite pun by revealing it, but suffice it to say, it is literally to LOL)

moonpanther moldywarpe
rigours & vigours & bloody triggers
gallimaufryan coagulum of mixed-up oddness

Railsea is a wild ride. Different aspects of it will appeal to a wide range of readers, and it will certainly merit multiple re-readings. Miéville fans will be pleased to encounter many of the things they have come to expect from this inventive writer.

Railsea is out in the UK from Tor UK on May 24 & in the US from Del Rey on May 15

frutti di marechera (near english faculty library, oxford)