Lo que más me gusta de las novelas que he leído de Adam Roberts es la estructura desestructurada con las que se presentan sus historias. Capítulos situados en distintos momentos dentro de una supuesta misma línea temporal pero situados con cientos o miles de años de diferencia que, sin embargo, tienen más cosas en común de las que puedan parecer.

En su nueva novela, con un título tan enigmático como el que tiene, nos presenta una especie de Twitter con manos libres al cual se accede a través de un implante que te puedes poner en parte alta de la boca y que se expande a través de tu cerebro. De esta manera tu acceso a la red social es directo y la inmersión completa.

Sin embargo, esto no está bien visto por una parte de la sociedad que considera que quienes forman de esa red social terminan por ser parte de un culto que absorbe a sus miembros alejándose de la sociedad tal y como la entendemos. La creación de una mente colmena donde todos los pensamientos se reúnan en un mismo sitio está cada vez más cerca.

Al mismo tiempo tenemos historias situadas en un futuro lejano donde los humanos luchan contra una mente colmena formada por AIs con ansias de colonización global. O una trama donde un personaje parece ser capaz de combatir a la mente colmena sin que nadie sepa muy bien porqué.

Comenta el propio autor que el filósofo Hegel es una gran influencia en este libro, aunque puedo decir que se puede leer también sin conocer la obra del alemán. Aunque, siendo honestos, seguramente alguna idea del tramo final se me haya escapado precisamente por no conocer las ideas del filósofo. En cualquier caso, es una novela plenamente disfrutable.

En cualquier caso, 'The This' me ha parecido una fantástica novela de mentes colmena, futuros posibles, tecnología del día a día llevada a un lugar reconocible y posibles desafíos a los que nosotros mismo y nuestra tecnología nos puede llevar más pronto que tarde.

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’m 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

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 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.

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?)

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.