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The This
The This is the new social media platform everyone is talking about. Allow it to be injected into the roof of your mouth and it will grow into your brain, allow you to connect with others without even picking up your phone. Its followers are growing. Its detractors say it is a cult. But for one journalist, hired to do a puff-piece interview with their CEO, it will change the world forever.Adan just wants to stay at home with his smart-companion Elegy - phone, friend, confidante, sex toy. But when his mother flees to Europe and joins a cult, leaving him penniless, he has to enlist in the army. Sentient robots are invading America, but it seems Adan has a surprising ability to survive their attacks. He has a purpose, even if he doesn't know what it is.And in the far future, war between a hivemind of AIs and the remnants of humanity is coming to its inevitable end. But one woman has developed a weapon which might change the course of the war. It's just a pity she's trapped in an inescapable prison on a hivemind ship.
296 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 3, 2022
67 people are currently reading
1687 people want to read
About the author
Adam Roberts
258 books559 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Adam Roberts (born 1965) is an academic, critic and novelist. He also writes parodies under the pseudonyms of A.R.R.R. Roberts, A3R Roberts and Don Brine. He also blogs at The Valve, a group blog devoted to literature and cultural studies.
He has a degree in English from the University of Aberdeen and a PhD from Cambridge University on Robert Browning and the Classics. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Adam Roberts has been nominated twice for the Arthur C. Clarke Award: in 2001, for his debut novel, Salt, and in 2007, for Gradisil.
Adam Roberts (born 1965) is an academic, critic and novelist. He also writes parodies under the pseudonyms of A.R.R.R. Roberts, A3R Roberts and Don Brine. He also blogs at The Valve, a group blog devoted to literature and cultural studies.
He has a degree in English from the University of Aberdeen and a PhD from Cambridge University on Robert Browning and the Classics. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Adam Roberts has been nominated twice for the Arthur C. Clarke Award: in 2001, for his debut novel, Salt, and in 2007, for Gradisil.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 88 reviews
February 21, 2022
Adam Roberts is easily the most interesting active science fiction author. He is the 21st century's equivalent of John Brunner – endlessly innovative. Though Roberts is more intellectual in style and sophisticated in approach than Brunner was, both have come up with a mix of novels of brilliance and others that push the boundaries so much that they make it difficult to truly engage with them as storytelling. On this spectrum, The This is Roberts’ equivalent of Stand on Zanzibar or The Sheep Look Up – at the boundary-pushing end of the spectrum.
We begin with a chapter located in the Buddhist inter-life concept of the Bardo (I had to look that up), then get a chapter that’s half made up of footnotes that form a kind of electronic stream of consciousness, before getting into intertwined storylines from the near and more distant future. Linking all this (sort of) is what first seems to be a next-step social media system, called The This, but which increasingly facilitates humans becoming part of a hive mind - the Borg without the nasty bolt-on bits. As if all this isn’t enough for one relatively short novel, we also get one of Roberts’ favourite conceits, a riff on a classic SF book - I won't reveal which one, but this fits wonderfully with what has come before.
Underpinning all this is apparently the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Roberts has form on this approach - his wonderful The Thing Itself makes use of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant - but there is a big difference in the way it is done here. I learned all I knew about Kant and Hegel before reading Roberts' books from Monty Python's Philosopher's Song, but in The Thing Itself, some of Kant's ideas are expounded by the characters, so the reader knows what's going on. Here, no one ever mentions Hegel and so concepts of subject and object equivalence, absolute idealism and Spirit are flung about without knowing what to do with them.
I think it is excellent when fiction incorporates cultural references that are only picked up by those who are in the know. A recent episode of the fluffy daytime detective TV show Shakespeare and Hathaway began with a body being found in a near perfect reproduction of Millais' Ophelia painting - and if you knew the painting it provided a little thrill - an Easter egg in gaming terms. But the trouble here is that Hegel's ideas aren't just a little bonus for the cognoscenti, they are essential to pull the threads of the book together. I'd also say that where Kant's philosophy could be seen as fairly scientific, Hegel's seems more of a theological schema - and as such is perhaps not quite as good a fit with science fiction.
This is all intensely clever: I kept pausing to admire what Roberts was doing. But both the fragmented nature of the storytelling and the absence of likeable characters make it a book that’s difficult to truly enjoy. I am very glad I did read it - there’s so much in there – but I prefer a little more of a conventional structure (just as I far prefer Brunner’s Shockwave Rider to either Stand or Sheep). Even so, The This can't be faulted on either in its deluge of ideas or Roberts' bravura: it is a significant achievement.
We begin with a chapter located in the Buddhist inter-life concept of the Bardo (I had to look that up), then get a chapter that’s half made up of footnotes that form a kind of electronic stream of consciousness, before getting into intertwined storylines from the near and more distant future. Linking all this (sort of) is what first seems to be a next-step social media system, called The This, but which increasingly facilitates humans becoming part of a hive mind - the Borg without the nasty bolt-on bits. As if all this isn’t enough for one relatively short novel, we also get one of Roberts’ favourite conceits, a riff on a classic SF book - I won't reveal which one, but this fits wonderfully with what has come before.
Underpinning all this is apparently the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Roberts has form on this approach - his wonderful The Thing Itself makes use of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant - but there is a big difference in the way it is done here. I learned all I knew about Kant and Hegel before reading Roberts' books from Monty Python's Philosopher's Song, but in The Thing Itself, some of Kant's ideas are expounded by the characters, so the reader knows what's going on. Here, no one ever mentions Hegel and so concepts of subject and object equivalence, absolute idealism and Spirit are flung about without knowing what to do with them.
I think it is excellent when fiction incorporates cultural references that are only picked up by those who are in the know. A recent episode of the fluffy daytime detective TV show Shakespeare and Hathaway began with a body being found in a near perfect reproduction of Millais' Ophelia painting - and if you knew the painting it provided a little thrill - an Easter egg in gaming terms. But the trouble here is that Hegel's ideas aren't just a little bonus for the cognoscenti, they are essential to pull the threads of the book together. I'd also say that where Kant's philosophy could be seen as fairly scientific, Hegel's seems more of a theological schema - and as such is perhaps not quite as good a fit with science fiction.
This is all intensely clever: I kept pausing to admire what Roberts was doing. But both the fragmented nature of the storytelling and the absence of likeable characters make it a book that’s difficult to truly enjoy. I am very glad I did read it - there’s so much in there – but I prefer a little more of a conventional structure (just as I far prefer Brunner’s Shockwave Rider to either Stand or Sheep). Even so, The This can't be faulted on either in its deluge of ideas or Roberts' bravura: it is a significant achievement.
February 5, 2022
I pretty much inhaled The This, as it playfully tweaked a number of my interests, playfully being the core word. A big picture absolute reincarnation treatise mixed with a much more modern seeming social media satire, there are also chapters that visit a number of future war scenarios. It possibly overwhelms itself with ideas and its own cuteness in places, but I must admit it made me think and it made me laugh in equal order whilst being both exceedingly dense and readable.
We start in The Bardo where a soul is constantly being reincarnated, and we flip through these lives often in miniscule summaries : there is an entire page of "You are a farmer." until we get a life pressed into the army. The book often alternates a page dense, humourous info dump, with more philosophical conversations, here the other voice in the Bardo is Abby (which stands for a number of "of course" concepts in the book). Next, and the closest thing we get to a returning narrative, we are introdeced to Rich, a sad and lonely writer in London who clowly becomes entangled with "The This" - a twitter style social media there the interface is hardwired into your brain - creating inevitably some sort of hive mind wghich starts to worry the non-hive minds out there. We revist Rich a few times, most other chapters are one off tangentially linked short stories (a woman who invents a device that can freeze Venus, a future warrior given the secret to undermine its enemy). And as the book progresses the idea becomes larger and larger until we are faces with intergalactic communication and parallel universes. Its all the Marvel stuff but with some actual Hegellian philosophy behind it.
All this might seem difficult, but Roberts sketches his few actual characters really well, and here has a knack of using repetition, and character beats to come and haunt us later. And at the heart of it is a very compelling organisational idea that life has evolved ever more complex systems, is it possible that an assimilationist hive mind might be the end point of this process. He does have to stay his hand in places, and possibly indulges in a little too much exposition in the final chapter, but it is audacious exposition on a multi-dimensional scale so I will let that slide. The fact that he allows himself an extended 1984 parody, as well as a little raid of Grant Morrison's Hypertime is all for the good (hive minds after all will have all ideas in them). Lots of heady big concept fun.
