Polystom: Two Universes in One Reality

by Adam Roberts

In a feat of extraordinary imagination, Adam Roberts creates a universe in which a breathable atmosphere extends out between the planets, aristocrats cruise interstellar space in biplanes, Skywhals make mysterious distant orbits, and a fruitless war has dragged on for years. With bravura plotting, Roberts presents two universes, challenging our very notions of reality.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Steampunk, Speculative Fiction, British Literature

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Librarian 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.

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm. This was a strange one, and in the end a little unsatisfying. It starts with a great idea- that there is an atmosphere between the planets of a solar system, and that people can fly propeller planes between them. The system is run on a feudal sort of model and there is a war going on where the serf types have risen up against the rulers of one of the inner worlds.

Adam Roberts is a diva of interesting ideas and cool concepts (see his book Stone for a great example) Unfortunately the main character of Polystom is an unlikable dick, and the story moves from the interesting air-linked feudal worlds to what is essentially an extended world-war-one-in-the-trenches narrative which, while engaging, is not as compelling. Added to this the final reveal and justification for the strange physics of Polystom's universe - which I won't spoil here - is a fairly old idea which left me a little cold.

Sigh. This is the third or fourth book I've read in a row, by an author whose other works I've loved, that has been a middling three stars. I'm getting deja vu from typing 'this isn't as good as (insert author)'s other book (insert title). For this one Polystom isn't as interesting as Salt, or as good as Stone, which is my favorite of Adam Robert's works.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quite strange read, set in what I can only describe as a kind of clockwork steampunk universe, or at least, solar system. The planets and moons exist not in a vacuum but in an atmosphere which allows those with the money and inclination to travel between them using bi-planes. Society appears to be semi-feudal and on one of these worlds, a war to put down a 'servant uprising' has been ongoing for years without end.

The story's central character, Polystom, is a kind of caricature of a certain kind of young upper-class officer in waiting, unaware of the extent of his own privileges and easily frustrated when people, and the world more generally, doesn't behave exactly as he would want it to. Other reviewers have complained that he's an unlikable character, which I think rather misses the point. Maybe it's because he's presented as bookish and diffident and a certain kind of reader therefore expects him to fit into a certain kind of heroic template, but I don't think we're *meant* to like him. In spite of his love of epic poetry and romance, his greatest failing is one of imagination. He simply can't get inside the head of anyone substantially different from him: hence why he struggles to understand either his wife in the first section of the book, or the men under him in the latter part. It is not that he is intrinsically any nastier than those around him, but rather than having been born into a position of great power, he has never had to see anything from anyone else's perspective and seems to lack the ability to do so (in this, I think he differs from his uncle, who appears an altogether more knowing, and cynical piece of work...

The book divides into three sections. In the first, we are told the story of Polystom's ill-fated marriage to Beeswing, a misfit whom he never really tries to understand and ends up driven to try to control in ever more coercive ways. As a portrait of how a powerful but naive young scion can do a lot of harm, I thought it rather well done. The second section of the book tells the story of the assassination of his influential uncle, who has been involved in a long-running war on the planet of Mudworld, while the final section of the book jumps forward to see Polystom enlist as an officer in that war in reaction to his uncle's death and has more than a touch of 'World War One in Space' about it, particularly in the sense of involving very bloody battles for incremental territorial gains.

As a whole, the book reminded me a little of some of Iain M Banks' work - particularly Inversions and , to a lesser extent his not-quite-science-fiction book, A Song of Stone (which I found a crushing disappointment when I picked it up immediately after reading The Crow Road at 18, but really ought to go back and revisit).

Except there's a late reveal, hinted at in both the book's title and blurb and occasionally throughout the book. So, in the final fifty or so pages, it is revealed that the whole world might be nothing more than a simulation inside a vastly powerful computer. Or not. I can imagine that if I had read this when I was much younger, and had not previously read, for example, Nick Bostrom's take on the simulation argument, I might have found this mind-blowing. But as it was, I couldn't help thinking it was, for the most part, a bit of a cheap high-concept add-on. I'm not sure it really put much of a new spin on the story told in the preceding three parts of the book. Did it really make much of a difference to what had gone before that, perhaps, none of it was real? Is there some kind of meta-narrative point being made about the fact that what I'd just read was a work of fiction within a work of fiction? Maybe, but I can't help thinking that this late twist felt like little more than a thought experiment tacked on to the end of the story.

