ANT004 - Hard facts, fly-by apprenticeships & dystopian sci-fi
In this fourth edition of A Novel Tribe, I focus on books that dive deeply into various professions while my guest, John Murray, shares five novels focused around dystopian futures.
When people talk about novels teaching us, they are generally referring to the softer side of things - the empathy, varying philosophies and ways of thinking that come from seeing the world through the eyes of others. I linked to a Simon Sarris article in issue 1 that describes the way of thinking ingrained by novels beautifully as “a loose poeticism of thought.”
While that is true, there are also many books that deliver on the harder stuff - indisputable facts and encyclopaedic information. There are some that follow characters so closely that it feels as if we are shadowing them as an apprentice might, often gaining an insight into interesting and otherwise closed off professions. Writing that is so deeply researched and rich in detail that it grants us a fly by view of the inner workings of doctors, micro-biologists, lawyers, astronauts, psychologists and more.
Most intriguingly, these books give us a different view than text-books and more factual accounts. Rather than simply telling us the facts and knowledge that these people are working with, we can see into their mind - the conjecture, doubts and systems of thinking that make them tick. If nothing else, it is simply a feeling, the placebo effect of living in these lives, that is as satisfying as the knowledge itself.
Novels along these lines package up a wealth of information, but they would get nowhere without it being in service of an excellent story. The richness of information is not simply to transfer it to us as the reader, but to build the world that we are temporarily living within. The worst examples end up dry and dragging, the best act as trojan horses - information seeping into us almost un-noticed as the writing, plot and characterisation pleasurably carries it along.
Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth
Albert Camus
I find myself drawn to novels such as these when they focus on the natural world. We are led to think of the sciences in school as rigid - a factual antithesis of creativity - but the reality could hardly be more different. The insight and curiosity of physicists and biologists ultimately always hits unexplainable dead-ends, at which point only conjecture, philosophy and sheer wonder can survive. I have come to notice a poetic inclination in the non-fiction writing of scientists such as Sy Montgomery (The Soul of an Octopus), Janna Levin (Black Hole Blues) and Carlo Rovelli (The Order of Time), so it comes as no surprise that there is heavy bleed-over from similar topics into great fiction.
Richard Powers’ is a writer who had already written about genetics, neuroscience and chemical engineering when he released The Overstory in 2018. It follows a diverse range of characters who are linked together by one thing - trees. One of the central characters, a hearing-impaired dendrologist (the study of trees), is ostracised by the scientific world for her seemingly disproved discovery that trees communicate with each other through chemicals, only to be later redeemed. Heavily inspired by the career of ecologist Suzanne Simard, her character weaves fine grain detail about life underneath the forest bed throughout.
A forest knows things. They wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren’t shaped to see. Root plasticity, solving problems and making decisions. Fungal synapses. What else do you want to call it? Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware.
Richard Powers - The Overstory
Another such example is Anthony Doerr’s debut About Grace, which focuses on a hydrologist (the study of water) who’s life is thrown off kilter when he begins to have prophetic dreams. Inspired in part by Wilson A. Bentley’s beautiful early photographs of snowflakes, it tugs at the interconnected nature of the human and natural worlds.
In the infinite permutations of an ice crystal, everything repeats itself, but, really, from another point of view, nothing repeats itself. The arms go out, forming dendrites, sectored plates, the same angle every time, but the final product – because of wind, because of molecular vibration, because of rate of growth and temperature – is never the same.
Anthony Doerr - About Grace
Moving into wider professions, it seems fitting that I have already mentioned Ian McEwan’s work, a writer known for his incredibly well-researched dives into professions from physicists to classical composers and newspaper editors. The prime example comes in the form of The Children Act, which follows a leading High Court Judge working on the case of a seventeen year old who is refusing life-saving medical treatment for religious reasons. Its moral quandary is captivating but it is the deep insight into the judge who must make impossible decisions, her intelligent uncertainty, that makes it tick.
Blind luck, to arrive in the world with your properly formed parts in the right place, to be born to parents who were loving, not cruel, or to escape, by geographical or social accident, war or poverty. And therefore to find it so much easier to be virtuous.
Ian McEwan - The Children Act
Robert Seethaler’s touching The Tobacconist follows a seventeen year old Austrian boy who leaves his home-town for Vienna. He becomes the apprentice to an elderly tobacconist, but it is through his admiration and eventual friendship with Professor Freud, a regular with a fondness for cigars, that we are introduced to a wealth of wisdom from Freud himself and an exploration of the social psychology of Nazi Austria.
We don’t come into this world to find answers, but to ask questions. We grope around, as it were, in perpetual darkness, and it’s only if we’re very lucky that we sometimes see a little flicker of light. And only with a great deal of courage or persistence or stupidity — or, best of all, all three at once — can we make our mark here and there, indicate the way.
Robert Seethaler - The Tobacconist
The most all encompassing novel I have read in a long time, Martin Macinnes’ In Ascension has a certain gravitas from the off. The name, the cover, the single word review quotes (transcendent, magnificent, monumental), the length (496 pages), the booker nomination. All this combines to lead to a premise that is intriguingly ambitious.
It follows a marine biologist, Leigh, from her earliest enchantment with underwater worlds to a single-minded goal of uncovering and understanding the microbes that were the first forms of life on earth. This leads her onto an exploration boat in the most remote depths of the Atlantic Ocean, measuring the largest ocean trench ever discovered, then to a space-program in the blistering heat of California’s Mojave desert and eventually to the furthest reaches of space itself. All the while, her deep knowledge and fascination with the origins of life treats us to breathless diversions into atomic structures and the miracle of existence - the palpable excitement of both Macinnes and his character proving contagious.
