New Model Army by Adam Roberts

Every now and then you come across a book and within the first two pages you realise it's 'important'. Adam Roberts has written something that fits that description. Telling the apparent story of a mercenary in a modern day Condottieri it turns into something entirely other by the end and delivers a cerebral and wholly satisfying punch to your philosophical apparatus.

Saying that it's not without flaws but they are almost entirely of the 'device needed to tell a big' story' variety and I'm not going to dwell on them here. Suffice to say that they're needed to help move the narrative through the intellectual ideas Roberts wants to gallop through.

There are enough ideas packed onto the page here to keep lesser authors supplied for entire ten book series but Roberts is interested in the whole, in the concepts that underlie the elements and it's enough to say "here it is, because of that there". Not since I read Quicksilver have I been so excited by the sheer volume of detail and exploration on display - if one could get fat from reading then this book would have tipped me well over my daily allowance.

How Roberts delivers this is through a ballsy tale of democratic participation in the midst of a war set, for the most part, in the home counties (including the unforgettable Battle of Basingstoke). If you're worried it's all a bit hi falutin, do panic, what Roberts is exploring is presented to the reader as a war story whose end we experience with the narrator. It feels both deliciously Enlightenment (and Baroque) while proudly tattooing its contemporary setting across your forehead. I was reminded of Hobbes, Bacon, De Tocqueville and Arthur C Clarke and Huxley at their very best. This is Sci Fi as it's supposed to be written, in all its glorious drive to understanding humanity and what shapes us.

So far I've detailed a book I really enjoyed. Why's it important? Here's why: Roberts tackles the idea of social media as a tool for revolution (it was published in 2009 and so written almost coincidentally around the time the first Arab Springs were being sprung), about how proper democracy is really very different from representative democracy and how being part of that is transformational for both those on the inside and those on the outside. He also pores over what it means to be human (through the lens of sociality and technology) and what intelligence might look like as it evolves in an age driven by technological change.

In summary this is a good story overwhelmed (in a compelling and positive manner) by an American super sized breakfast buffet of ideas and visions of the future.