Gollancz, 2010, 282p.

You know that you’re reading something a bit out of the ordinary when the first sentence of a novel is “I am not the hero of this story.” Whether or not this statement is reliable is a question that can only be answered by reading the whole but, coupled with the narrator’s knowingness about how a novel ought to be structured, shows a strong authorial awareness of his craft. It is a consciously literary sentence and the novel as a whole bears out its promise. I didn’t much take to Roberts’s 2011 novel By Light Alone but was more impressed by his much earlier Stone. A back cover quote on New Model Army from Kim Stanley Robinson says, “Roberts should have won the 2009 Booker Prize.” (That would have been for Roberts’s prior book Yellow Blue Tibia which I have yet to read. New Model Army has literary claims to have won it in 2010. I can see why it was not considered, though.)

The New Model Army of the title, whose members have named it Pantegral, is – like other NMAs of its sort – a truly democratic one. Enabled by the internet – its communications and information web is referred to as a “Wiki” throughout – to communicate and discuss in real time, they vote on proposals on tactical and strategic matters and act on the majority decision. This contrasts with the hierarchical, feudal structures of the traditional state army against which it fights – and repeatedly defeats.

The battle sequences are believably described though the background to the war that is taking place in a disintegrating UK is a trifle – if amusingly – far-fetched. In addition the ease with which the NMA’s members access advanced ordinance wasn’t fully obvious, the rest of life in England, which is where the first segment is set, seems little different from the present where such access is limited to say the least. (Or I hope it is.)

An echo of Stone is in the narration. Here the narrative is a kind of memoir addressed as if to a US colonel by whom Block is being interrogated and who wishes to use him as a weapon against NMAs. Unless we are to infer that later Block returns to the US this doesn’t quite work in the second long section when Block falls into the hands of an Alsatian NMA known as Schäferhund, nor in the very much shorter third segment.

New Model Army has important things to say about why wars occur and the nature of humanity – what we do in general and why we do it. Treating not only with the evolution of humanity beyond feudalism into the “giants” of the NMAs but also with the literary perennials of love and death, it packs a lot into its 282 pages.

(Unfortunately there was a span count of 3, though; plus 1 “lay.”)

Gollancz, 2004, 303p, plus 13p glossary.

This is an epistolary novel unusual in that the addressee of each letter is the stone of the title.

In a space-faring society known as t’T where crime is all but unknown Ae starts her narration awaiting execution in a seemingly inescapable jail situated in the upper atmosphere of a star. The death sentence is carried out by the removal of her dotTech (nanodevices which repair any deleterious damage and render humans effectively immortal.) However, having struck a bargain with mysterious would be liberators to kill the inhabitants of an entire planet she is soon sprung from her confinement. Unfortunately we do not get to this climax for a long part of the book as Ae travels the galaxy and meets with various people fascinated by the injuries, illnesses and scars she suffers as a result of her lack of dotTech.

She kills one who has begun to suspect her status as an escapee – this is a necessarily laborious process because of their dotTech and is gone into in detail – yet later takes a lover. A lot of discussion centres around a galactic phenomenon known as the Great Gravity Trench, an anomaly where space has been bent back on itself like a ruffled sheet. Indeed it sometimes seems as if Roberts is using his story to present a primer text on quantum theory. The faster than light mechanism works by means of simultaneous quantum adjustments but is constrained by mass – effectively anything larger than a human is debarred – and also by the volume of space involved; fast-space allows up to 3000c, slow-space up to 3c and sub-light space only Einsteinian travel. These areas are seemingly influenced by the Gravity Trench.

To portray a mass murderer in any sort of sympathetic light is a difficult trick to pull off. While Roberts does not quite succeed in this he nevertheless draws the reader in to the story. In many ways I felt I was reading a 1950s or 60s piece of SF, here. The characters seemed a bit wooden, but of course they were being filtered through Ae’s consciousness.

It is a neat authorial trick to get round the information dumping problem by having the narration couched as what is effectively a confession but also as a translation (supposedly from Ae’s language Glicé into Amglish) complete with footnotes. Under a psychiatrist’s suggestion Ae is telling her story to a stone due to her inability/reluctance to communicate with other humans.

Stone is an interesting read but with some longueurs. I’ll look out for more Roberts.

(However there was a span, shrunk and miniscule count of 1 each.)