In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
Publisher – Atlantic
Published – Out Now
Price – £9.99 paperback £4.91 Kindle ebook
Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth's first life forms - what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.
Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency. Drawn deeper into the agency's work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.
I once got told at school ‘No man Is An island’ by a teacher to which I thought well you try being the only boy in school who likes Doctor Who and hates football. However, as I’ve got older and been proved right on my choice of a tv show I also have come to realise no one is in a vacuum. Even if you cut yourself off from people you’re still part of the universe and the wider natural world we have a place in it we affect it by our litter our pollution, our recycling or our gardening. An ecosystem billions of years evolving under our feet slowly. In Martin MacInnes’ enigmatic science fiction novel In Ascension we have an intriguing mystery, compelling character studies and writing but ultimately I found the story did not really reach the heights its aiming for and the more I have puzzled my reaction to it.
Leigh is a Dutch woman living in the near future as a marine biologist and intrigued by the ancient organisms that started life at the start of the world we call home. She is called to work on a new science expedition that finds an astounding hole in the crust of the oceans significantly deeper than anything else yet discovered. The mission finds strange metals, organisms and has a bizarre impact on Leigh and a few other of the explorers who enter the water. This experience starts Leigh onto a new cutting-edge piece of biological research far from her estranged family and home and coincides with new developments in space travel and exploration. Leigh finds herself on a new mission, but the outcome will be more surprising than she can ever expect.
I enjoyed the first half of In Ascension a lot but the set-up is ultimately not enough and I do find the character arcs such as they are a little problematic. Initially though the standout is Leigh’s voice. MacInnnes writes Leigh talking about her early life and a terribly abusive father with a very short temper. This creates issues as she grows up with her mother who was silent on the abuse and her sister who seems to have blocked the memories out. While this goes on, she finds her love of nature and realising how much life there is even in a drop of water or our stomachs. The initial feeling is that we are reading an accomplished scientist’s biology looking back at her life. There is a diary like approach of key moment, impressions of people and how she experiences things. Leigh is very much an observer, an introvert, uncomfortable with people and not one to realise that diving into your work will not help your efforts to engage with family, partners or friends. You do get to understand science and nature are for her the safe havens she has run to.
Slowly, very slowly, MacInnes drops into the tale some mysteries and the exploration to this mysterious crater that appears bottomless is really well told. You can feel the ship, the nature of the crew and the cutting edge science. Then things get weird – its like a sea within a sea and the fivers such as Leigh seem to be both ill and changed. It’s a good mystery as its feels very strange and then we end and move on to leigh working on a mysterious Nasa-related space mission. At this point I feel the novel starts to fall apart.
MacInnes writes science beautifully. The description of microscopic organisms, the power of evolution or the vast content of Voyager 1 are as flowing as you’ll find in any good coffee table science book – it makes the world around us come alive. Sadly, MacInnes seems always reluctant to have any actual action on the page. The pacing is baggy, slow and curiously loves to skip things. A character disappears and no explanation given; we suddenly find there is an environmental protest about the nature of Leigh’s work that makes plot points happen but comes out of nowhere and a spaceship goes one way and then we find goes the other. While Leigh is very well portrayed, and we get to understand her in the first half of the novel all the other characters appear cyphers – able to do the traditional long exposition as conversation scenes but really feel for the most part functional rather than human beings. I didn’t care about them or their fates. The mission is ultimately however well described a fairly routine science fiction plot at this point, and you can guess where it goes and indeed it does
Without getting too spoiler I’m also slightly troubled by how Leigh a woman shaped by abuse into someone who runs from her family, her partner and any real connection ends up more the observer and sacrifice to what happens next. There is no growth to Leigh in the novel and the idea that her childhood helps her to achieve just being at the book’s finale is for me a waste of a character and raises a troubling question of is it ok for Leigh to effectively disappear rather than be allowed to grow and make her own choices? Her passivity in the end for me really felt like MacInnes didn’t know what to do next so we will end on an ellipsis. Doctor Who’s conclusion to the episode Earthshock was way more interesting and I’ll leave it at that. But ultimately for me the autobiographical style the first half of the novel unwinds the book as Leigh’s future becomes apparent. It no longer fits the story as I was asking myself exactly who was she writing to?
I’m conscious writing this that In Ascension has just won the Clarke Award, so clearly some feel differently about the book, but while I can appreciate the language and the first half really is a very good start , for me, the complete reading experience was a touch disappointing with a feeling that underneath the unique character voice, flowing language and some interesting ideas there ultimately feels just a very simple space travel tale we’ve seen before. Worth a read but I suspect will not be one people will keep coming back to.
