If something was wrong, if it was bad, then that something was to be fixed, not endured. These kids, they simply did not accept that the world as it is has any special gravity, any hold upon us. Computers were the bones, but imagination, ambition and possibility were the blood. … it had almost nothing to do with computers, the modernity I was trying to understand. Harkaway seems to be asking questions not just about how willing we are to tolerate invasive surveillance and a dearth of privacy but also how we feel about technology in general. Are they merely Hunter’s attempts to resist interrogation by neural probe? Or is there more going on here? But the memories are really stories, stories of the lives of people who might never have existed. Hunter’s death during this interrogation is the central mystery. Neith has to unpack the memories recorded during the interrogation of Diana Hunter. Had Harkaway stopped here, I think he could have a perfectly good sci-fi thriller on his hands.

Neith is a believer in the System, yet signs point to someone tampering with what is supposedly tamper-proof. So at first, the book seems like a story about mysteries in a surveillance state, and therefore, a polemic against such a dystopia. Neither the Witness nor the System are conscious, in any meaningful sense, though indeed one of the larger questions Harkaway would like us to ruminate upon is why we are so certain we’re conscious and the System is not. As an Inspector for the Witness, she goes anywhere that is necessary to collect information, process it with her meatbrain, and then integrate it with whatever else the Witness has gleaned from other sources. Mielikki Neith is one of the human cogs in this machine. The Witness is the System’s data collection/feedback component, i.e., it monitors what people do, investigates when crimes happen, and provides reports. The System is an omnipresent AI built from a collection of self-correcting algorithms. We start with what seems like a mystery set in a near-future where the UK is even more of a surveillance society than it currently is.

If you read it, your journey might be quite different, and your mileage, of course, may vary. Let me take you on my personal journey of understanding this book. Gnomon is a lot of things, and a simple summary won’t really cut it. Nick Harkaway’s story is intricately layered and nested, and while I wasn’t sure about it at first, the more time I spent with it, the more I came to appreciate and enjoy its construction. Even then it took me several days to get through it.

Yes, Gnomon is a behemoth of a book, one I am glad I saved for the beginning of March Break.

Gnomon harkaway