Jack Glass (Golden Age) [Hardcover]

Adam Roberts' latest novel is in three parts, each written as a separate mystery (of a sort - they're not all Whodunnits) but making up a greater whole.

The first part is a prison story. A group of convicts are marooned on an asteroid for seven years. They must make it habitable or they will die.

The second introduces two teenage girls, the putative heirs to the Clan Argent. Diane and Eva are the result of advanced genetic engineering (we may suspect, but never learn for sure, that Alice, Beth and Carol before them may not have come up to scratch...) There is perhaps a touch of Dune here - the Argents jostle with a number of other clans for a position immediately below the ruling Ulanovs but above a mass of guilds, commercial concerns and mafias. Treachery and violence is always distinctly possible.

The third part follows closely from the second and could be described as a locked room mystery (but so could the others as well). It does bring together themes from the book as a whole, and it provides some answers (although I don't think we ever learn who the man was running through the olive grove in the heat of the day (or why he was running) in part 2).

"Jack Glass" does, in some respects, pick up themes from last year's By Light Alone. I'm thinking especially of the sort-of post-scarcity setting - in Jack Glass, there is no shortage of room - humanity has populated space with flimsy sphere habitations - or of food - most people exist on spore grown "ghunk" fed by sunlight. But, as in the earlier book, it's far from being a utopia: the poor live flavourless lives, subsisting on the basics and very definitely at the bottom of the heap.

Another resemblance is in characters. As in "By Light", "Jack Glass" has as its main protagonists (apart from Jack himself) a couple of rather spoiled, privileged teenage girls. Roberts has some fun creating a plausible future teen-speak ("No wavey way!") which is only one example of his ingenious use of language in the book - the preface, for example introduces the verb "to doctorwatson". Some of the invented terms are explained in an appendix, which also serves as a short primer to 26th century society. This is a rigid hierarchy, with the Ulanovs at the top and the Sump at the bottom.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, though very slightly less than I did By Light Alone, mainly because I found most of part 2 rather slow in pace, especially after the dramatic end to part 1. Having said that, considering it as a single book, it's really very good and fun SF and well worth reading, whether you've read Roberts before or not.

The book cover looks amazing and apart from the rocket ships, could be mistaken for non-genre literature. The three quotes on the back all mention the word "literary". So it makes me smile to think of a reader picking up this book expecting Ian McEwan (mentioned on the reverse), and discovering (and hopefully falling in love with) this political, techno, 100% pure science fiction novel. The inside jacket gets it right "From a tiny asteroid in the far reaches of space, to a comfortable country house, to a sealed orbital habitat, Adam Roberts takes us on a spellbinding journey through a future that challenges all our notions of crime, punishment, power and freedom." Get in! The book is split into three stories. The first is a very melancholic and dark prison tale, full of despair and horror. This acts as an introduction to the main story and longer middle section. This second story uses a common cyberpunk theme of warring multinational corporations and heirs amongst numerous others. The third and final section deals with the war aftermath and revolutionary activity against these vicious capitalist "clans". Funny, serious, exciting and thought provoking. The prose throughout is a joy to read.

This book is three stories about Jack Glass, a wanted criminal in a future solar system where a draconian oligarchy rules the space-ways. Glass is rumored to be a terrorist and is certainly anti-authority. He believes that his survival is vital to the survival of the species. And so he has to commit a series of murders. The first tale is of seven convicts marooned on an asteroid and what they will do to survive. One of the convicts is Glass, and what will he do to survive? The second and third tales are linked with the same characters and lead to a chase across the solar system, from Earth to space habitat. The second tale was an Agatha Christie style whodunnit. Deliberately so, and was probably the more interesting of the to because it introduced the nobility of the future. The third was a chase story and was a bit of a bore.