C

Author: Tom Mccarthy

Even when the British new wave was introducing literary experiment into science fiction, the genre has been suspicious of the avantgarde. There is a sense that no nonsense storytelling does not belong with the wilder inventions characteristic of the literary fringes. But the suspicion is not always justified, as the case of C demonstrates. McCarthy is the general secretary of the International Necronautical Society which is devoted to mind-bending art projects about death, and his first novel was only published when a Paris-based art collective took it up. Not a background that science fiction would feel comfortable with, but like science fiction McCarthy believes that technology shapes and controls our world, and that idea is central t this novel. The central character, Serge, is the son of an eccentric inventor who runs a school for the deaf. These inventions include work on wireless transmissions, and that becomes the guiding principle of Serge's life, taking him on a series of extravagant adventures including operating wireless sets on World War One spotter planes, escaping from a German Prisoner of War camp, exposing fake mediums in postwar London, and eventually establishing an international communications network for a sinister organisation in Egypt. Like Thomas Pynchon, with whom he has many similarities, McCarthy writes stories that depart from the real world into realms of extravagant invention and surreal technological twists, while always staying true to a central science-based idea.