Most people agreed that ocean vents were life’s beginning. At their base, archaea - the ancients - feasted on methane and sulphur, converting gases into sugars and founding the food chain […] But archaea still exist […] their most exotic site of all, arguably, is in our stomachs. Presumably they act symbiotically, and help us in some way. No one’s really sure. Among other strange characteristics, archaea have the ability to become dormant, and to reanimate after tens of thousands of years.
It is undoubtedly science fiction - there is interstellar space travel, hints of alien life, strange effects of the ocean water, even time travel - but In Ascension’s power is that it remains believable. A question often asked of sci-fi writing, one that has to be answered for it to gain intrigue, is ‘how did we get from here to there?’ Macinnes does this beautifully - slowly, taking his time, but never blandly. And certainly never soothingly - there are terrifying, mind-altering, humanity-threatening leaps of discovery being made and we must feel the weight of that. It is Leigh’s tenacity, even through her own disbelief and fear, that propels the story forward at a pace that feels like lightning despite its measured depth.
I close my eyes, breathe in, try to realise it, feel exactly where we are, the edge of the interstellar. I sense it on my skin, the ripple of ionised radiation through the mid-deck. We’re drifting out of range of the solar winds, edging into the more dangerous and unstable region of interstellar light. The plasma of another star. We’re cruising towards the heliopause at close to maximum velocity, 9,000 miles per second, 4.7 per cent light speed, partly light ourselves.
Throughout, there is the constant presence of the unknown. The great blackness beyond human knowledge and the theories and superstitions even Leigh and the world leading explorers and engineers around her can’t help but fill it with. A belief that something alien is acting around or through humans sits ever present, a humming tension that keeps the pages turning, and is all the more powerful for the doubt that is also cast upon it.
Basically, it’s guided by what it’s already seen. An object acts in an unusual way, it’s studied more, further anomalous data comes in, leading to still greater attention; the process feeds back on itself. But as a rule, any object studied in sufficient depth will eventually exhibit anomalous behaviour.
This is a book that is far reaching in its geography but even further reaching in the scales of life it examines - from the smallest, singular organisms up to humans, family, society, the solar system and the Oort Cloud that lies beyond it. On all of these levels, the writing is enlightening and Macinnes navigates matters of the heart just as well as the scientific, often merging them to delightful effect. The relationships between his characters simmer with a subtle but ever-present threat of untangling that seems to sit at the heart of everything in the book.
It’s not easy, you know, being a parent. I hope you know that. But I’m not just talking about families and children; I mean everyone. Everyone is a parent. That’s what getting old is: catastrophic senescence. That’s what dying is. You become a parent. You fall into the stream.
It is rare that novels, particularly those of this length, can balance such micro-detail with page-turning pace, but it’s something achieved here. In Ascension is a book that sucks you into the deepest atoms of our world and doesn’t let go until it has upended everything you thought you knew about them.
I looked into the water with eyes that were born there, several billion years before.
In Ascension - Martin Macinnes
Six sci-fi dystopias, by software account executive, John Murray.
1. The Mandibles - Lionel Shriver
Funny and provocative page turner. Set in near-future America, Shriver users the threat of economic collapse to challenge societal norms and question big government.
2. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
A classic sci-fi novel where one man wakes up in hospital to find that everyone else is blind. More than just a survival story, this book is beautifully written and full of wisdom - my personal favourite on this list.
3. The Death of Grass - John Christopher
In terms of pure dystopian survival stories, this is the pinnacle. Fast-paced and full of ethical dilemmas, you’ll undoubtedly find yourself hatching out your own survival plan. Remember, we are only three meals away from chaos.
4. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
A thrilling journey told through the eyes of protagonist, Guy Montag. Set in a world where books are banned, Bradbury explores themes of censorship and intellectual freedom, drawing uncanny parallels to the lack of critical thinking that is too often present in our own world.
5. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
A harrowing yet beautiful story that uses a backdrop of desolation to focus in on the power of connection and the enduring human spirit, even if there’s nothing else left.
6. The Time Machine - H.G.Wells
A journey far beyond a future you’ve likely ever thought about. I found this book expansive and a wonderful reminder that, in a grander scheme, everything is fleeting and therefore precious.
Want to contribute as a guest? Just hit reply and tell me a bit about you.
Bette Adriaanse on her experience of the tensions between art, money and social good - The Other Side of Money. Framed as a punchy numbered list that jumps through time and experience.
When I arrived on the other side of money, I could not do the thing I had planned: to just make art and be happy
This essay by Moxie Marlinspike is, on the face of it, about career advice for young people. In reality, it’s as much about how to live, applying to those of any age.
As a young person, though, I think the best thing you can do is to ignore all of that and simply observe the older people working there […] Look at the real people, and you’ll see the honest future for yourself.
Ted Gioia, inspired by Richard Feynman’s habit of keeping a list of big, open-ended questions to guide his life’s work, lists his own 12 Favourite Problems. It highlights a useful creative practice as well as thought-provoking questions.
Every time you hear a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, ‘How did he do it? He must be a genius!’
Tottenham rapper CASISDEAD is hard to categorise, his style singular. His new album Famous Last Words is a 23 track throwback to a pre-streaming era when albums were works of art. Cinematic skits and beats that conjure visions of eighties roller disco’s frame gritty bars, full of wit.
I hope you’re continuing to enjoy A Novel Tribe. If you are, the best thing you could do to help right now is to share it with someone you know. Simply forward this email or link them to the website.
Until next time,
MQ.