Angelmaker

This novel is a caper and a part of a system of capers, pay attention to it! Several Harkaway-standard larger-than-life characters are off to the races, neck deep in a bizarre espionage adventure with roots in second world war mad science and the pursuit of truth.

Fundamentally, apart from anything else, this is a fun novel, and it's having fun with itself too. It has Guy-Ritchie-movie energy, classic British gangster swagger, and chaotic spy-movie thrills. Everyone in here is an utterly wild caricature of a British archetype. The sect of engineer-monks dedicated to finding the divine in craft is absolutely joyful. There's a lot to love and I had a great time.

I can't help reading echoes of the same themes which eventually became Gnomon. The arch-villain has echoes of the character who becomes Gnomon themself. The themes of legitimate and illegitimate state power & surveillance vs the autonomy of the individual and the capacity to resist. The tension around the implications of comprehensive knowledge, truth, and transparency — how much is too much?

But (mild spoilers for the operating principle of the MacGuffin beyond this point), I'd like to rant about the theory behind the doomsday they're trying to prevent. It's a classic quantum quantum quantum problem, much like the last third of Anathem, which I otherwise quite enjoyed.

Human consciousness is not, I repeat is not, a consequence of quantum effects. Faffing around with quantum stuff does not impact consciousness unless you also create classical real physical phenomena. Humans fundamentally don't have free will except perhaps randomly at the margins. You cannot "freeze" all the randomness out of the world by observing it too hard. All that observation stuff isn't attached to the consciousness of the observer, though sci-com has done a very bad job at explaining this. Quantum superpositions don't collapse because the "observer" is human or conscious. They collapse because a physical phenomenon would have a different outcome depending on which state the system is in*. The "observer" is any physical system; that's what collapses the wave. Human awareness is irrelevant.

Likewise, you cannot collapse the whole universe into static determinism by observing it too hard. You cannot observe that much! The physical realities of the universe limit how much of what can be observed! A machine which did this sort of super-observing would be much larger than the universe, because it would need to mechanically observe every electron and photon, and then every particle making up the machine would need to be observed by another machine, and so on and so on. The best machine that exists for observing/determining the universe is the universe itself, which is already as causally-bound to itself as it can be. Any attempts to pin down uncertainty and randomness in one place allow a commensurate amount of other stuff to be unobserved. The whole thesis of the uncertainty principle is that there exist very real physical limits on what can be observed and known.

None of which makes the silly speculative premise in the middle of a book full of impossible fictions any less fun or reasonable in the context of the novel. There's really nothing wrong with using pseudoscience in science fiction. And this is a fun thought experiment, for sure. I just… these misapprehensions are so common that it's frustrating to see them even in fiction. Because I worry about just reinforcing this misinformation, even though there's no reason to take this bit of fiction more literally than any of the other fictitious elements of the novel. Rant over.

*Though this is an idea which is almost impossible to truly internalize, so, for ethical reasons, I recommend acting as though you have free will and moral responsibility for your own actions, but pushing society to treat destructive behaviors as systems problems rather than personal moral failings.

In an alternate, present-day London, Joe Spork--clock repairman and son of a legendary gangster--accepts a commission to repair an old automaton. Unknowingly, he sets in motion an impending disaster, which is the culmination of a decades-old battle between a British Intelligence agent and a brutal Southeast Asian dictator.

This is not my typical style of reading. I don't usually go in for humor, but Nick Harkaway is the son of the Grandmaster of Espionage himself, John le Carré, so I wanted to see what the son could do with speculative fiction.

In general, the strengths of this novel are mostly in the dialog. The banter is witty and hilarious. The characters are adequate and serve their purpose, save the protagonist himself, who goes through an unbelievable metamorphosis from anonymous geek to popular hero even though he doesn't possess any of the skills to do so. And, unfortunately, the narrative is verbose and overblown. At times there are some interesting comments, but much of it is pointless digression which doesn't advance the story and only serves as filler. If a character has to use a pen, you'd better believe you'll hear the full history of the pen before the character is finished writing.

The plot and structure are a bit unusual. The villain makes a late entrance and is mostly absent towards the end. Most of his presence is felt in a lengthy flashback in the middle. The world-altering disaster is hardly touched on outside of a few quick comments in the news, making it difficult to get a sense of the scope and urgency. Many of the events just seem like mini urban adventures for the reader to discover this alternate London and meet some colorful characters. And finally, the mixture of the serious and humorous doesn't play well together in this instance, and the very nature of the automaton and its danger is ridiculous.

Also, what kind of idiot designs an impenetrable fortress with train tracks leading right up to the wall?

However, knowing the history of Nick Harkaway's father, John le Carré, and of his con-man grandfather--and that John le Carré used it as the basis for his brilliant novel A Perfect Spy--it is interesting to see the relationship between Joseph Spork, Matthew "Tommy Gun" Spork, and his grandfather Daniel. At least it has something in that regard for readers who are interested in the theme of fathers. There's also a discussion about restricting personal freedoms in the name of public safety that's topical and echoes some of John le Carré's current writing.

It's not a horrible novel, but it isn't very good, either. There's too much frustration if humor isn't your goal or if you have moderate-to-high expectations for what you read. It's rather like spending an evening talking with a smartass. Sure, the smartass is witty and funny, but it gets tiring the longer you stay. Perhaps this novel would have worked better if it had been shorter, but I get the feeling Harkaway likes words...lots of words. I'd recommend this to people who want a more mature, less fantastical version of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere or a more verbose version of something like Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, but with less-polished absurdity.