Salt
Adam Roberts
248 pages
published in 2000

Salt is Adam Roberts' first novel. It was recieved well, and got largely positive reviews as well as a nomination for the 2000 Clarke Awards. Since then he has written several more novels, as well as a non-fiction book about science fiction. He is also a regular columnist for classic fanzine The Alien Online.

Superficially Roberts seems to be a part of the new generation of British science fiction writers that popped out in the late nineties and early naughties. Salt came out in the same year as Revelation Space, Alastair Reynold's first novel. However, he doesn't quite seem to fit in with writers like Reynolds, Mieville, Meany or MacLeod. I only realised why this was when I found out Roberts teaches in the English Department of the University of London: he came to science fiction writing from an academic background. This may make him unique: I at least know of no other science fiction writer with this background, whose writing is so informed by it. It also may explain the problems I had with this novel and especially with his writing style.

Salt is the story of a colonization fleet which discovers, upon reaching its destination, that it isn't the paradise they were expecting. The planet Salt turns out to be mostly NaCl, a great salt desert with few usable bodies of brackish water. The fleet is made up of various religious sects, with one wild card: one of the groups is a community of anarchists, unwanted on Earth, who presented themselves as being religion-based in order to be allowed on the expedition, their last chance at escaping Earth.

These anarchists, who call themselves Alsists, are almost a parody of real-life anarchists. In Alsist "society", the individual is paramount, anyone can do as they like, no-one can tell anybody else what to do and if you don't like something, you walk away. There's no real community: all work is done by lottery and people live according to their own whims. Alsists ridicule heirarchies and abhor group thinking and have little to no understanding of them either.

This attitude does not sit well with the other groups, especially not with the Senaarians, a very agressive, very religious group, who have organised their society along much more traditional lines, having created a libertarian night watchman state, where your worth as a person depends on the amount of money and power you posses. Senaar is in some ways nothing as much as a caricature of Libertaria.

The story of the conflict and war between these two groups is told through the eyes of Petja, a typical Alsist who through circumstance is forced into the role of an unwilling leader and Barlei, more than willing Leader of the Senaarians, who present himself as being motivated by altruism and as having the best interests of his nation at heart, but you realise quickly he isn't entirely as he presents himself. In fact, neither Petja nor Barlei are nice men. Barlei is the type of snakey creep who in another age would have been a tv preacher while Petja, in his rigid individualism is rude to the point of autism a nd more tellingly, at one point rapes someone without realising he did anything wrong. Something that s oured me quite a bit on this novel.

Which brings me to the core problem of Salt. It is an unpleasant story of a pointless and needless war fought by people neither of which I liked, told through the eyes of obnoxious or unpleasant people. It doesn't help that Roberts has a style of writing which can be somewhat dry and detached from the story. He isn't a bad writer: all his characters are distinctive and he has some flights of poetry in describing the landscape. It's just that this story seems ultimately pointless. In presentation Salt comes across as a serious novel, something more than just entertainment, with a point to make. However the point it makes, that people will carry their sins and misunderstandings to the stars, is a very obvious and belaboured one.