We start in The Bardo where a soul is constantly being reincarnated, and we flip through these lives often in miniscule summaries : there is an entire page of "You are a farmer." until we get a life pressed into the army. The book often alternates a page dense, humourous info dump, with more philosophical conversations, here the other voice in the Bardo is Abby (which stands for a number of "of course" concepts in the book). Next, and the closest thing we get to a returning narrative, we are introdeced to Rich, a sad and lonely writer in London who clowly becomes entangled with "The This" - a twitter style social media there the interface is hardwired into your brain - creating inevitably some sort of hive mind wghich starts to worry the non-hive minds out there. We revist Rich a few times, most other chapters are one off tangentially linked short stories (a woman who invents a device that can freeze Venus, a future warrior given the secret to undermine its enemy). And as the book progresses the idea becomes larger and larger until we are faces with intergalactic communication and parallel universes. Its all the Marvel stuff but with some actual Hegellian philosophy behind it.
All this might seem difficult, but Roberts sketches his few actual characters really well, and here has a knack of using repetition, and character beats to come and haunt us later. And at the heart of it is a very compelling organisational idea that life has evolved ever more complex systems, is it possible that an assimilationist hive mind might be the end point of this process. He does have to stay his hand in places, and possibly indulges in a little too much exposition in the final chapter, but it is audacious exposition on a multi-dimensional scale so I will let that slide. The fact that he allows himself an extended 1984 parody, as well as a little raid of Grant Morrison's Hypertime is all for the good (hive minds after all will have all ideas in them). Lots of heady big concept fun.
January 29, 2022
Review first posted at: https://www.curiositykilledthebookwor...
The This is the hot new social network. A sort of hands free Twitter, they say. All you need is an implant in the roof of your mouth, the world will never be the same again.
As always with Adam Roberts’ books, there’s a lot to unpick and I imagine some of it went over my head, but at the end of the day it was also an immensely enjoyable science fiction story. Essentially it’s about social media, its influence on the world and on our psyche. What do we sacrifice for the chance to be part of something? Our privacy? Our sense of self? People don’t really ask questions when they’re offered something for free, especially if there’s FOMO.
We joke about asking the hive mind when we reach out on Twitter, but here we see the hive mind in action, from its early days where The This is seen as mostly harmless, the latest tech company with cult-like status, to the point where its users no longer seem like themselves. And beyond, where it threatens our individuality as we know it. Some might ask if we’re already there, with our Twitter echo chambers and divisive politics. Some might feel that thinking for yourself is overrated.
Also it’s about loneliness and the desire to belong. We reach for social media even when we hate it, because that’s where people are. In the future the story shows Adan, who just wants to be left alone with his Phene, a humanoid version of a phone. Adan is in love with her. Has our reliance on our devices gone too far?
As the story jumps through time we see a glimpse at the future of humanity. Is the hive mind just the next step in human evolution or will it be our downfall? It shows us the futility of being human in a technologically advanced war, something we are already approaching. The war shows senseless loss of life, we see comradery being formed amongst soldiers for their lives to be snuffed out in minutes. It certainly isn’t romanticised. And it’s not entirely implausible that social media could cause a war these days.
If philosophy is your thing, Adam Roberts explores some Hegelian philosophy, as he did with Kant in The Thing Itself. Hegel was obsessed with the word “this” being both specific and general at the same time. However it really doesn’t matter if you have no idea about all that stuff, the novel works without prior knowledge.
I loved the section that is a Nineteen Eighty-Four homage. It is pretty much set in Orwell’s vision with the megastates of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia having a slightly different interpretation. It all makes total sense in the context of The This.
The This is the hot new social network. A sort of hands free Twitter, they say. All you need is an implant in the roof of your mouth, the world will never be the same again.
As always with Adam Roberts’ books, there’s a lot to unpick and I imagine some of it went over my head, but at the end of the day it was also an immensely enjoyable science fiction story. Essentially it’s about social media, its influence on the world and on our psyche. What do we sacrifice for the chance to be part of something? Our privacy? Our sense of self? People don’t really ask questions when they’re offered something for free, especially if there’s FOMO.
We joke about asking the hive mind when we reach out on Twitter, but here we see the hive mind in action, from its early days where The This is seen as mostly harmless, the latest tech company with cult-like status, to the point where its users no longer seem like themselves. And beyond, where it threatens our individuality as we know it. Some might ask if we’re already there, with our Twitter echo chambers and divisive politics. Some might feel that thinking for yourself is overrated.
Also it’s about loneliness and the desire to belong. We reach for social media even when we hate it, because that’s where people are. In the future the story shows Adan, who just wants to be left alone with his Phene, a humanoid version of a phone. Adan is in love with her. Has our reliance on our devices gone too far?
As the story jumps through time we see a glimpse at the future of humanity. Is the hive mind just the next step in human evolution or will it be our downfall? It shows us the futility of being human in a technologically advanced war, something we are already approaching. The war shows senseless loss of life, we see comradery being formed amongst soldiers for their lives to be snuffed out in minutes. It certainly isn’t romanticised. And it’s not entirely implausible that social media could cause a war these days.
If philosophy is your thing, Adam Roberts explores some Hegelian philosophy, as he did with Kant in The Thing Itself. Hegel was obsessed with the word “this” being both specific and general at the same time. However it really doesn’t matter if you have no idea about all that stuff, the novel works without prior knowledge.
I loved the section that is a Nineteen Eighty-Four homage. It is pretty much set in Orwell’s vision with the megastates of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia having a slightly different interpretation. It all makes total sense in the context of The This.
February 25, 2022
I think I can contribute little to this review. The book begins as one thing and ends as quite another... or not. This "becoming" of the plot is well thought out and if there is something that cannot be discussed about the author, it is his talent.
Along the way I suppose I have missed details, especially in the last part of the novel. A few perhaps? Not too many I hope. In one of these last chapters there is a rather daring twist that leaves me perplexed. A foreign object that apparently clashes with the rest of the novel and that I understand as a tribute to a great classic which fortunately I read very recently (a clue: it starts with 19 and ends with 84). I should also clarify that at the end of the novel everything makes (more) sense.
So what I can say about the book is that the most "tangible" aspect in itself is worth reading: a very incisive critique of how the social networks and their intrinsic perverse side affects us. This is not a book against social networks, far from it: the author enjoys a privileged perspective in terms of diagnosis of our age and at the same time provides us with a fascinating proposal for a possible future of our society: great the concept of Toycene. And of course there is more, but here we enter the realms of... Hegel.
I'm sorry if I've been unclear with this review. Do I recommend it? Yes, but bear in mind that it is a book by Adam Roberts.
Along the way I suppose I have missed details, especially in the last part of the novel. A few perhaps? Not too many I hope. In one of these last chapters there is a rather daring twist that leaves me perplexed. A foreign object that apparently clashes with the rest of the novel and that I understand as a tribute to a great classic which fortunately I read very recently (a clue: it starts with 19 and ends with 84). I should also clarify that at the end of the novel everything makes (more) sense.
So what I can say about the book is that the most "tangible" aspect in itself is worth reading: a very incisive critique of how the social networks and their intrinsic perverse side affects us. This is not a book against social networks, far from it: the author enjoys a privileged perspective in terms of diagnosis of our age and at the same time provides us with a fascinating proposal for a possible future of our society: great the concept of Toycene. And of course there is more, but here we enter the realms of... Hegel.
I'm sorry if I've been unclear with this review. Do I recommend it? Yes, but bear in mind that it is a book by Adam Roberts.
February 22, 2022
This is another offering with a rather chatty blurb that you’d do well to avoid as it gives away far too much of the story. Although it also manages to be very misleading, because it concentrates on the plot, rather than the narrative engine of the book which isn’t the storyline.
Most novels provide stories that take their readers away to other places, peopled by sympathetic characters with whom we can identify. Sometimes it provides pure escape and entertainment, other times the story provides a warning message, or commentary on current inequalities – such as George Orwell’s 1984. However, there are novels who are powered by an idea, or theory and the story is tailored to support that notion – the other example that immediately springs to my mind is Jo Walton’s masterly and very enjoyable Thessaly trilogy, which explores Plato’s theory of an ideal society as proposed in his book, Republic. And this book is another one that falls into that category – this time looking at Hegel’s philosophy in amongst other ideas.
That might sound dry and unappealing – and in less able hands that might be the case. But Roberts is a remarkable writer who deserves to be far better known for his talent and versatility. Few others could get away with flourishes like the opening passage at the start of the book, which charts the various incarnations of a single person, circling around the phrase, In the Bardo subject and object are the same thing… While the characters and the storylines matter and certainly had me turning the pages to see what would happen next, they also support or challenge the ideas that Roberts wants to explore. And my mention of 1984 wasn’t merely incidental – there is also a homage to the book in amongst the closing chapters that is both entertaining and slightly horrifying.
