Nova Swing (2006) by M John Harrison
Don't miss out on the other works in the series:
Light (2002) Book Review
Empty Space (2012) Book Review
Available works by M John Harrison
Review
Set in the region of the Kefahuchi Tract decades after the events of Light (2002), Nova Swing is the second novel in M. John Harrison’s Kefahuchi Tract trilogy (2002–2012). It continues Harrison’s exploration of a reality in which the strange phenomena of quantum mechanics, including superposition, entanglement and tunnelling, spill into the macroscopic world. Time, space, narrative and identity exist in states of uncertainty, ultimately collapsing in upon themselves. Nova Swing won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2007 and the Philip K. Dick Award in 2008.
Since the events of Light, the influence of the Kefahuchi Tract has extended to planets along its rim. In the spaceport of Saudade City, it manifests as the ‘event site’, a permeable spacetime anomaly that defies known physical laws. The novel interweaves several narrative threads centred on those drawn into its orbit. Vic Serotonin, an illicit tour guide specialising in excursions into the event site, has sold a mysterious artefact to nightclub owner Paulie DeRaad, unaware that it contains infectious code seemingly incubating something unknown. As DeRaad begins to change under its influence, the transaction attracts the attention of Lens Aschemann, a detective with Saudade’s artefact police, who investigates the illegal trade in objects recovered from the anomaly.
Just as the spacetime distortions of the Kefahuchi Tract shaped the lives of the characters in Light, the quantum strangeness of the event site in Nova Swing becomes a vehicle for their hopes, desires and obsessions. Yet nothing is ever fully resolved. Everyone remains suspended in a condition of uncertainty, neither wholly present nor capable of moving beyond the past.
Cats proliferate throughout Nova Swing, just as they do in Light. At dusk and dawn, waves of black and white cats occupy the spaces between Saudade City and the event site, evoking Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment and its paradox of quantum superposition. Like Schrödinger’s cat, Harrison’s characters inhabit states of unresolved possibility, their identities and futures seemingly suspended between alternative outcomes.
Saudade is a waystation populated by people estranged from their former lives, desperately hoping to recover something that may no longer exist. Aschemann remains haunted by the mysterious death of his wife, believing that she might somehow be found within the event site. His heavily augmented assistant has lost almost every trace of her previous identity and obsessively searches for her forgotten name, finding refuge in a virtual reality tank where she inhabits the role of a 1950s housewife. Vic Serotonin, meanwhile, has devoted his life to penetrating the mysteries of the anomaly, postponing any possibility of fulfilment until he succeeds.
In contrast to the technological transcendence envisioned in posthuman space operas such as Dan Simmons’s Hyperion Cantos (1989–1997) and David Zindell’s Neverness universe (1988–1998), Harrison’s characters never escape the limitations of their humanity. Despite the extraordinary technologies surrounding them, their desires remain painfully mundane. They seek lost lovers, forgotten identities, personal redemption and the possibility of beginning again. Technological transformation offers no guarantee of transcendence.
The event site itself embodies radical uncertainty and the unknowability of the alien. Those who enter frequently return altered or contaminated; others disappear altogether. Some visitors are motivated by scientific curiosity, others by the promise of extraordinary experiences, while a few simply seek the thrill of having sex within sight of the anomaly. Time behaves unpredictably: a week spent inside certain regions may correspond to a year in the outside world, and what appears observable from beyond its boundaries rarely corresponds to what is encountered within.
Aschemann speculates that recent changes in the event site may represent stages in the lifecycle of an unfamiliar species of artefact. Strange, infantile humanoid creatures have begun emerging from the anomaly, and he suspects that their behaviour constitutes an attempt at communication, one that human observers are incapable of recognising or interpreting. As with so much in Harrison’s fiction, the theory remains unresolved. Nevertheless, it recalls the enigmatic Shrander of Light, another seemingly alien intelligence whose attempts to communicate with humanity resist conventional understanding.
Combining detective fiction with noir, Nova Swing unfolds largely amid the neon-lit streets, bars and nightclubs of Saudade City. Its atmosphere is distinctly cyberpunk: cramped shops offer body modifications, genetic therapies, intelligent tattoos, memory manipulation and downloadable skills. Through the Uncle Zip franchise, customers can even purchase disposable bodies off the rack. In Saudade, appearance, identity and ability have become commodities. Anyone can look like anything, assume another identity or acquire almost any skill.
Yet this apparent freedom masks a more unsettling reality. As in much cyberpunk literature, powerful corporations exert influence from beyond the immediate narrative. Earth Military Contracts (EMC) repeatedly enters and withdraws from the story, its operations suggesting hidden interests whose ultimate purposes are never disclosed.
Harrison thus appropriates the familiar machinery of cyberpunk and space opera while undermining their traditional promises. The technologies of self-transformation are ubiquitous, but identity remains elusive. The alien is everywhere, yet meaningful contact seems impossible. Even the detective narrative, conventionally organised around the eventual resolution of a mystery, becomes an exercise in uncertainty. In Nova Swing, the closer the characters come to understanding the world around them, the less certain they become of what understanding might mean.