Monday, June 27, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Invisible Things by Mat Johnson

 




 Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on June 28, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Invisible Things is the latest book by author Mat Johnson, previously (among a bunch of other things) the author of 2011's Pym (my review of Pym is here).  Pym was a pretty strong satire of race, heritage, and whiteness in particular in a story taking inspiration from Edgar Allen Poe's only published novel - which has some severe racist issues underlying its text.  It was the type of satire that is only occasionally laugh out loud funny....and yet Pym maintained a consistently ridiculous and kind of hilarious take on its themes (and how people act due to these issues) that always made it feel like I was chuckling at what came next, and the satire was often so thick I had to put it down often before I choked on it all - which was not a bad thing.  

Invisible Things is similar in that way - it's once again a satire that is thick with things and issues that are both utterly ridiculous and utterly ordinary and so understandable to anyone who lives in society today.  This time, the satire is based upon a city-state similar to our own world made up of people who were abducted from our own world mysteriously by some sort of alien force, as humans from our world come and try to rescue those who were abducted....and find that the will for such a thing isn't quite what they expected.  And while Race is part of that satire once again, here the main themes are more the structures of society, how they wind up organized to benefit some more than others (in both race and class aspects), and how people wind up overlooking the so-called "invisible things" that underline society and keep the inequalities and increasingly fascist elements of society embedded without opposition.  And it works really well.  
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When black misanthropic sociologist Nalini Jackson joins the SS Delany for the first manned mission to Jupiter, she expects to study mostly the group dynamics of the crew aboard - the obnoxious White "Bob"s who act dominant and overbearing, how the other scientists begin to orient themselves towards them, and how her one fellow Black scientist reacts to their obnoxiousness as he tries to get time to do his own work.  But what she doesn't expect is to find a strange dome on the surface of Europa filled with what looks like a typical American City...or to mysteriously be transported there themselves.  

A few weeks later, Nalini doesn't know what to make of what has happened - how the society she has found there in the city of New Roanoke is made up of abductees who act like everything is normal, how the society seems to be a mirror of Earth societies in its repressive fascist government that praises everything as being normal, with long-time members of society being favored over new abductees, and society spoken of as being chosen by god - a society that the lead Bob has wormed his way into.  And then there's how everyone seems to ignore the unexplainable: the "Invisible Things" that occur here and there, seeming to move people and objects around....clearly there for anyone to see, except everyone is afraid to mention these events out loud for seemingly no reason, or how bizarre everything is.  

But when a mission from Earth brings a ship into New Roanoke, one meant for rescuing the abductees and led by a Rich Elderly Man, a Military Man, a retired NASA Admiral, and the rich man's conspiracy minded but complacent driver....everything changes.  For the ship brings the unspoken realities of New Roanoke, and the Invisible Things, to the forefront, and Nalini can just see that this time they're not going to go away......
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Invisible Things is a story told from a few perspectives, but most notably Nalini - a sociologist who is analyzing everything that happens - even what is happening to her - from a professional perspective as it goes on.  By contrast, the secondary point of view character is Chase, a limo driver/personal assistant to a rich man, who has always been happy his whole life just letting things be and just hanging around...even as he does sometimes question why things are the way they are, or what is happening....like for example, what happened to his wife who he believes must have been abducted by aliens (and she was), a wife who was disastisfied with his inability to try to get more in life.  

The two different perspectives help show really the themes of this book, as exemplified by the setting in New Roanoke, a society that is very much like our own: it's controlled really by a nativist one party system (nativist in this case being favoring those who got there first and were abducted first over more recent abductees), which uses a state media network (ala Fox News) with one reasonable moderate broadcaster in mid-day to keep up its propaganda of being chosen by god, and who uses dirty tricks very familiar to American life these days and in history to try to keep power whenever a dissenting party actually comes to power. 

And of course you have the people who flock to each group from the recent arrivals on the Delany, - with Dwayne the other Black scientist refusing to accept this society and its clear wrongs and joining an exaggerated opposition party with more bark than bite (as Nalini notes) and Bob, the pompous ass White scientist who acts like he should be in charge no matter what, barking his way into prominent position in the Founders party which rules.  Nalini observes this all dispassionately and notes how ridiculous each part is, and how it fits into paradigms she know from Earth culture, and Johnson draws it all out in ridiculous caricature that always feels real.  

And then there are the Invisible Things - literal invisible forces that telekinetically affect people, such as by lifting them up in the air before dropping them....or more dramatically spinning them in the air, breaking bones, or even crushing heads.  The forces seem very much to act in ways to stop those from breaking the status quo - like against a military man rescuer who's one-minded approach towards rescue won't just stop - and so the people of New Roanoke adopt a policy of refusing to acknowledge they exist, believing perhaps that to mention them will only cause them to act more.  

And so you have a world like our own, corrupt as hell, fascist in intent, with peoples left behind and hidden in an underworld not spoken of....and the society held together by these "Invisible Things" that no one is willing to mention, something that frustrates Nalini (who sees how these things tie things together in wrong fashion) and Chase (who just can't understand why they'd be ignored when they're so obvious...but eventually is convinced to buy into the status quo).  And Johnson draws this out in such biting satire, making you chuckle throughout, all the way up until the end when those Invisible Things become revealed...and in doing so, and in making everyone acknowledge them, something can finally be done about them to finally improve upon the Status Quo.  

I know this review doesn't do a great job of explaining how biting the satire is, in favor of talking about the themes and layout, but let me just put forth that this book is damn good at that satire, even if it's sometimes so thick you have to put it down or choke.  And so it uses SciFi to posit this about our own world, about our own Invisible Things, which hopefully one day we'll be able to expose in the same fashion, such that we can finally act to tear them down and improve upon our own fascist status quo.  So yeah, this is a winner you should read.

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