The notion of social media is thoroughly examined – what does it mean to be part of world-wide group such as Twitter. And what would happen if those who spend their time locked onto their phones tweeting were offered the opportunity to become part of a new cult craze called The This. Better still, to belong you don’t even need a phone – a small implant is inserted in the roof of your mouth and you’re good to go. You can be part of the hive mind of The This 24/7 – and never alone, again. Roberts explores the idea of loneliness and isolation versus the lure of belonging – although I don’t wholly agree with his premise or his conclusions, given he clearly has very fixed ideas about the impact of social media. But that doesn’t stop this book being a fascinating read that still has me mulling over the ideas it tosses out as the story rackets along at a gripping pace. Very highly recommended for those who enjoy their science fiction laced with philosophical ideas along with a very readable story. While I obtained an arc of The This from the publisher via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
9/10
Most novels provide stories that take their readers away to other places, peopled by sympathetic characters with whom we can identify. Sometimes it provides pure escape and entertainment, other times the story provides a warning message, or commentary on current inequalities – such as George Orwell’s 1984. However, there are novels who are powered by an idea, or theory and the story is tailored to support that notion – the other example that immediately springs to my mind is Jo Walton’s masterly and very enjoyable Thessaly trilogy, which explores Plato’s theory of an ideal society as proposed in his book, Republic. And this book is another one that falls into that category – this time looking at Hegel’s philosophy in amongst other ideas.
That might sound dry and unappealing – and in less able hands that might be the case. But Roberts is a remarkable writer who deserves to be far better known for his talent and versatility. Few others could get away with flourishes like the opening passage at the start of the book, which charts the various incarnations of a single person, circling around the phrase, In the Bardo subject and object are the same thing… While the characters and the storylines matter and certainly had me turning the pages to see what would happen next, they also support or challenge the ideas that Roberts wants to explore. And my mention of 1984 wasn’t merely incidental – there is also a homage to the book in amongst the closing chapters that is both entertaining and slightly horrifying.
The notion of social media is thoroughly examined – what does it mean to be part of world-wide group such as Twitter. And what would happen if those who spend their time locked onto their phones tweeting were offered the opportunity to become part of a new cult craze called The This. Better still, to belong you don’t even need a phone – a small implant is inserted in the roof of your mouth and you’re good to go. You can be part of the hive mind of The This 24/7 – and never alone, again. Roberts explores the idea of loneliness and isolation versus the lure of belonging – although I don’t wholly agree with his premise or his conclusions, given he clearly has very fixed ideas about the impact of social media. But that doesn’t stop this book being a fascinating read that still has me mulling over the ideas it tosses out as the story rackets along at a gripping pace. Very highly recommended for those who enjoy their science fiction laced with philosophical ideas along with a very readable story. While I obtained an arc of The This from the publisher via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
9/10
January 29, 2023
This is, in many ways, the book I wish I had the skill and talent to have written.
June 5, 2022
It is genuinely uncanny that I happened to read Alexandria by Paul Kingsnorth and The This by Adam Roberts consecutively. From the blurbs and my prior familiarity with both authors, I expected them to be utterly different novels. In style, structure, and genre, they are. However, both have the same central theme: conflict between embodied individual humans and disembodied posthuman collective hiveminds. That is a little odd, but what I found really weird is that the two books have the same ending. This similarity would be less odd had I come across such an ending before these two novels; I had not. I'm tempted to ascribe some significance to it as an expression of contemporary existential and technological anxieties. The overlap may also stem from Hegel, whose work I know very little about (and that filtered through later philosophers). Roberts explicitly characterises The This as a 'Hegel-novel' to match his 'Kant-novel', The Thing Itself (which I recommend). Either way, it's an extraordinary coincidence that I read the two adjacently. I love this type of reading serendipity.
Returning to The This itself, the title is awkward but the novel is excellent. I associate Roberts with well-executed high concept sci-fi and I think this is one of his best. I much preferred its more engaging, thorough, and thoughtful treatment of the theme to that of Alexandria. The This initially appears to be a satire and critique of social media, then becomes steadily more existential. Chapter two has a convincingly inane twitter feed as a footnote throughout, which was particularly amusing to read on a long weekend when I'd logged out of twitter for the first time in years.
The narrative extends forwards and sideways in time, as usual with Roberts novels via the perspective of Some Hapless Man. Although I wish he'd try a Some Hapless Woman protagonist for variety, I enjoyed the depiction of mundanity in a world where upload to an immortal posthuman hivemind is an option. This jaded angle on the future of technology is from a Transmetropolitan, Vol. 1: Back on the Street-esque vision of the future:
A war between humans and posthumans is also shown strikingly via a grunt trooper. The last few chapters stand out as the highlights.
The This constantly juxtaposes philosophical abstractions and human pettiness, to alternately funny and profound effect. There is nothing more mundane than death, I suppose, as it comes to us all. The plot is cleverly structured and the world-building full of arresting details. Novels by Roberts are always focused on exploring abstract ideas in a somewhat fantastical material context. I think The This does so in a particularly satisfying and memorable way.
Returning to The This itself, the title is awkward but the novel is excellent. I associate Roberts with well-executed high concept sci-fi and I think this is one of his best. I much preferred its more engaging, thorough, and thoughtful treatment of the theme to that of Alexandria. The This initially appears to be a satire and critique of social media, then becomes steadily more existential. Chapter two has a convincingly inane twitter feed as a footnote throughout, which was particularly amusing to read on a long weekend when I'd logged out of twitter for the first time in years.
The narrative extends forwards and sideways in time, as usual with Roberts novels via the perspective of Some Hapless Man. Although I wish he'd try a Some Hapless Woman protagonist for variety, I enjoyed the depiction of mundanity in a world where upload to an immortal posthuman hivemind is an option. This jaded angle on the future of technology is from a Transmetropolitan, Vol. 1: Back on the Street-esque vision of the future:
Toys everywhere. The toy event horizon. Adan had his toys. He had a library of seven thousand virtual virtual games he had played, some of which he returned to and replayed many times. He had hundreds of thousands of screen dramas to watch, and millions of songs he could listen to, and more online platforms on which he could pass his time arguing with strangers than he could ever visit. Most of all he had his phone, and in this he was like an increasing number of people. Because the iron law of the Toycene was this: kids want their toys to be their friends and adults want to fuck their toys.
A war between humans and posthumans is also shown strikingly via a grunt trooper. The last few chapters stand out as the highlights.
The This constantly juxtaposes philosophical abstractions and human pettiness, to alternately funny and profound effect. There is nothing more mundane than death, I suppose, as it comes to us all. The plot is cleverly structured and the world-building full of arresting details. Novels by Roberts are always focused on exploring abstract ideas in a somewhat fantastical material context. I think The This does so in a particularly satisfying and memorable way.
February 18, 2022
An enthralling and riveting book, entertaining in a bizarre way and full of food for thought.
I loved and hated it at the same time, felt bored and couldn't stop reading.
It could be defined a experimental novel but it's also a classic dystopia at times.
And it's a hell to review it because it's very far from any standard dystopia or sci-fi.
Let's call it an experience and a mental exercise.
I recommend it if you are willing to try and experience it
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
I loved and hated it at the same time, felt bored and couldn't stop reading.
It could be defined a experimental novel but it's also a classic dystopia at times.
And it's a hell to review it because it's very far from any standard dystopia or sci-fi.
Let's call it an experience and a mental exercise.
I recommend it if you are willing to try and experience it
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
March 7, 2022
'In the Bardo, subject and object are the same.'
As always with Adam Roberts' books, The This fizzes with ideas, the story illustrating, looping around, and developing, themes from philosophy, physics, popular culture, literature, religion, music (and doubtless more I didn't spot. Roberts is, in the best sense of the word, a clever author - not because, or not only because, of this incredible hinterland, but because he is able to share it without making the reader feel they've missed stuff. Rather, one feels gleeful about what one has spotted.
It helps that while the background (as I learned from the Afterword) may be in Hegel, the actual argument and case developed in the book is very plain to see whether or not you have read that philosopher. The points we see made are about a person versus a collective society, about loneliness ('the odd thing about loneliness is the way it's both an intensely isolating , individual experience and the one thing most widely shared by human beings'), about the experience of loss, about that weird thing we call death. They are all integrated into a portrayal of modern life that feels right (right as in, convincing, real, authentic).
