Adam Roberts’ Lake of Darkness is an absorbing story of utopia and evil in a space opera drama that spans multiple worlds, all of which enjoy a post-scarcity civilization. It’s probably not for everyone, though, since it is heavy on philosophical talk and dense descriptions of the physics of black holes and faster than light travel, among other things. At times it reminded me of a play I once acted in, George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman. In that play, the Devil begins a long attack on human kind by saying, more or less, “Have you walked up and down upon the earth lately? Well, I have…” and he proceeds to list all the violence and evil in the world that he has seen. Roberts refers to the same biblical quote that Shaw does from the temptation of Christ when Jesus asks the Devil where he is coming from – walking up and down upon the earth is the reply. From early on, Lake of Darkness prepares us for a meeting with the Gentleman himself who has a devastating effect on a few of the inhabitants of this utopian world.
The story opens with two faster than light ships orbiting a black hole known as QV Tel for short. The captain of one ship, a man named Raine, begins acting strangely and soon starts murdering the rest of the crew. When the crew of the second ship discover what has been happening, they start forming a plan to take Raine into custody. But these folks in the distant future of this story have been raised in a sort of utopia, which the narrator calls a heterotopia.
Because all material needs are met and competition is unnecessary, people group themselves into “fandoms” to pursue their interests. They are really hobbyists, some specializing in physics, some in space flight, some in history, etc. They are totally unused to violence and believe they have resolved all the problems of humanity. Though their ideology seems to have prepared them to deal with malevolence, the crew members trying to capture Raine can only see him as someone in need of mental health care. Once it’s clear he has committed murder, they train themselves and imagine they will be prepared with their plans to readily confine him. Their training is only a form of play and pretend combat. They prove no match for the ingenious clarity of evil that has taken over his mind and being.
In the sixth part of the first chapter, the narrative voice changes. We are hearing Raine describing his transformation, his becoming himself, by committing to his path, through decisive action, through murder. In three paragraphs, each beginning with the number 6, it’s clear who has taken over his thought process. Having achieved his clarity through his first murder, he then relates his conversation with the Gentleman, the Devil himself. It is chillingly logical and far distant from anything that life in heterotopia could prepare its citizens for.
In the society that prevails in Lake of Darkness, there are difficulties (since life in a conflict-free utopia would be pointless) but “setbacks are received as exciting challenges, … distress is bracing rather than … damaging and … tension is a matter of balance, harmony and tautness, not distress or debilitation.” People no longer compete with each other and triumph as others lose, rather all pick their favorite pastimes and flourish together. Evil has been analyzed to its basics in possessiveness, which is rooted out, aggression brought on by excess testosterone, which is medicated, and boredom, which is banished by providing an over-supply of “absorbing, fascinating, stimulating and challenging tasks.”
But even though confronted with Raine’s evil, once a new expedition captures him and takes him back to his home planet, the powers that be can think of nothing better to do than keep him out of sight in a strange prison structure where he is in a state of permanent sedation. But his history draws the interest of a woman named Saccade, a historian interested in serial killers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Like everyone else in this world, she is hopelessly naive, while imagining she is quite sophisticated in the ways of the world. She arranges to interview Raine in a simulation that will protect her from direct contact and presumably from any danger. When Raine appears, he has become terribly misshapen, his skin erupting in sores, his body bent, and the roof of his mouth covered with teeth. At one point, Saccade finds Raine suddenly sitting beside her, and she is shaken deeply.
Her encounter with Raine, even though restricted to a sim, grows on her and gradually leads her, without knowing why, to attempt to steal Raine’s physical body and take it with her to a different planet. Since the authorities can’t imagine why anyone would want to do such a thing, Saccade has little trouble, but one woman approaches her, believing she is probably sleepwalking and not aware of what she is doing. Saccade attacks and nearly kills the woman, but when she is captured she seems ignorant of what she has done and is overcome with grief as she is made to review the video of her actions.
So this story goes, with one character after another falling under the influence of the Gentleman and driven to strange and bloody acts, all of which seem to lead back to QV Tel. Along the way there are extensive and interesting discussions, not just of black holes and utopia, but of more ultimate things about the nature of spacetime, creation, as well as spiritual darkness and light. But Roberts’ skill is to wrap all this in a fairly compelling story that moves quickly through its big beats to what feels like an inevitable climax. And the narrative voice is always intriguing. Early on, that voice seems to be talking to us, the readers in our time, from the vantage point of the future society of its own. There is a sort of boomerang effect in that voice that circles its story, as it gradually makes it way back to the starting point where all is revealed. Lake of Darkness is the first Adam Roberts novel I have read, but it definitely won’t be the last. While this style of writing may not be for everyone, I’m hooked.
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