[deilann · Rating 1 out of 5]

Originally posted on SpecFic Junkie.

I'm not really the type to feel sorry for an abuser, especially an abuser who's just a fucking shitty person in general. So when a book is clearly showing him in a sympathetic light, I'm going to be annoyed as fuck. On top of that, the science in it is just inconsistent and awful, which might be fine if it wasn't justified in the last 10% of the book.

To put it in a simpler way: I was literally allergic to this book and misplaced it three times. I think my subconscious really, really wanted me to stop reading it. Spoilers for the ending after the cut.

So, you know how "it was all a dream" is a shitty ending? You know what else is shitty? "It was all a virtual reality maybe we don't know maybe we're in the virtual reality."

Because that was the end.

But wait! You have to get through 270 pages of weirdly inconsistent bad science before it's even hinted at that this is all just a dream. Or maybe we're the dream.

But wait! You also have to get through a huge portion of the book where the protagonist abuses his wife to death, but it's so sad that she died and he misses her. No, I'm not kidding.

He's told he should marry to get over his father's death. Make him less lonely and all. So, he sees a girl from afar at a party where his aunt is trying to matchmake him with someone else, and falls in love with her. He meets her guardian who tries to tell him that she's kind of unmanageable. Always running away. Her mothers weren't able to contain her.

He meets her once and asks her to marry him. She said neither yes nor no, so he decides it's cool and runs with it. Because that's totally consent and all. Oh, he's also realized at this point that she's dissociative as fuck, but doesn't seem to connect it to the fact that her mothers and her guardian were abusing her. But then he can't control her (and he literally talks about how he's driven to possess her) and so he decides to lock her in a room.

Despite her having stated that's her greatest fear.

Oh, and as far as I can tell, there's no irony meant in the fact that he locked her in the Yellow Room. Needless to say, she doesn't respond well. She smashes her head in on a door and before she's better, runs away. And then dies.

His uncle asked him if he blames himself. And his response? "For what?" He fucking killed his wife and he's merely sad about her death. He can't realize that he's the one who fucking killed her.

And then we get like a billion more (sneezy) pages waxing on about how sad he is. His uncle dies and he isn't sad about that, so he joins the military because he's not sad.

But we should feel sorry for him.

I don't. One star. Fuck this book.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first Adam Roberts read, and it's a winner. Structured as three linked novellas, Polystom is set in an Edwardian analog to Garfinkle's CELESTIAL MATTERS, but with an information-age "what is reality?" twist. And I'm a sucker for the old "Ms. found in a [weird place]" device. An unusual, and well-written, science-fantasy. 3.5 stars.

Read, and reviewed, circa 2004. Rasfw post, I think.

"In one strange corner of the universe, six worlds and their several moons orbit tightly around their odd sun, which operates not only by fusion, but by simple oxidation..." --Paul Di Filippo
[circa 2003, no longer online]

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried this new author and found it not to my liking.

[Stephen Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

What on earth was that all about. The original concept was quite understandable, albeit the character was at best annoying at worst an out and out cad. The story arch takes some quite strange turns, and I did find myself wanting to find out what happened next, so from that point of view a page turner. The final few paragraphs are quite frankly....wtf! It spoiled the feel of where the story was going and quite frankly was up itself. Such a disappointing ending.

[Duncan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Adam Roberts continually sets his books in strange settings and this was no exception. In a universe where the air between planets is breathable, 'space' travel is only a matter of setting sail for another planet through the air. The story itself was something that didn't really grab me and the characters were somewhat flat but I'll always applaud a novel setting.

[Jonathan D McMillan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A slow starting rollercoaster

This book starts out so mellow it did the perfect job of hiding its true nature. There is some classic Adam Roberts' body horror, and crazy big concepts. Best read not knowing the main plot points

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars.

Another early Roberts that isn't short of mind-bending ideas, but is a bit rough around the edges and dark in a way that feels gratuitous - which either means it is a reference to something I missed, or 20 years of changing sensibilities have taken their toll.

[Dirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard going half-way, but a real surprize at the end..

[Ben Brackett · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the lower end of the meh scale. Would have been better as a short story or novella.