Rich lives that modern life. He's possibly one of the many lives (an entire page of them farmers! But also I think I saw Billy Bragg lyrics?) lived by the "you" that comes and goes from the Bardo in the bewitching opening section of the book. This section allows Roberts free rein devising inventive micro-stories (whole lives told in a sentence or a paragraph, many bringing in those references I mentioned above). Rich is, at least in this life, not really rich - that's more of a nickname - but he is comfortable enough, in his Putney flat, to survive on occasional bits of work from the gig economy. Sometimes he even has a bit of cash left over to pursue his hobby of collecting... cash, in the form of rare banknotes. (We get a couple of pages of digression musing on the nature of banknotes as essentially known lies).
Interspersed with Rich's story, Roberts has included chunks of social media, sort of. Status updates. Locations. Spam. Messages. Complaints. Puns (of course puns! 'He preferred Apple products to PCs, computer-wise. You might say: pomme? - cuter. You might say.' Roberts' way with puns is genius. They aren't just there to be funny, rather they're a tool that adds layers of meaning to the text). The way this material is arranged means that the flow of Rich's story is continually broken up. I had to keep going back and reminding myself where a sentence came from, before my attention was spammed, the whole experience of course redolent of the contemporary struggle for attention in the face of a torrent of jangling content - but also illustrating Rich's particular life as he twiddles and fiddles his days away supposedly working on his novel (an epic fantasy project).
The story takes wing when Rich is allotted a job interviewing the representative of a company, the 'The This' of the title, which has developed an implant allowing social media to be literally pumped into the brain. Is The This a cult, as some allege? Rich is intrigued by his encounter, but soon discovers that The This may have plans for him. As the behaviour of the company becomes outright stalkery, it seems clear that Rich is somehow important - and not only to The This.
Several centuries on, Adan lives an, I suppose, even more modern life (it's the future so it must be more modern?) focussed on Elegy, an AI sex-toy that Adan is absurdly, sweetly, devoted to. But it's still a slacker existence similar to Rich's, buffered by his mother's money - until she defects to The Enemy. By Adan's time The This has metastasised into a formidable hive mind against which humanity - or parts of it - are at war. And Adan soon finds himself in the army.
There are other strands too - a whole section set in the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, expanding on the theme of the hive mind in an interpretation of that book that I'd never have considered but which fitted exactly with the idea of Big Brother. Some writers would take just that idea and make it into a whole story - by no means the only example in this book of Roberts' prodigality with ideas: basically he hoses the reader with them. Loneliness? Here is Father Mackenzie, caught as it were just out of the song, 'wiping his hands on his cassock and talking nervously about God's love'. Ah, we're doing Beatles, well, here is 'a car alarm... going off like Yoko Ono in full song'. The book is like a bulging sack of presents on Christmas Day, with treat after treat to unwrap.
Returning to Adan's story, though, Roberts uses it to add yet another thematic thread with a confused, panicked view of warfare - all fumbles and shock and confusion with comrades butchered and intentions muddled). It's a war in which Adan, inexplicably, seems to play a central role but his place - and importance - are no clearer than Rich's. I'd say the focus of the story switches from one to the other, Roberts giving us clear portrayals of both. Not necessarily people I'd want to meet or spend time with, they are both, nevertheless, rounded, actual characters, something that gives them a sort of edge over the various forces - the military, espionage agencies or The This itself - that are trying to manipulate them. The book returns in the end, I think, to deep questions: what it is that makes us human, whether mere happiness and contentment is enough to satisfy that nature, and what may lie beyond even something like The This which seems - in many respects - like a desirable endpoint for human evolution.
Clever, humane, absorbing and great fun, this is in my view Roberts' writing at his very very best. Just a glorious book to read. Get it now!
(The book also built my vocabulary. Evanishment? Haecceity? Velleities?)
As always with Adam Roberts' books, The This fizzes with ideas, the story illustrating, looping around, and developing, themes from philosophy, physics, popular culture, literature, religion, music (and doubtless more I didn't spot. Roberts is, in the best sense of the word, a clever author - not because, or not only because, of this incredible hinterland, but because he is able to share it without making the reader feel they've missed stuff. Rather, one feels gleeful about what one has spotted.
It helps that while the background (as I learned from the Afterword) may be in Hegel, the actual argument and case developed in the book is very plain to see whether or not you have read that philosopher. The points we see made are about a person versus a collective society, about loneliness ('the odd thing about loneliness is the way it's both an intensely isolating , individual experience and the one thing most widely shared by human beings'), about the experience of loss, about that weird thing we call death. They are all integrated into a portrayal of modern life that feels right (right as in, convincing, real, authentic).
Rich lives that modern life. He's possibly one of the many lives (an entire page of them farmers! But also I think I saw Billy Bragg lyrics?) lived by the "you" that comes and goes from the Bardo in the bewitching opening section of the book. This section allows Roberts free rein devising inventive micro-stories (whole lives told in a sentence or a paragraph, many bringing in those references I mentioned above). Rich is, at least in this life, not really rich - that's more of a nickname - but he is comfortable enough, in his Putney flat, to survive on occasional bits of work from the gig economy. Sometimes he even has a bit of cash left over to pursue his hobby of collecting... cash, in the form of rare banknotes. (We get a couple of pages of digression musing on the nature of banknotes as essentially known lies).
Interspersed with Rich's story, Roberts has included chunks of social media, sort of. Status updates. Locations. Spam. Messages. Complaints. Puns (of course puns! 'He preferred Apple products to PCs, computer-wise. You might say: pomme? - cuter. You might say.' Roberts' way with puns is genius. They aren't just there to be funny, rather they're a tool that adds layers of meaning to the text). The way this material is arranged means that the flow of Rich's story is continually broken up. I had to keep going back and reminding myself where a sentence came from, before my attention was spammed, the whole experience of course redolent of the contemporary struggle for attention in the face of a torrent of jangling content - but also illustrating Rich's particular life as he twiddles and fiddles his days away supposedly working on his novel (an epic fantasy project).
The story takes wing when Rich is allotted a job interviewing the representative of a company, the 'The This' of the title, which has developed an implant allowing social media to be literally pumped into the brain. Is The This a cult, as some allege? Rich is intrigued by his encounter, but soon discovers that The This may have plans for him. As the behaviour of the company becomes outright stalkery, it seems clear that Rich is somehow important - and not only to The This.
Several centuries on, Adan lives an, I suppose, even more modern life (it's the future so it must be more modern?) focussed on Elegy, an AI sex-toy that Adan is absurdly, sweetly, devoted to. But it's still a slacker existence similar to Rich's, buffered by his mother's money - until she defects to The Enemy. By Adan's time The This has metastasised into a formidable hive mind against which humanity - or parts of it - are at war. And Adan soon finds himself in the army.
There are other strands too - a whole section set in the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, expanding on the theme of the hive mind in an interpretation of that book that I'd never have considered but which fitted exactly with the idea of Big Brother. Some writers would take just that idea and make it into a whole story - by no means the only example in this book of Roberts' prodigality with ideas: basically he hoses the reader with them. Loneliness? Here is Father Mackenzie, caught as it were just out of the song, 'wiping his hands on his cassock and talking nervously about God's love'. Ah, we're doing Beatles, well, here is 'a car alarm... going off like Yoko Ono in full song'. The book is like a bulging sack of presents on Christmas Day, with treat after treat to unwrap.
Returning to Adan's story, though, Roberts uses it to add yet another thematic thread with a confused, panicked view of warfare - all fumbles and shock and confusion with comrades butchered and intentions muddled). It's a war in which Adan, inexplicably, seems to play a central role but his place - and importance - are no clearer than Rich's. I'd say the focus of the story switches from one to the other, Roberts giving us clear portrayals of both. Not necessarily people I'd want to meet or spend time with, they are both, nevertheless, rounded, actual characters, something that gives them a sort of edge over the various forces - the military, espionage agencies or The This itself - that are trying to manipulate them. The book returns in the end, I think, to deep questions: what it is that makes us human, whether mere happiness and contentment is enough to satisfy that nature, and what may lie beyond even something like The This which seems - in many respects - like a desirable endpoint for human evolution.
Clever, humane, absorbing and great fun, this is in my view Roberts' writing at his very very best. Just a glorious book to read. Get it now!
(The book also built my vocabulary. Evanishment? Haecceity? Velleities?)
February 3, 2023
A hugely enjoyable ideas driven SF novel exploring social media and humanity’s need to connect to…something. There are passages of writing just to savour and though ending doesn’t quite land for me I think the journey was great
Full review -! https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/bl...
Full review -! https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/bl...
