Gnomon by Nick Harkaway

In my review of Harkaway's debut novel The Gone-Away World, I compared it favorably to a bunch of SF absurdist and surrealist works, with the caveat that it wasn't for everybody.  Since then I've made sure to read all his output.  I also did a review of Tigerman, and generally liked Angelmaker without an official write-up of it - although in both cases I wasn't sure if they lived up to the promise displayed in Gone-Away World.  But a new work by Harkaway is cause for excitement, and I wasn't sure what I was going to get out of this.

Having read it, I still don't know if I'm entirely sure.  As it opens, we're introduced to the UK of about fifty years from now, where surveillance has become so ubiquitous and social media so intrusive that they're no longer considered distinct things.  Any citizen can learn just about anything about any other citizen with a simple online query, although of course the existence of the query is itself disclosable to anyone who asks.  You live in a fishbowl but so does absolutely everyone else.  As an upside there's next to no crime, since everything is recorded, and there's a benevolent search construct which monitors everything constantly - for safety and security, naturally.  And everyone is more or less happy and content with this situation, and if they're not happy then they can get adjusted until they are happy and content with it.  So far it sounds a lot like 1984 with more than a hint of Brave New World about it.

Anyhow, there's a woman named Diana Hunter who was into some sort of subversive stuff and she's brought in for an interrogation session, which means that they'll plug her in and literally read her thoughts over her protests.  They'll fix what's making her unhappy while they're at it.  And then the unthinkable happens - she dies under interrogation.  Enter investigator Mielikki Neith, since even a panopticon surveillance state can't see absolutely everything, and sometimes the human touch is required.  As an agent of the Witness, Neith is responsible for satisfying the general public that this event wasn't intentional or at least that if it was, those who did it are themselves called out.

You think it's that easy?  The first chapter outright tells you that the investigation will make her doubt everything she believes.  Which is certainly plausible, since she gets a whole bunch of Hunter's memories downloaded into her own mind to sort through, and then things get really weird.

I find myself hesitant to actually say much more about the actual plot of the book.  The comparison that I kept drawing as the book went on is actually the cult classic Illuminatus!, in that much of the pleasure of the book comes from the constant discovery that the authors are screwing with you, and that even when you know what kind of book you're dealing with, it just keeps happening.  There's nothing more trustworthy than some huckster telling you outright that the whole thing is a con, after all.  (There's also quite a bit of thematic similarity around the number 5 . . . coincidence?)

So, without specifics, let me mention a couple of high points.  It's clear from a reading of Harkaway's work that he is very intrigued by the notion of bad things which happen without any specific evil intent on the part of anyone, and he heavily advocates for people to stand up and be counted, even when it's maybe not in their own personal interests to do so.  There's a lot of that here.  And he's also deeply affronted at the idea that procedural and democratic safeguards are to be set aside in the name of safety and exigency.  There's something freeing about reading a good writer really, incandescently pissed off about morally offensive things.

Unfortunately it's not perfect.  I felt that it took a while to really get going.  Neith encounters a villainous figure in the first chapter who engages in frankly preposterous dialog, and that individual continues to do so whenever encountered.  In fact, I wasn't hooked until about halfway though the third chapter, which isn't an unforgivable failure in such a large work but might be a dealbreaker for someone who wasn't already predisposed to give it a chance.  And there are many, many different narrative threads without immediately obvious connections going on there for a while.  All that said, once I did get through the third chapter, I found myself actually really quite absorbed in the story to an extent that I don't normally get, so good on him.  He even manages to mostly stick the landing, although I'm still mulling over the last chapter.

All in all, it's a very solid effort and a good way to kick off 2018.  I'm finding it sticking with me and although I don't know if it'll be an all-time favorite, I think it's going to be at least significant for me.  If you liked any of Harkaway's previous novels, you'll probably like this one, and it's sufficiently different and weird to not be a retread of any of them.  If you want a story that combines Brexit, Facebook, Gamergate, global economic meltdown and a post-Singularity gestalt consciousness, you'll not be disappointed.  If you didn't like Illuminatus! or don't like the absurd, maybe this isn't for you.