[Roddy Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Amongst all his Uncle Cleonicles’ notions, his explanation for the stars has always seemed just too fanciful to be true to Polystom, fiftieth steward of Enting.

Yes, his uncle invented the Computational Device, the Greatest Work of Man, the Summation of Human Knowledge, but surely everyone accepts that the air between the planets is without end. how could there be nothing beyond something? Where would air end and nothing begin?

This is but one certainty in a universe of certainties for the fiftieth Steward of Enting. Polystom is certain his new wife will love him. Certain that his servants respect him. Certain that war will bring him the glory he has been looking for.

the death of his uncle is only one of the first shocks to his comfortable view of life…

Adam Roberts has, in a marvellous feat of the imagination, created a vivid unique universe. One in which autocrats cruise between the planets in biplanes, in which Skywhals make mysterious distant orbits, in which a fruitless war has dragged on for years.

For it to be any other way is, of course, completely impossible….’

Blurb from the 2003 Gollancz paperback edition

Roberts made his name with the excellent ‘Salt’ and has gone on to produce several monosyllabically titled novels. here, breaking into fresh three-syllable territory, he gives us ‘Polystom’, Polystom being the central character, the Steward of Enting, one of a number of worlds orbiting only a few thousand miles out from a small sun in a system in which the atmosphere stretches between the planets, populated by Skywhals and air plankton, and allows Polystom (or anyone else for that matter) to fly a plane from one world to another.
This society is a quaint feudal one, the classes divided strictly between masters and servants. The story, brought to us through Polystom’s eyes, is sometimes shocking in the attitude of those of Polystom’s level to their servants.
Polystom’s uncle Cleonicles, we learn, had a brief affair with a male servant, whom he ordered to dominate and sodomise him over a period of months.
Finally tiring of this sexual pleasure and feeling a little ashamed, he sends the servant away to the ongoing war on the planet Aelop and almost certain death.
The shame was not one of homosexuality, but of the servant dominating the master. Same-sex relationships are not unusual in this universe as Polystom's father had a long-term relationship with another man himself.
Death is a constant presence in the novel. We know that Polystom’s father had not long died at the start of the novel. Polystom then marries the wilful and enigmatic Beeswing who tries to escape the marriage by running away. With Polystom in pursuit she trips and falls, is recaptured by her husband and, during the argument, falls again and dies.
Polystom’s uncle is then murdered by anonymous men, thought to be escaped from the war on Aelop. It may have been the old man’s spurned servant seeking revenge, or agents of the military, after the old scientist’s secrets. Roberts leaves it to the reader to determine.
Polystom then raises a platoon of his own servants and joins the war, a crazy affair conducted in the hot reeking mud of Aelop.
It is only here, near the end of this strange but beautiful novel that any connection between our world and Polystom’s is mentioned. Is our world a simulation running in a vast computer on Polystom’s world of Aelop? Or is Polystom’s universe merely a simulation created by Earth scientists on their own ‘Computational Devices’? Is the violence and chaos of Earth leaking through into Polystom’s peaceful universe and inciting revolution and bloodshed?
The ideas are Eganesque and also hark back to earlier conceptual breakthrough novels like ‘Non Stop’ and Daniel F Galouye’s ‘Dark Universe’
However, the denouement i.e. the revelation at the end seemed a little too much like a gimmick introduced simply to connect Polystom’s world with our own.

[Paul Silver · Rating 3 out of 5]

An amazing setting, a bizarre first few pages, then a story about a completely unlikeable man. Polystom is an aristocrat in a universe, or maybe a pocket of a universe, where the planets are close together and atmosphere stretches between them and many of the planets in the system are inhabited. He can fly his plane to the moon to visit his uncle.

Sadly, Polystom is narcissitic and the story grinds through his short, horrible marriage, a murder investigation, war and then some strange philosophy which finishes things off. The philosophy is interesting, the situation is interesting, almost everything about the main character is irritating.

I've given this three stars because there is lots of interest in the story, and I admire Roberts for having an unlikeable antihero as his hero, but really, it would have been better if Polystom had actually grown as a person during his experiences. He might be quite an accurate portrayal of someone of extreme wealth and breeding (admittedly, in a fantastical setting) but reading a whole story where the main character is grindingly annoying isn't much fun, and this is a setting that was just crying out for a bit more fun.