September 17, 2023
A science fiction novel about a Twitter-like social network but weirder, published in 2022, is already overtaken by the events of the last (insane) 12 months of Twitter.
I mean, if you were to say "come up with a MORE STUPID name for a social network than THE THIS" and someone said "how about X?" you'd say "no, that's taking it too far"
That aside, there's a lot of good stuff in this novel. It's like four distinct stories, and each would be fine, but just clumping them together in an intentionally "difficult" style doesn't elevate the whole, and renders a lot of it tedious.
Full review on my podcast, SFBRP episode #523.
Luke and Juliane discuss The This by Adam Roberts, a novel of disparate good parts that didn’t work together as well as Luke hoped.
https://www.sfbrp.com/archives/2144
I mean, if you were to say "come up with a MORE STUPID name for a social network than THE THIS" and someone said "how about X?" you'd say "no, that's taking it too far"
That aside, there's a lot of good stuff in this novel. It's like four distinct stories, and each would be fine, but just clumping them together in an intentionally "difficult" style doesn't elevate the whole, and renders a lot of it tedious.
Full review on my podcast, SFBRP episode #523.
Luke and Juliane discuss The This by Adam Roberts, a novel of disparate good parts that didn’t work together as well as Luke hoped.
https://www.sfbrp.com/archives/2144
June 6, 2022
I was leery of yet another novel about social networks gone wild, but fortunately, in this case that whole story is a bit of a red herring hiding a superb examination of the nature of humanity, society, groupthink/gestalt and where we're heading as a species. Roberts can be quite hit and miss for me, but when it's a hit, like this one, it is usually a big hit, and though not a sequel, this resides somewhere in the same headspace as The Thing Itself, so if you loved that one, you'll likely love (the) this as well.
October 6, 2025
Intelligent, unique, thought-provoking, hard to grasp and affectionate! How will humankind evolve? Will we evolve individually or collectively? Perhaps we should abandon social media altogether and interact with each other again. Is evolving into a hive mind inevitable? This may take some time to process... Full review hopefully soon...
December 3, 2023
I give this book 2 stars and 4 stars.
On the one hand I hate The This because of the opaqueness of its plot and the fact that the prose is 80% 'throw a thesaurus at the wall and see what sticks', while on the other I feel intrigued and compelled by the themes and issues it touches on (and actually gives some resolution to!). I guess this is what happens when Literature Syndrome collides with a fundamentally good scifi novel. Curious.
On the one hand I hate The This because of the opaqueness of its plot and the fact that the prose is 80% 'throw a thesaurus at the wall and see what sticks', while on the other I feel intrigued and compelled by the themes and issues it touches on (and actually gives some resolution to!). I guess this is what happens when Literature Syndrome collides with a fundamentally good scifi novel. Curious.
October 6, 2022
For those with FOMO, the thought of not having a presence in the new social network, The This, is too much for some people. But to sign up involves more than submitting an email address and a promise to read all the targeted advertising they will through at you. For this you need a small implant injected into the roof of your mouth.
The device will then grow into your brain and allow you to connect to everyone on the network instantaneously. It is marketed as hands-free, but it seems to be consuming those that have signed up for it. Adan has heard of it, but he is quite happy with his life and the erotic female companion that comes with his Elergy phone. He is asked to write an article about The This and after that, he keeps being approached by the company to join.
He is reluctant to join, but the attention that the company are paying him has been noticed by the government. They want him to sign up and take something with him into the network…
I liked almost all of this a lot. The premise was well thought through and the plot zipped along at a fair old pace. The characters didn’t really develop that much, they were there as the pieces on the frankly terrifying social media network that is The This. The one flaw that I felt it had was that the ending was not resolved as I thought and hoped that it might be.
The device will then grow into your brain and allow you to connect to everyone on the network instantaneously. It is marketed as hands-free, but it seems to be consuming those that have signed up for it. Adan has heard of it, but he is quite happy with his life and the erotic female companion that comes with his Elergy phone. He is asked to write an article about The This and after that, he keeps being approached by the company to join.
He is reluctant to join, but the attention that the company are paying him has been noticed by the government. They want him to sign up and take something with him into the network…
I liked almost all of this a lot. The premise was well thought through and the plot zipped along at a fair old pace. The characters didn’t really develop that much, they were there as the pieces on the frankly terrifying social media network that is The This. The one flaw that I felt it had was that the ending was not resolved as I thought and hoped that it might be.
June 22, 2022
If the best name an author can come up with for a revolutionary technology is 'This', warning bells should start ringing. They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but in this case, I should have trusted my gut. This book reminded me of that one annoying guest at parties who thinks he's far smarter than he actually is and thinks everyone's eye-rolls are just them 'not getting it'.
On the one hand, I was impressed by the ambitious concept and particularly the unusual execution. This didn't follow a typical story structure, which was interesting from a narrative perspective and meant I was never quite sure where things were headed. The various twists were reasonably well-executed, some better than others, and while the story as a whole was too far up its own ass to be enjoyable, there were sections that piqued my curiosity.
Unfortunately, the book was ultimately let down by the writing at almost every turn. The prose was painful to read at times, particularly when it came to dialogue and action sequences. The pacing was also all over the place, much like the narrative focus. The themes were conveyed with the subtlety of a wrecking ball while the characters felt more suited to a low-budget tv series that never stood a chance of getting renewed for a second season. There was one section in the second half that was particularly telling of how the author viewed people of lower intelligence and it was honestly uncomfortable to read. The bizarre 1984 homage, however, cemented this in the 1-star graveyard.
So unless you feel like being lectured about the dangers of a societal hive mind from an obvious pseudo-intellectual, I'd steer clear of this one. The story isn't good even if you're willing to forgive some painfully cringey tangents. The characters are unlikeable and shallow, and unless you've read very little sci-fi, you'd have come across the core ideas before, probably done far better.
On the one hand, I was impressed by the ambitious concept and particularly the unusual execution. This didn't follow a typical story structure, which was interesting from a narrative perspective and meant I was never quite sure where things were headed. The various twists were reasonably well-executed, some better than others, and while the story as a whole was too far up its own ass to be enjoyable, there were sections that piqued my curiosity.
Unfortunately, the book was ultimately let down by the writing at almost every turn. The prose was painful to read at times, particularly when it came to dialogue and action sequences. The pacing was also all over the place, much like the narrative focus. The themes were conveyed with the subtlety of a wrecking ball while the characters felt more suited to a low-budget tv series that never stood a chance of getting renewed for a second season. There was one section in the second half that was particularly telling of how the author viewed people of lower intelligence and it was honestly uncomfortable to read. The bizarre 1984 homage, however, cemented this in the 1-star graveyard.
So unless you feel like being lectured about the dangers of a societal hive mind from an obvious pseudo-intellectual, I'd steer clear of this one. The story isn't good even if you're willing to forgive some painfully cringey tangents. The characters are unlikeable and shallow, and unless you've read very little sci-fi, you'd have come across the core ideas before, probably done far better.
February 15, 2022
Strange In a Most Fabulous Way!
THE THIS is quite a read. Wow. I devoured Adam Robert's story, it's weaving in and out, backwards and forward, until whoosh...it's ends...or did it?
THE THIS is quite a read. Wow. I devoured Adam Robert's story, it's weaving in and out, backwards and forward, until whoosh...it's ends...or did it?
August 18, 2022
Interesting take on the hive mind / uploading idea. Often too … abstract for me, lacking a story to follow, guess it helps if you are familiar with philosophy.
October 11, 2023
8,8 (4,5 stars) This book is hard to categorize. It's literary science fiction, with an experimental structure (almost a nested tale like 'Cloud Atlas', or at least a mosaic novel) and with prose filled with original descriptions, astute observations and a dollop of innovation. It's also nicely intertextual, ranging from small allusions to a chapter that could be categorized as '1984-fanfiction' (one of the best parts of the book - Orwell would be proud!).
But that's not to say that this is stuffy, academic. Roberts wrote well known Lord of the Rings-parodies (and Hobbit-parodies and more; yes, he is THE A.R.R.R. Roberts) and this is filled with puns and witticisms and dialogue that riffs on P.G. Wodehouse (Jeeves is referenced and two of the main characters lives a bit like Wooster, complete with relatives wondering when they will get married). This is a frothy book. The word to use is 'fun'.
But on the other hand it is a philosophical SF-novel. Adams wrote 'The Thing Itself' in dialogue with Kant, and here he is riffing on Hegel (according to his afterword. I'm not really well versed in philosophy myself, but I took up some things in here).
