Verdict of the new scientist of the reading club on the lake of darkness by Adam Roberts: a mixed bag

After watching historical characters travel in time in Kaliane Bradley The Ministry of TimeThe New Scientist Book Club has headed in the other direction for our last reading, in the distant future and a lasting science fiction with Adam Roberts Darkness lake. Taking up in an apparently utopian society, this opens while two spaceships orbit a black hole – only so that the captain of one of them claims that he had been ordered to kill all his companions on dashboards by a voice emanating from the black hole. Not so utopian after all, and via the protagonist of Roberts Saccade, a serial killers historian from 21^st Century, we soon learn more about this mysterious presence.

This was a mixed bag for our readers, some of you really enjoying it and others finding it slow. I am on the side of the new member of the scientist reading club, Paul Jonas, who writes on our Facebook group that he was “captivated by history” and “loved the elements of science fiction of space trips, black holes and utopian societies”. Paul is smarter than me – he “also liked the underlying philosophical elements of Deleuze’s thought” in this novel, which I am not sure to have obtained.

I am a grumpy type with regard to fiction and I rarely find myself amused by books that claim to be funny (Terry Pratchett aside, of course). This was not the case with Darkness lake: I tried in all kinds of opportunities, and I particularly appreciated the way in which the distant characters of Roberts lacked to our history, their deciphering of so-called “More codeA first modern tik-tak system with long and short pulses, each for a glyph “to their song of this well-known Beatles song, We all live in a sunny yellow scene.

Like Paul, I was also very intrigued by the representation by the book of a future utopian society and the problems it raised. When I discussed with him, Roberts told me that he wanted to write a novel in all the different sub-genres of science fiction. It was his point of view on utopia, but even if you take the novel’s antagonist, the gentleman (or to use his more common name – Spoiler alert – Satan), from it, this utopian vision is not very tempting. There is nothing to do with anyone, because all the work has been taken up by “smart machines”. The weather is filled with hobbies or fandoms; As the gentleman says: “You know the value of everything and the cost of nothing. But unless something costs, it’s worth nothing. The best things cost a lot. ” I found rather pleasant to feel a little higher than this future company because of having a job (and to be able to read).

Charlotte CEE, member of the reading club, was another fan, listening to the audio book and “very much enjoying humor and hard science”. “As for life inside a black hole-it’s interesting,” she adds. “As one of the characters says, there is certainly available energy, but is there space or time?!”

Barbara Howe was not so sure. Although she loved “historical misunderstandings” and “utopian criticism” in the book, she estimated that “painted utopia also seems to be a very masculine vision of one, with all nudity and sex without consequences and not a word on utopian ideals or even to recognize the existence of children who must be trained in administration in utopian ideals”.

Barbara also raised a point that disturbed a few other readers: she was happy to have read Darkness lake As an Ebook, because she “had to look for more words in this only book than in the last dozen that I read”. Alan Perrett felt in the same way, finding the broad vocabulary and having to seek various “slightly off -putting” terms. Jess Brady was also in this team, loving “the concept” but criticizing the “slow prose”.

It was not something that I noticed particularly – not because I knew all the words used by Roberts, but because (like the hard physics of the book), I tend to let this kind of washing me. As Barbara said, in reference to the physics of all of this: “I treat any description of the FTL flight (faster than light) with the same respect, I treat the descriptions of time travel: assuming that they are there to provide a plating of scientific respectability on a plot device which is essentially magical. The meaning I generally talk about them to see if they are entertaining – these – without making an effort to see if physics makes sense. “

Another criticism on the part of the readers was that the characters were not kind: Alan wrote that “there was not one person with whom I sympathized or cried their death. They are all incredibly boring and stupid. ” Karen Seers agreed: “There were enough in the book to grasp my interest for the start, but I simply did not develop interest in a casting of unlikely characters. I did not care what had happened to them.”

Well, that’s something I agree with. The characters are all incredibly stupid and some of them – Guunarsonsdottir, I look at you – are simply horrible. But I felt that it was the point, and I liked to look at their movements while these upset and intellectually lazy people tried to face a real danger – generally by forming another committee to discuss what to do. And I cannot quarrel with the genius to appoint a character Bartlewasp. It’s just funny in itself.

Paul felt similar to me, I think. “Saccade was a great character, ok, she lives in a utopia surrounded by an AI, so she will be a little pampered. They somehow remind me of the characters of the cultural stories of Iain M Banks, except that they are not special agents for special circumstances, so are not so wise,” he writes. “I do not find that I must completely identify myself with the characters in a story. I can follow them, without them being saints or superheroes.”

I finished Darkness lake With a lot of capital thoughts, many of which I still think about. Did the things of the black hole really make sense? Did I really understand what happened at the end? I’m still not sure, but I like to make him think everywhere – just like Barbara, who concludes that the novel “went to directions that I did not expect, and was certainly provoked”.

“Towards the end, I felt as if I was back in the 1980s, trying to give meaning to the paradoxes of Gödel by Douglas Hofstadter, Escher, Bach: a golden eternal braid,” she adds. “Fortunately, it didn’t last too long, but I’m still disconcerted by the end. I do not understand why the Joyns did what she did. And did the gentleman get what he wanted, or not?

Paul is also always perplexed alongside Barbara and I: “The end was perhaps confusing because of the physics of the black hole,” he wrote. “In addition, geometry stuff inside / outside an infinite object were rather flexions of mind.”

Let’s go from the physics of the black hole to gravity for our next reading, which is the wonderful Circular movement by Alex Foster. This first brilliant new novel imagines that the rotation of the earth is accelerating gradually, with increasingly devastating effects as the days go short, ultimately only 2 hours. I really loved it and I can’t wait to find out what you all think about it. You can consult an extract from the novel here – it shows you how this accelerated land is, inevitably, the fault of us humans – and read a play from Alex here, in which it tells how the physics of an accelerated land would take place. I will speak to him later this month of the novel, so ask all the questions you have for him on our Facebook group.