The This by Adam Roberts (book review).

‘The This’ by Adam Roberts is a standalone literary Science Fiction novel. It juxtaposes loneliness against the internet-turned-hive-mind, a universe’s timespan against the moment and real people against pheno-entities. (Phenotypes have ‘the appearance of an organism based on multifactorial combinations of genetic and environmental traits’.)

As would be expected with so many themes, this novel has two interwoven threads.

One thread is about the Bardo, that place where souls enter to be reborn in the real world in another body. In the space of sixteen pages, Roberts takes us through rebirth after rebirth from the start of consciousness to the end of time, not once, but twice. We end up realising that all the lives lived are the same ‘soul’, Abby. She can only exist in the Bardo if any life she has lived dies and she can only be Ab-solute if she has lived every life.

The other thread is about what happens in real life. A hive mind, HMθ, develops. It attracts members by promising people they will never be lonely again. With it comes the promise of immortality of the ‘soul’ within HMθ. Not everyone is happy to join its gestalt. Some fight against it. This is the story of brave individuals who want to banish hive minds.

The portrayal of these themes is through the eyes of individuals who play a significant part in the battle. They are easy to relate to. This is what makes the novel a delightful read.

But it is a novel of many layers of subtlety and depth. Roberts comes up with thought-provoking ideas such as, ‘Money is speech, not silence’, and ‘It’s a device (a fridge) for cooling things below absolute zero’. A reader can stop to enjoy the beauty of the unusual and mull over its mind-boggling implications.

Roberts enjoys playing with words. For instance, HMθ calls the terraforming of Venus, veneration. Perhaps he plays too much given he uses many obscure words, such as ectoplasmic, ideation and congeries. Though their meanings can be inferred by their context, the reader needs a wide vocabulary to enjoy the full richness in the novel.

Being literary, there are numerous references to culture such as Father McKenzie of the Beatles’ song, ‘Eleanor Rigby’. Such knowledge is not essential but, for those who cannot identify the references, the words get in the way of the enjoyment.

These are gremlins and should not detract from the novel’s achievement.

‘The This’ adds to the thematic canon of Science Fiction. It takes the genre to where no story has ever gone before. With this comes the freshness and excitement of the new and unexplored and it does so within the constraints of realistic extrapolated science for the real life thread.

Rosie Oliver

March 2022

(pub: Gollancz, 2022. 296 pages hardback. Price: £16.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-473-23090-3)

check out website: https://www.gollancz.co.uk/titles/adam-roberts/the-this/9781473230903/