But don't be put off by that either. First because this is a book dealing with current events: the rise of social media networks, with their own kind of community and interaction that mediate an answer to our inner loneliness through technology. It gets quite distopian - Adams seems to have predicted the rise of AI used for text generation, and people falling in love with their phones (the use of 1984 is fitting).
But that's not all: secondly it's high concept SF, with pulpy subjects like weird bombs that are based on temperatures below absolute zero, high tech warfare complete with drones and other action filled shenanigans. A lot of idea's that would deserve a novel on their own and certainly inspiring. Oh, and at the end there's even some spiritual discussion here, with a meeting outside of space and time that I appreciated, especially its conclusion about the specificity of love.
Does it provide all the answers to all the questions it raises? No. That's the main reason for me not awarding this five stars. The narrative threads are not brought together well. Enormous idea's about parallel realities are introduced but they cannot really explain what has happened. The rationale offered at the end, to me, seemed insufficient. As if Roberts had written himself in a corner and just concluded 'This is what happened even if it doesn't make much sense'. Does this harm the book that much? No. In other, more linear books, a conclusion without answers that make sense would really diminish my appreciation. But this book is not like that. Here the conclusion of the whole does not diminish the parts. It's the parts that matter. The hilarious, well written, surprising parts. Believe me, this is worth reading just because of the 1984-part.
So, recommended for those in need of a well written modern SF books that will make you grin and make you think in equal amounts.
But that's not to say that this is stuffy, academic. Roberts wrote well known Lord of the Rings-parodies (and Hobbit-parodies and more; yes, he is THE A.R.R.R. Roberts) and this is filled with puns and witticisms and dialogue that riffs on P.G. Wodehouse (Jeeves is referenced and two of the main characters lives a bit like Wooster, complete with relatives wondering when they will get married). This is a frothy book. The word to use is 'fun'.
But on the other hand it is a philosophical SF-novel. Adams wrote 'The Thing Itself' in dialogue with Kant, and here he is riffing on Hegel (according to his afterword. I'm not really well versed in philosophy myself, but I took up some things in here).
But don't be put off by that either. First because this is a book dealing with current events: the rise of social media networks, with their own kind of community and interaction that mediate an answer to our inner loneliness through technology. It gets quite distopian - Adams seems to have predicted the rise of AI used for text generation, and people falling in love with their phones (the use of 1984 is fitting).
But that's not all: secondly it's high concept SF, with pulpy subjects like weird bombs that are based on temperatures below absolute zero, high tech warfare complete with drones and other action filled shenanigans. A lot of idea's that would deserve a novel on their own and certainly inspiring. Oh, and at the end there's even some spiritual discussion here, with a meeting outside of space and time that I appreciated, especially its conclusion about the specificity of love.
Does it provide all the answers to all the questions it raises? No. That's the main reason for me not awarding this five stars. The narrative threads are not brought together well. Enormous idea's about parallel realities are introduced but they cannot really explain what has happened. The rationale offered at the end, to me, seemed insufficient. As if Roberts had written himself in a corner and just concluded 'This is what happened even if it doesn't make much sense'. Does this harm the book that much? No. In other, more linear books, a conclusion without answers that make sense would really diminish my appreciation. But this book is not like that. Here the conclusion of the whole does not diminish the parts. It's the parts that matter. The hilarious, well written, surprising parts. Believe me, this is worth reading just because of the 1984-part.
So, recommended for those in need of a well written modern SF books that will make you grin and make you think in equal amounts.
December 16, 2022
Cynical dystopian with a dash of satire and a healthy portion of anxiety inducing social media based prophesying.
The This is not a cult, they promise, and like many real world social media platforms their key selling point is one of connectivity and harmoniousness, which is of course, a load of bollocks. This book is about individuality, free will, social media reliance and loneliness. "Information overload" comes to mind as well, it was very clever to include a running feed at the bottom of several pages, conveying just how constant social media is in modern life. The tone was its self lonely feeling, and for people like me, who hate social media with a passion (despite this review being posted on it), it was damn scary to see my worst fears unfolding before me. Very conspiratorial and cynical, my favourite.
The plot is a back and forth between timelines which I found enjoyable, the prelude and aftermath of such a technology are explored by protagonists Rich and Adan, bookended by chapters set in "The Bardo" where we are given some insight from beyond the main narrative through the eyes of Abby Normal. The structure worked well. The Bardo chapters were slightly confusing but still a fun way of changing perspective, which I think was well needed and certainly helped break up the overly similar two male protagonists. Maybe it would have helped break up Rich and Adan's similarities even more if the Bardo scenes were more frequent, but I'm nit-picking.
Oh, and there was a rather unexpected cameo chapter from another, very famous dystopian novel. That was fun.
So who do I think should read this book?
If you're a fan of cynicism, false utopias and paranoid speculations, you'll probably like the main point of this book. The humour works well enough to be enjoyable for non sci-fi fans too. For fans of beautiful, flowery prose, look elsewhere.
7/10
The This is not a cult, they promise, and like many real world social media platforms their key selling point is one of connectivity and harmoniousness, which is of course, a load of bollocks. This book is about individuality, free will, social media reliance and loneliness. "Information overload" comes to mind as well, it was very clever to include a running feed at the bottom of several pages, conveying just how constant social media is in modern life. The tone was its self lonely feeling, and for people like me, who hate social media with a passion (despite this review being posted on it), it was damn scary to see my worst fears unfolding before me. Very conspiratorial and cynical, my favourite.
The plot is a back and forth between timelines which I found enjoyable, the prelude and aftermath of such a technology are explored by protagonists Rich and Adan, bookended by chapters set in "The Bardo" where we are given some insight from beyond the main narrative through the eyes of Abby Normal. The structure worked well. The Bardo chapters were slightly confusing but still a fun way of changing perspective, which I think was well needed and certainly helped break up the overly similar two male protagonists. Maybe it would have helped break up Rich and Adan's similarities even more if the Bardo scenes were more frequent, but I'm nit-picking.
Oh, and there was a rather unexpected cameo chapter from another, very famous dystopian novel. That was fun.
So who do I think should read this book?
If you're a fan of cynicism, false utopias and paranoid speculations, you'll probably like the main point of this book. The humour works well enough to be enjoyable for non sci-fi fans too. For fans of beautiful, flowery prose, look elsewhere.
7/10
February 18, 2022
Great Hegelian fun.
April 18, 2025
4.5 stars. Adam Roberts is very talented, that is clear. The This is a breathtaking achievement. Projecting contemporary concerns regarding social-media onto a complex philosophical world-view and managing to make that understandable, it brims with erudition. It’s whiz-bang stylistics, brilliantly entertaining as they are, do tend to spoil immersion (but only a half-star’s worth); nevertheless this exceptional novel is a real page turner. The action is exciting and the few characters realistically drawn. Roberts does not feel the need for a supporting cast or to over labour his points. His prose is economical and in places very funny. Highly recommended for fans of cutting-edge literary science fiction.
July 6, 2023
We live in a crazy time in which social media is everywhere. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Tumblr, Discord, just to name a few, have taken over the lives of many people. Many folks are addicted to social media; they can always been seen staring into their phones while walking
down the street, oblivious to the world around them. Social media has been blamed for many of society's ills. Whether or not you believe that statement, I think it's fair to say that the world has changed immensely since and due to the advent of social media.
So, what if you could communicate directly with someone else without a keyboard, using a "hands free Twitter", as the novel describes it? The This, the new social media platform, is just the thing for you if that sounds appealing to you. The corporation that has created The This basically inserts a neural implant through the roof of your mouth that burrows into your brain that allows direct mind-to-mind communication.
But really, did you think that the story actually revolves around The This? Well, yes, I guess it does, but as you might guess, the story revolves around the affect that technology has on humanity, and THE THIS is no exception.
The story takes place on two separate timelines. The first is in what seems to be the near future, the other is in the future. Rich, our near future protagonist, takes side jobs for extra cash doing free lance interviews. He gets an assignment to interview a representative of The This. He is warned not to call The This a cult, but the more questions he asks, the more curious he is, and eventually does refer to it as a cult. The interview ends without incident, and he turns in his work. Not long after, he finds himself the object of an intense recruiting campaign by The This, which is something that they never do. While he is trying to figure all this out, he meets an elderly woman named Helen Susanna, formerly a "member" of The This. That encounter sets him on a path that will hopefully save humanity.