[Eric Lawton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in a universe (maybe) where servants (read "slaves") are executed on a whim by and upper class very reminiscent of the British peerage. The "hero" (Polystom) has his nose rubbed in reality and turns out to be marginally more thoughtful than his physicist/computer science uncle. I dropped one star because I got so mad at Polystom for being such an a-hole that it went on a few pages too far, but in retrospect it could be funny if you were in the right mood.

As well as satirizing the upper class, it introduces some strange twists of physics and philosophy towards the end, which is Roberts' trademark but to say more would be a spoiler.

I'm on my third reading of Roberts' books. Increasing my rating because as I pay more attention to the writing and less to the bizarre plots, I realize how good that is; it gives a wonderful impression of the thought processes of the characters who, however literally outlandish, seem very realistic.

[Pick Nik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Das war das dritte und am wenig unterhaltsamste Buch das ich von Adam Roberts gelesen habe.
Man kann ihm nicht vorwerfen, dass er auf symphatischen Figuren setzt um eine Geschichte zu erzählen. Im Gegenteil. Bei diesem Buch konnte ich es gar nicht erwarten, dass der Hauptcharakter endlich ins Gras beißt. Das war sehr ähnlich wie Stone (dt. Sternenstaub)
Dieser Wunsch hat mich dann ziemlich schnell ans Ende des Buches gebracht, wo im Normalfall die Schicksale aufgedeckt werden. Die Science-Fiction kam eigentlich erst so richtig am Ende des letzten Kapitels ins Spiel und hat das Buch noch unterhaltsam gemacht, besonders die philosophische Betrachtungen haben mir dabei gefallen.

[Peter]

V.well written. Interesting concept, weak story realisation: I chose this largely based on the book cover notes with a mind that it may be along the lines of Moorcocks Dancers at the End of Time. Though no relevance to that, Polystom sketches an engaging world , HG Wells/Victorians in Space, however does not follow through with plot execution or characters you really invest in whilst reading the book. On reflection its culmination veers towards a cyberpunk concept of alternate realities; interesting though not defining.

[Jeremy Hornik · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extremely dislikable narrator (an aristocrat in a highly stratified society) and a meta twist at the end. The lead character is so pathetic and ignorant that you feel bad for him, and then he goes and accidentally on purpose kills his wife and gets a lot of other people killed and generally doesn't stand up for good.

There's something in here about being locked into a point of view by one's upbringing, but it's not wholly formed, and not everyone will have the stomach to sift through the awful behavior for it.

[Lune Loh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this a four, since I really like Roberts' ideas in his various books, and Polystom was one with a universe that captivated my imagination.

Despite the narration of the antihero, it is in Roberts' mastery to bring out the absolute worst of human nature in his stories and he did that with Polystom - rich, unlikable and dispossessed from his noble background.

There's the ending - But i'll give it a pass despite it's unoriginality, since it is difficult for even a Universe like this to exist under scientific principles based on our reality. It is reminiscent of Koji Suzuki's 'Loop'.

[Peter Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very unpleasant Neo Victorian gentleman in a Universe where ether exists discovers some very disquieting things about his beloved stable system.

I'm not clever enough to usually understand the effects of changing physical constants and this is no exception - probably why I disliked Greg Egan's latest work - but I was able to overlook the different physics enough to enjoy this. Be warned - pretty much every man in this novel is appalling.

[Allan Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The actual story is something we have seen before and not that interesting.
What works is Roberts's universe, which is a combo of futuristic tolerance combined with an archaic view of servants. Certain things are described in great detail. Certain details are completely irrelevant and yet described as were they essential to the plot. The reader cannot believe that the universe is right, and with that the ending becomes superfluous.

[Jon Sayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started as a bit of a slog. Ended in a bit of a slog...

The philosophy near the end struck me as pedantic.

But Polystom as a character.... Man. Mr. Roberts is a master of exploring the inner mind of people that in our world would be called "creepy stalker dude".

[Rich Boulton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed this, and like Stone, the other Roberts book I've read, it had an interestingly unlikeable protagonist. It just didn't feel as strong as Stone, and I doubt it will have a lasting impact on me.

[bluetyson]

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