{"id":4585,"date":"2022-10-10T14:59:19","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T14:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/?page_id=4585"},"modified":"2022-10-11T08:29:25","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T08:29:25","slug":"the-second-sleep-by-robert-harris","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/writing\/book-reviews\/the-second-sleep-by-robert-harris\/","title":{"rendered":"The Second Sleep, by Robert Harris"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Second Sleep<\/em>, by Robert Harris<\/strong><\/p>\n

An unusual one for Harris: technically sf, but to him it\u2019s obviously just another\"\"<\/a> story so I\u2019ve not heard anyone claim it as such, and I prefer this to famous lit\u2019ry types decreeing that they are writing sf whether you like it or not, and the answer tends to be \u201cnot\u201d because they have no clue of the tropes they are wrestling with. And breathe. Because this isn\u2019t published as sf, I\u2019m spared the painful task of saying that it\u2019s not very good sf. But it\u2019s still a cracking read. It\u2019s no great spoiler \u2013 because you start to work it out from page 2 \u2013 that what appears to be England in the Middle Ages is in fact centuries in the future, our present civilisation having collapsed almost overnight around 2025. From barely surviving antique documents, historians of the future deduce it might have been something to do with \u201ccyber warfare\u201d, whatever that is. They know all our money and most of our knowledge was in \u201cthe cloud\u201d (whatever that is) so when that vanished it was essentially game over.<\/p>\n

Think something like The Chrysalids<\/em>, something like A Canticle for Leibowitz<\/em>, except that the world is still intact. Harris does take the entirely reasonable position that church buildings were made of stone and designed to last centuries \u2013 that\u2019s why they are still around today. So, they are still around here, too, whereas apart from concrete megastructures and geographical features like the M40 gorge through the Chilterns, there\u2019s very little sign of our present day buildings. The church is ascendant and determined to keep anyone from delving too deeply into the secrets of the ancients in case they bring down the wrath of God again. The novel takes place in the 1400s \u2026 because the calendar was reset to 666 in the year of the collapse. Hey, I did say it\u2019s not brilliant sf. There is a nice line when a bishop is accused of burning books. He replies indignantly that knowledge is not for burning. Beat. It\u2019s for suppressing.<\/p>\n

Our civilisation is precariously perched, and it obviously bugs Harris big time. And it should. The eeriest chapter is when a future historian describes what he has deduced about the apocalypse. London was a city of some 8 million inhabitants, but with almost no space dedicated to producing food: so, never more than six meals away from starvation. Within days of the collapse there was the Great Exodus as London\u2019s 8 million inhabitants marched out of the city. We know this from the mass graves at Redhill, St Albans, Dartford \u2026 There are still surviving messages carved on the walls of churches \u2013 those handy long-lived structures again \u2013 of people looking for loved ones, by which historians can trace the routes people took around the country and mark the points where their journeys ended, usually in death. There\u2019s also a throwaway theological discussion that comes back to bite as people discuss the story of Noah\u2019s Ark. Even the survivors of that story must have had friends and family they had to abandon: how ruthless must you be to be a successful survivor?<\/p>\n

As usual in a Harris novel, everything is proceeding normally until someone uncovers the first loose thread in a life-threatening mystery. To have that mystery be rooted nearly 1000 years ago is quite a feat, but he manages it. As is unusual \u2013 and this is my one gripe \u2013 some characters act carelessly or against type just because the plot requires them to, so maybe Harris hasn\u2019t fully come to grips with writing this kind of non-sf sf. This one isn\u2019t up there with the best of his oeuvre but it\u2019s by no means the least.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Second Sleep, by Robert Harris An unusual one for Harris: technically sf, but to him it\u2019s obviously just another story so I\u2019ve not heard anyone claim it as such, and I prefer this to famous lit\u2019ry types decreeing that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":368,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4585","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4585"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4664,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4585\/revisions\/4664"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}