I said hopefully. In the future, to no one's surprise there is a hive mind made up of folks who joined The This. That hive mind is waging a war against baseline humans. They are trying to terraform Venus and use that as a base of operations for attacking the remaining humans on
Earth. Adan, our future protagonist, is a lay about, living off his mother's finances and using his phone as a sex toy. Yeah, a little weird, but that actually is an important point in the story. Suddenly, his funds are cut off as his mother runs off to join a cult - yeah, that one -
and ends up as a soldier on the front lines. His relationship with Elegy - that advanced, sophisticated sex toy - gets him special powers that allow him to survive attacks from the enemy. The military brass want to use him as a sort of kamikaze weapon (although that's not the right word, because he doesn't die), but as these things go events go in a different direction entirely.
As I said earlier, the novel isn't really about The This. The story is about how The This affects humanity, and how a revolutionary new social media platform can change the future of mankind completely. Once I finished listening to the book, it became obvious that I should have seen the obvious - that The This was going to create a hive mind that would believe it was the next step in human evolution, and that there would be an inevitable conflict between baseline humans and the hive mind.
While this all sounds straightforward, and the book really is readable, Roberts provides some weird and interesting scenarios and events that keep the reader engaged and focused. And the beginning and ending of the book, both of which take place in The Bardo, tie up together quite nicely. This is a pretty good novel, and has me interested in reading other novels by Adam Roberts. And that's what an author wants, I think.
Elliot Fitzpatrick is a narrator that seems to fit the material exactly. I'm not sure that his style and tone would fit a lot of other things that I've listened to, but given the nature of the story I can't imagine anyone else narrating it. He is a good fit and made the story more enjoyable for me.
down the street, oblivious to the world around them. Social media has been blamed for many of society's ills. Whether or not you believe that statement, I think it's fair to say that the world has changed immensely since and due to the advent of social media.
So, what if you could communicate directly with someone else without a keyboard, using a "hands free Twitter", as the novel describes it? The This, the new social media platform, is just the thing for you if that sounds appealing to you. The corporation that has created The This basically inserts a neural implant through the roof of your mouth that burrows into your brain that allows direct mind-to-mind communication.
But really, did you think that the story actually revolves around The This? Well, yes, I guess it does, but as you might guess, the story revolves around the affect that technology has on humanity, and THE THIS is no exception.
The story takes place on two separate timelines. The first is in what seems to be the near future, the other is in the future. Rich, our near future protagonist, takes side jobs for extra cash doing free lance interviews. He gets an assignment to interview a representative of The This. He is warned not to call The This a cult, but the more questions he asks, the more curious he is, and eventually does refer to it as a cult. The interview ends without incident, and he turns in his work. Not long after, he finds himself the object of an intense recruiting campaign by The This, which is something that they never do. While he is trying to figure all this out, he meets an elderly woman named Helen Susanna, formerly a "member" of The This. That encounter sets him on a path that will hopefully save humanity.
I said hopefully. In the future, to no one's surprise there is a hive mind made up of folks who joined The This. That hive mind is waging a war against baseline humans. They are trying to terraform Venus and use that as a base of operations for attacking the remaining humans on
Earth. Adan, our future protagonist, is a lay about, living off his mother's finances and using his phone as a sex toy. Yeah, a little weird, but that actually is an important point in the story. Suddenly, his funds are cut off as his mother runs off to join a cult - yeah, that one -
and ends up as a soldier on the front lines. His relationship with Elegy - that advanced, sophisticated sex toy - gets him special powers that allow him to survive attacks from the enemy. The military brass want to use him as a sort of kamikaze weapon (although that's not the right word, because he doesn't die), but as these things go events go in a different direction entirely.
As I said earlier, the novel isn't really about The This. The story is about how The This affects humanity, and how a revolutionary new social media platform can change the future of mankind completely. Once I finished listening to the book, it became obvious that I should have seen the obvious - that The This was going to create a hive mind that would believe it was the next step in human evolution, and that there would be an inevitable conflict between baseline humans and the hive mind.
While this all sounds straightforward, and the book really is readable, Roberts provides some weird and interesting scenarios and events that keep the reader engaged and focused. And the beginning and ending of the book, both of which take place in The Bardo, tie up together quite nicely. This is a pretty good novel, and has me interested in reading other novels by Adam Roberts. And that's what an author wants, I think.
Elliot Fitzpatrick is a narrator that seems to fit the material exactly. I'm not sure that his style and tone would fit a lot of other things that I've listened to, but given the nature of the story I can't imagine anyone else narrating it. He is a good fit and made the story more enjoyable for me.
August 21, 2022
The description for this book makes it seem far more linear and conventionally structured than it actually is. Anyway I really liked it.
August 22, 2022
Adam Roberts. He writes the cleverest, most heartfelt novels with clean, elegant prose, and they still are... you know, skiffy. This book contains a number of well varied characters living different lives at different times, and also, a war for Venus. You think it's going to be a satire about social media (and it is) when it turns into this exploration of collective consciousness, and freedom versus belonging? But also, this guy is in love with his sex robot phone?
I like Adam Roberts quite a bit. Usually he is careful to tell one story... but this one is sprawling and wide reaching... well, he gets loose. There are a lot of ideas, and a lot of tones. Plus, I had to keep flipping backwards to remember who people were... the chapters are almost short stories, they're set in different places with different characters over the course of human history... but that's fine, actually, because as we learn in the Bardo, all time is happening at once and there is no difference between subject and object? Also, there's a parody of 1984. And somehow Hegel, I guess? I don't know anything about Hegel that can't be written on a post-it note.
Anyhow, I liked it a lot. I really like weirdo sci-fi, and I also like things that are well written, and it's rare to find a book that is both. It's probably off-puttingly clever... but not to me, I love it.
PS Here is everything I know about Hegel:
Thesis + antithesis --> synthesis
German?
David Hume could outconsume Schopenhauer and Hegel
I like Adam Roberts quite a bit. Usually he is careful to tell one story... but this one is sprawling and wide reaching... well, he gets loose. There are a lot of ideas, and a lot of tones. Plus, I had to keep flipping backwards to remember who people were... the chapters are almost short stories, they're set in different places with different characters over the course of human history... but that's fine, actually, because as we learn in the Bardo, all time is happening at once and there is no difference between subject and object? Also, there's a parody of 1984. And somehow Hegel, I guess? I don't know anything about Hegel that can't be written on a post-it note.
Anyhow, I liked it a lot. I really like weirdo sci-fi, and I also like things that are well written, and it's rare to find a book that is both. It's probably off-puttingly clever... but not to me, I love it.
PS Here is everything I know about Hegel:
Thesis + antithesis --> synthesis
German?
David Hume could outconsume Schopenhauer and Hegel
November 9, 2022
This book intelligently and introspectively pushes the boundaries of language and form as it explores philosophy, psychology, loneliness, social media, religion, culture and time.
Personally, I'm not used to reading novels that so completely deviate from the common structure you expect from a narrative. There is a jarring lack of order and a general sense of confusion that persists throughout the book as you wonder exactly how each character, scene and element will relate to the overall plot. By the end, though, I had come to appreciate that the novel itself is a play on what would happen if the usual, linear sense of time was disrupted, which fits well with the concepts of immortality and transcendence explored within its pages.
It's the kind of book you could return to multiple times and still find new treasures. From the hidden jokes and heart-wrenching cries for help that contrast so vividly in the social media comments sections that run the length of one chapter, to the fact that the emphasis on 'this' and 'spirit' comes from Hegelian philosophy, which the author is using this text to explore, there's a lot of hidden references and allusions to grand ideas that might warrant a second reading.
I would recommend this to sci-fi lovers looking for a read that might require some research alongside it (I had to Google so much!), and to fans of darkly intelligent dystopia like Orwell's 1984.
Personally, I'm not used to reading novels that so completely deviate from the common structure you expect from a narrative. There is a jarring lack of order and a general sense of confusion that persists throughout the book as you wonder exactly how each character, scene and element will relate to the overall plot. By the end, though, I had come to appreciate that the novel itself is a play on what would happen if the usual, linear sense of time was disrupted, which fits well with the concepts of immortality and transcendence explored within its pages.
It's the kind of book you could return to multiple times and still find new treasures. From the hidden jokes and heart-wrenching cries for help that contrast so vividly in the social media comments sections that run the length of one chapter, to the fact that the emphasis on 'this' and 'spirit' comes from Hegelian philosophy, which the author is using this text to explore, there's a lot of hidden references and allusions to grand ideas that might warrant a second reading.
I would recommend this to sci-fi lovers looking for a read that might require some research alongside it (I had to Google so much!), and to fans of darkly intelligent dystopia like Orwell's 1984.
