The This by Adam Roberts

Published – Out Now

Publisher - Gollancz

Price – £9.99 paperback £0.99 Kindle eBook

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.

Social media I have an interesting relationship with. Its very much where I talk about books, where the blog gets promoted and I like to chat and cross paths with friends. At the same time, it’s a strange business – constantly being pushed to use an algorithm rather than time; it is often LOUD and occasionally feeds a desire to be angry and mean. Its also hard to shake-off. I can justify it but am I addicted as much as any of us? In Adam Roberts intelligent and disquieting The This we get an examination of social media as a reflection on humanity’s ongoing need to belong to something with both positive and dangerous outcomes in the balance.

The This is twitter without having to use your thumbs. The ability to simply have an implant into your brain and be permanently connected – a reassuring hive. In our time its just starting to gain traction and governments are getting suspicious. Is The This with its focus on certain people, fathering of their bank accounts and constant spread actually more of a cult? Rich is a journalist always on hire asked to ask some questions of the people running it and then he finds The This really want him to join up. So do a mysterious agency. In the far future Earth is at war with a hive mind that wants to take over Venus and set up  a new colony then to be left in peace. War is coming and Adan normally just wanting a life of idle luxury end up recruited. As events run their course these two periods will finally explain how The This ends up so powerful and attracts even more attention trying to stop it.

Adam Roberts has done some marvellous things in this book which is a reading experience I can thoroughly recommend. This is Science Fiction examining a subject, exploring all sides of it and crucially then both managing to explore the future ramifications of technology but also how the technology also reflects humanity. It has some deliciously dizzying writing to pull you in. This starts with a mysterious place known as the Bardo where an unseen character lives the life of eery ancestor; then everyone else who ever lived. Roberts writing speeds through centuries at pace (and covering a lot of farming) and it’s a splendid opening chapter – its gripping and mysterious – how exactly is all of this happening? Everything will come together but as a way to make you keep turning pages it has to be applauded.

We move to the present day and Rich’s story and crossing paths with Adan’s story. Here we get what could be a familiar SF trope – technology run by evil corporation, but Roberts isn’t going for the obvious. This book is about our desire to belong. Rich is as we find lonely and The This offers Bliss. In one section as we get to understand the world the narrative runs alongside a familiar almost twitter stream of ads, cries for help, rants, puns and it feels all so familiar to any user and as the chapter goes on so repetitive but also reassuring  - that what we do right? But The This is a bit more sinister when it wants people its members can act with one voice; know where you are and sometimes take over everyone in a pub. They’re meaning but not quite yet explaining their agenda and why Rich ,who is lovably useless and we find desperately lonely, is so important to their masterplan and yet really with his hobby of collecting banknotes he’s never expected as likely to change the world. Here Social Media is a balm; an addiction and some say a cult that influences behaviour and becomes just a little worrying.

In Adan’s story set a few centuries later we recognise the Hive Mind now viewed as earth’s enemy is itself just The This’ latest incarnation. It feels almost a decadent future Adam is 32 and addicted to his AI girlfriend. Cynically companies realised people are so attached to their phones imagine what would happen if they made them into obedient life partners. What could easily though play for laughs (and initially does) though moves into Starship Troopers territory where for reasons the book amusingly explains Adan has to fight and finds himself bizarrely the one soldier capable of stopping the Hive Mind’s various machine warriors. The interesting angle I think we explore is that social media is just another way we that create factions we choose to belong to. Its innate in humans to be part of a community but sometimes we go for the easier non questioning path – a religion; a wartime cause; a political party that turns into an autocratic state. That just the need for us to have belonging; doing what we believe we should do by those who really run things is just our human nature’s dark side. By joining up we start to lose our ability to adapt- a hive mind can offer unity of thought; constant connection and who knows in the future potential immortality but does it make it actually improve ourselves as a species or suck out our creativity? As the story turns, I found myself questioning my relationship with my beloved apps and the questions are thought-provoking.

The This never feels like simply a three-hundred-page essay. Roberts has carefully structure the plot too jumping around time; giving us an assortment of characters from Rich and his suitably strange spymasters and their bodyguards and Adan ultra-cool yet also strangely pathetic friends in the future who all feel a little lost. We get to care about them and see them as people  - we understand their choices and we want them to be ok. The non-linear narrative means we don’t quite know where each chapter goes next – is it present day spy scene; SF future alien planet battle and we can leap into a chapter that appears almost like 1984 or something at the end even stranger – it does all get neatly sewn together to explain why its all connected. It feels fresh, constantly moving and a novel that you can sense enjoying playing with its theme. My slight reservation is the final act has to try to resolve it all and while we get an overall explanation it slightly falls over that a story saying hive minds are dangerous itself tries to say other non-social media forms of hive minds (be they cities, communities or more) are better and more successful. It doesn’t really capture that difference – all those other forms of hive minds existed pre-the internet -  to make me think it fully made the landing of its points but my goodness the journey and discussion are what I want an SF novel to deliver.

The This is a novel that makes us think about ourselves; where we are heading and how technology can influence those decisions. It’s a story that pays tribute to SF’s past and also feels like something interesting and new in itself dealing with today’s issues. Highly addictive to read and thought-provoking – it is strongly recommended when you have time to log off.