Review of The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts

Tucked into the middle of Ian Whates’ 2014 anthology Solaris Rising 3 is Adam Robert’s short story “Thing and Sick”.  Garnering little to no notice, it tells of two researchers sitting out long nights in Antarctica on a SETI project.  Together they maintain radios and machinery, cables and computer programs, but their free time serves only to widen the divide between their personalities.  One an introverted Kant fanatic, the other a more extroverted, pop culture kind of guy, trouble brews when the latter agrees to sell the former one of his personal letters from their weekly mail drops.  Possessing just the right tinge of something-else-ness to make the story science fiction, I thought “Roberts amalgamates philosophy, suspense, the isolation of Antarctica, and a minor character study in a truly compelling story. And the last line?  Beautifully slingshot.”  The slingshot, apparently, was into a novel.  In 2015 Roberts revealed the arching shot, titled The Thing Itself.

Positively non-standard in structure and form (a refreshing break from the glut of less-than-inspiring sf currently flooding the market), The Thing Itself extends the story of the two Antarctic researchers, Roy Curtius and Charles Gardner, to make the short story a prologue for the two’s later experiences in life, as well as the wild array of tributary fiction.  Missing toes and disfigured by frostbite, Gardner is unable to return to normal life in the UK after his time in the Antarctica with Curtius.  He descends into bad relationships and alcoholism and ends up working at a landfill for years before he is contacted by a scientist from a cutting edge institute.  Lured to the facility with promises of monthly compensation, car, and living quarters, it isn’t long before the secrets of the institute start revealing themselves.  Curtius living in a mental institution, he demands to see Gardner before he will reveal to the institute any of the advanced SETI programming he wrote while in Antarctica.  Gardner finally agreeing to meet with Curtius, it turns out to be a decision he will regret.  Reality slipping steadily away underfoot, the thing itself becomes as muddied as it does lucid.

Roberts overlaying his story on Immanuel Kant’s finely tuned philosophy of the reality of reality, The Thing Itself is as much about the thing (reality) as it is an abstract take on John W. Campbell's own Thing in the novella "Who Goes There?".  Reality slowly spun beyond realistic, Roberts uses AI, time travel, advanced communication technology and the subjectivity of perception as means of slipping and sliding beyond what the average human sees and understands on a daily basis to probe potential reality beyond.  Or, Gardner’s tale becomes ever more surreal even as his understanding of the true nature of existence deepens…

But for the ostensible dependence on Kant, there remains the presence of David Hume in The Thing Itself.  Physics—space and time—at the forefront of the novel, one might think Hume's billiard balls clicking and clacking across the velvet might be the subject matter I'm referring to. Surprisingly, no. It’s Hume’s later philosophy, particularly that which wrestles with the likes of first cause that becomes Roberts’ focus.  As Hume felt forced to admit, that there must be a supreme being of some type given the lack of any other evidence, so too does Roberts dance with the notion of a ghost in the beyond—an inexplicable causative to mankind’s understanding of realia.  An odd angle for a contemporary novel, it should be pointed out Roberts does not offer the novel as proof of faith, rather as a thought experiment.

Regarding the atypical form of the novel, it’s for a couple of reasons.  First is that Roberts uses the subsections of Kant’s theory of reality as a means of chapterizing The Thing Itself.  Second is that said chapters are non-linear in the sense that it’s only every other chapter which follows Gardner’s storyline. The intervening chapters completely abandon Gardner to shoot to different places and times and tell others’ stories, sometimes in a fashion directly related to the novel’s main storyline, and sometimes only indirectly.  “Badeker’s Fermi”, for example (which happens also to be yet another short story from a separately published sf anthology), is the novel’s second chapter.  Offering an ineffable experience comparable yet distinct from Gardner’s, it bears no relation to a later chapter/story telling of an abused boy in Victorian England and the demons which come to haunt him.  Nor does the chapter telling of humans—“ghosts”—traveling from the future to our time, a bizarre tale unto itself.  All in all, for readers tired of standardized sf, the novel is a gold mine.  

A thought hovers in the back of my mind almost whenever I read an Adam Roberts’ story: he’s not really taking this too seriously.  Not all but most stories feel tossed off, like a last minute homework assignment—still a good mark, but unpolished, just largely refined.  And The Thing Itself is another example.  Of course, part of Roberts’ genius is that he is way ahead of the curve when it comes to originality, story momentum, and ability to turn on crackling prose when the moment requires.  He jumps on ideas and rides them hard.  And background knowledge, intelligence, and a writerly something are all fully evident evident in The Thing Itself.  But at the detail level—the figurative crossing of t’s and the dotting of i’s—the narrative feels a little turbulent, a touch ramshackle.  With the non-linear structure there is bound to be some feeling of disjointedness, thus I should point out I’m referring more to the smoothness of transitions within the chapters, the eye to relative features, attention to tone at more than the surface level—these and other details that usually get treatment in a third or fourth revision.  The Thing Itself shows the potential for such detailed spit and polish, but only the partial realization of it. 

Regardless, Roberts remains one of the tip-top, most original voices in contemporary science fiction, and The Thing Itself continues to prove it.  John W. Campbell's Thing becoming Immanuel Kant’s The Thing Itself is no mean feat.  Slingshot, indeed.*



*Note: post edited March 15, 2017 to update original Thing reference.