The Gone-Away World
Nick Harkaway
532 pages
published in 2008

Whoa.

Now I understand why The Gone-Away World was one of last year's most discussed science fiction books. I'd noticed the fuzz but not gotten my hands on a copy until yesterday when I checked it out of the library for beach reading, but once I got it home it gripped me and didn't let me go until I'd finished it late at night after everybody else had gone to bed. Books like that are rare and you always finish them with a hint of regret that a pleasurable journey is over. And The Gone-Away World is very much a journey type of book, with plenty of amusing diversions along the way asnd in no hurry to reach its destination.

In fact, most of The Gone-Away World after the first chapter is a hugely extended flashback, only catching up to the present three fifths of the way through the story. Some may find this annoying enough to argue that the book would've been better off without that teaser. Personally I disagree, I think this structure was necessary. The "teaser" is there to get you interested in the world Harkaway has created, while the extended flashback explains both the personal history of the narrator and the world he lives in and how it came to be. When you rejoin the action after the flashback this added and detailed history gives added weight and poignancy to what happens next. It wouldn't have worked if it had been in strict chronological order.

The Gone-Away World revolves around Gonzo Lubitsch, strong, handsome, brave and not inclined to use his brains more than he has to, who largely glides through life without having had to so far. This is for a large part due to his sidekick and wingman, our nameless narrator, who is not as handsome or fortunate as Gonzo, who has had more need to think and plan to get what he wants out of life, but who's largely content to remain in Gonzo's shadow. Both are members and shareholders in the Haulage and Hazmat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company of Exmoor County, and they've just been hired to put out a big fire in a pumping station on the Pipe. The Pipe circles the world and is what keeps the Liveable Zone -- what remains of civilisation after the Go Away War -- safe from the Unreal and which is property of the beneficial and quite profitable Jorgmund company through the regular dispersal of FOX into the countryside around the Pipe. It's rather important in other words and it's up to the Haulage and Hazmat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company of Exmoor County to save the world. Again.

But exactly what's happening, why the pipe exists, what FOX is and what happened in the Go Away War is still unclear, because as said, the book now dives into an extended flashback explaining when and how the narrator and Gonzo met, how they became friends and so on. It starts with their first meeting at age five and goes on through their days at the slightly excentric Christian public school in Cricklewood Crove five minutes into a future in which Cuba has sought annexation by Britain, (leading to the worst pun in the book: CuBritannia). As Gonzo glides through life the narrator follows, like him getting into martial arts, following the Voiceless Dragon teachings of Master Wu, like him going to Jarndice University, bedding the best friend of Gonzo's girlfriend... But he also has his own life, getting involved with student politics which turns serious when he's arrested by some branch of the security services. Scared badly he drops politics, starts seriously studying, graduates and can't get a job because of his security annex and ends up working for the same man who had arrested him in the first place, George Copsen, coincidently the father of one of Gonzo's first girlfriends.

Meanwhile a crisis is brewing in the made up Central Asian country of Addeh Kattir, a small, pleasant and largely neglected country until the forces of international finance capitalism noticed it and rolled over it in name of profit. Things disintegrate, various international factions get involved in an unwar with their own peacekeeping forces shooting at each other. Gonzo and our hero are in the midst of things, as it turns out both have gotten involved in the very very secret unconventional weapons research project run by George Copsen, taken charge of the superweapon which self proclaimed super genius Derek (last name blanked out on his security badge) has invented. This weapon operates that if you separate information from matter, the latter will Go Away, just disappear, as matter without information cannot exist. Once the weapon gets used in retaliation for a chemical attack, it turns out said weapon is not so secret afterall, the war goes global and large parts of the world are disappeared. And of course in the aftermath it turns out the matter may have disappeared, the information is still there and is now freeflowing dream Stuff, able to bond to any nearby imagination. The old world has disappeared and New things, monsters and even humans appear in its place. In this new unstable world a measure of stability is reached with the invention of FOX, which counteracts Stuff and neutralises it, bringing a measure of safety to what's left of humanity.

This apocalypse is only one part of The Gone-Away World's huge plot, in which master Wu and his Voiceless Dragon martial arts also plays a major part. Master Wu himself died in a fire years before the Go Away war, either as a tragic accident or because he was targeted as part of a decades old vendetta against his family by the Clockwork Hand ninja society. This part of the plot comes to the fore only after the resolution of the flashback, as the crisis started in chapter one is at its highest and a moustachioed ninja attacks Gonzo and the narrator to prevent them from dealing with the fire in the Pipe. It's only after the resolution of this crisis that the narrator finally has to make his own separate way from Gonzo, and the true nature of their relationship, the reasons for the fire, the true nature of FOX and the real masters of the new world are revealed. It all ends in an insanely complicated finale battle royale in which everything comes together.

The Gone-Away World is complex, big and ambitious but Harkaway never drops the many balls he's juggling. Plotwise and worldbuilding wise it reminded me of Hal Duncan's duology Vellum and Ink, as well as Moorcock's earlier Blood. His storytelling however seems much more equal parts Neal Stephenson (long, geeky discourses on various seemingly irrelevant subjects), Terry Pratchett (the anger and frustration at the sheer wastefulness of companies and governments tempered by a healthy dose of humour, the humanist core that the best Pratchett novels have) and Douglas Adams (the smaller absurdities and follies of everyday life), as well as a soupcon of Iain Banks' ability to be equally at home in large scale science fiction and down to earth family stories. This last is important because at heart The Gone-Away World is a book about family as the heart in a hearthless world.

It's also a very blokish book: over the top, loud, far from subtle with kung fu and weird horror and cool special ops soldiers and Big Trucks and even Bigger Trucks and so on. But it is interwoven with those moments of family life, equally important to the story, not to mention several instances of sheer gutwrenching horror, the "oh shit the missiles are falling in five minutes" variety, that completely undercut the Boys' Adventure stuff mentioned above. And it's a British book, with its public school and Oxbridge background, its Exmoore and Cricklewood. Even the post-apocalypse world is British, but especially the humour, which again reminded me of Pratchett and his humourish asides in actually quite serious novels.

The Gone-Away World is one of those books that leaves you drained, unable to read any other fiction for a while, as everything else fades in comparison. It's an excellent novel by any standards, but the fact that it's actually Nick Harkaway's debut novel just fills me with awe and not a small bit of envy.