October 26, 2022
I found this oddly reminiscent of Sirens of Titan with its god like figures playfully intervening in the lives of various patsies to alter the course of human history. Roberts also seems to be revelling in his god like powers as an author as he interweaves aspects of Coleridge’s great poem on the power of art, Kubla Khan into his essentially Hegelian analysis. George Orwell also pops in at one point. None of the characters are particularly likeable but Roberts states in passing that this is de riguer for a modern novel.
August 9, 2022
Roberts is one of the most underappreciated novelists writing science fiction today. The This is typically wildly inventive and well thought-out, populated with well-drawn characters -- not something one can always expect from Novels of Ideas. It's a shame and an indictment I suppose of the escapist mentality of so much of the science fiction-reading audience these days that this isn't on the Hugo and Nebula ballots.
June 2, 2022
Many interesting ideas here are fascinatingly delved into. Although if it stuck with its main plot and explored that, I might have followed it better, as there are several different narratives mostly experimental that go off that feel like the start of another novel, although they do connect I feel it could have been done with a bit more focus. Very imaginative and can be compelling.
September 6, 2023
The author calls this novel a followup to The Thing Itself, but it's a thematic sequel and not a direct one. You'll be fine if you haven't read the earlier book.
Personally, I liked The This even better. It's more directly a work of science fiction, full of social commentary, cheeky humor, clever contemplation of Hegel's ideas about dialectics (without mentioning Hegel directly -- I thought the on-the-page discussion of Kant had weighed down The Thing Itself a little), and a willingness to discomfort the reader. To me, the discomfort thing is key -- many newer SF releases these days seem to lean in a comfort-food, wish-fulfillment direction, which is occasionally what I want, but not usually. Give me my shades of gray.
After an intriguing opening sequence in which an unnamed character lives, dies, and is reborn over and over, returning to a dialogue in some "Bardo" (see also Kim Stanley Robinson's underrated The Years of Rice and Salt), we're introduced to one of the primary characters, one Alan "Rich" Rigby. If you're a Beatles fan who gets the hint -- or even if you're not -- you'll recognize Rich as an exemplar of the "loneliness epidemic" that's been much discussed in the press in recent years. Seemingly pushing 40, Rich lives alone, supposedly working on a novel, but not really, and has no real friends outside of his social media connections. He works Uber-esque gig jobs in the slowly dying print media, plays a lot of video games, and drinks too much. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't find his circumstances somewhat relatable -- speaking as a non-married person in the over-40 set, my own social circle imploded after friends started getting married and having kids, with fewer and fewer unattached people my age on hand to replace them. Social media and participation in some online community or another can wallpaper over a few gaps in one's sense of connectness, but at some point, the gaps need you to stop doomscrolling and put something more substantial in them.
For reasons that are mysterious, Rich becomes the prime recruitment target for a next-gen social media service called The This, which claims to offer the antidote to the loneliness that plagues him and so many other people. All one needs to join is a little brain implant, inserted through the roof of the mouth, then one is part of a great community in which everyone is mentally interconnected in a proto-hive-mind and no one feels lonely anymore. Rich is highly skeptical of the cultiness of it all, especially after he meets a cantankerous old lady named Helen Susana (or Helena Susan?), who claims to have been a former member and sees the company as being up to no good. But certain contacts of hers, who claim to be part of the government, want to insert Rich into the This community as a mole, equipped with a brain implant of their own devising. What could go wrong?
Meanwhile, sometime in the future relative to Rich's life, another storyline takes place. In a vaguely Idiocracy-esque future United States (insert nervous laugh here), a young man named Adan, even more pathetic of a character than Rich, finds himself short on rent money when his mother finally cuts him off (at age 34, no less). To support himself and his "girlfriend", Adan must finally get a job. The "girlfriend", naturally, is of a sort that will no doubt one day trigger culture war clashes between some younger generation and its aghast parents, as demonstrated in a pretty funny introductory scene. Indeed, this culture war seems to be heating up into an actual war, as Adan discovers when he enters the one profession that will accept a healthy young person with no particular skillset or propensity for self-reflection -- the military (and he doesn't have the videogame scores for the cushy drone division, no comment from me on that). There, he finds something that he was always missing, but one thing leads to another...
While the underlying themes are serious, Roberts handles the storytelling in a playful, tongue-in-cheek way that I enjoyed. There's an ever-evolving back and forth battle between the two opposing "sides" in which the reader is never quite sure which of the two contestants has managed to outmaneuver the other. Which is, of course, a point. There's one literary homage towards the end that I didn't see coming at all, but loved for its off-the-wallness. It's pretty clear, from a bunch of unobtrusive little Easter eggs, that Mr. Roberts knows his SF classics.
It does all get a little metaphysical and time-bendy, especially the last act, but I don't mind that, as long as I can follow it. In his afterwards, Roberts cites Christopher Priest as an influence (among others) -- no surprises there.
In sum, I'm glad to have discoved this author, and will probably read more of his stuff in the future. I'm curious to see if he'll take the inspired-by-a-famous-philosopher theme further.
Personally, I liked The This even better. It's more directly a work of science fiction, full of social commentary, cheeky humor, clever contemplation of Hegel's ideas about dialectics (without mentioning Hegel directly -- I thought the on-the-page discussion of Kant had weighed down The Thing Itself a little), and a willingness to discomfort the reader. To me, the discomfort thing is key -- many newer SF releases these days seem to lean in a comfort-food, wish-fulfillment direction, which is occasionally what I want, but not usually. Give me my shades of gray.
After an intriguing opening sequence in which an unnamed character lives, dies, and is reborn over and over, returning to a dialogue in some "Bardo" (see also Kim Stanley Robinson's underrated The Years of Rice and Salt), we're introduced to one of the primary characters, one Alan "Rich" Rigby. If you're a Beatles fan who gets the hint -- or even if you're not -- you'll recognize Rich as an exemplar of the "loneliness epidemic" that's been much discussed in the press in recent years. Seemingly pushing 40, Rich lives alone, supposedly working on a novel, but not really, and has no real friends outside of his social media connections. He works Uber-esque gig jobs in the slowly dying print media, plays a lot of video games, and drinks too much. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't find his circumstances somewhat relatable -- speaking as a non-married person in the over-40 set, my own social circle imploded after friends started getting married and having kids, with fewer and fewer unattached people my age on hand to replace them. Social media and participation in some online community or another can wallpaper over a few gaps in one's sense of connectness, but at some point, the gaps need you to stop doomscrolling and put something more substantial in them.
For reasons that are mysterious, Rich becomes the prime recruitment target for a next-gen social media service called The This, which claims to offer the antidote to the loneliness that plagues him and so many other people. All one needs to join is a little brain implant, inserted through the roof of the mouth, then one is part of a great community in which everyone is mentally interconnected in a proto-hive-mind and no one feels lonely anymore. Rich is highly skeptical of the cultiness of it all, especially after he meets a cantankerous old lady named Helen Susana (or Helena Susan?), who claims to have been a former member and sees the company as being up to no good. But certain contacts of hers, who claim to be part of the government, want to insert Rich into the This community as a mole, equipped with a brain implant of their own devising. What could go wrong?
Meanwhile, sometime in the future relative to Rich's life, another storyline takes place. In a vaguely Idiocracy-esque future United States (insert nervous laugh here), a young man named Adan, even more pathetic of a character than Rich, finds himself short on rent money when his mother finally cuts him off (at age 34, no less). To support himself and his "girlfriend", Adan must finally get a job. The "girlfriend", naturally, is of a sort that will no doubt one day trigger culture war clashes between some younger generation and its aghast parents, as demonstrated in a pretty funny introductory scene. Indeed, this culture war seems to be heating up into an actual war, as Adan discovers when he enters the one profession that will accept a healthy young person with no particular skillset or propensity for self-reflection -- the military (and he doesn't have the videogame scores for the cushy drone division, no comment from me on that). There, he finds something that he was always missing, but one thing leads to another...
While the underlying themes are serious, Roberts handles the storytelling in a playful, tongue-in-cheek way that I enjoyed. There's an ever-evolving back and forth battle between the two opposing "sides" in which the reader is never quite sure which of the two contestants has managed to outmaneuver the other. Which is, of course, a point. There's one literary homage towards the end that I didn't see coming at all, but loved for its off-the-wallness. It's pretty clear, from a bunch of unobtrusive little Easter eggs, that Mr. Roberts knows his SF classics.
It does all get a little metaphysical and time-bendy, especially the last act, but I don't mind that, as long as I can follow it. In his afterwards, Roberts cites Christopher Priest as an influence (among others) -- no surprises there.
In sum, I'm glad to have discoved this author, and will probably read more of his stuff in the future. I'm curious to see if he'll take the inspired-by-a-famous-philosopher theme further.
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