By Bernard Beckett (Quercus £10.99)
The Edge Foundation poses a question every year to scholars and writers. In 2007, the question was "What are you optimistic about?" My answer was "art." Specifically, I said I hoped that "works of presently unimaginable aesthetic and moral force will be created by human beings not far ahead of us."
I meant it seriously. But if anyone had suggested that this hope might be fulfilled by a work of science fiction, just 35,000 words long, and marked out by its publisher for the "young adult" market, I would have laughed. Laughed louder, I'm afraid, if I'd been told the book was already in print, written by a school teacher and published in 2006 by a small press in his native New Zealand. But there you go. It's nice to be proved insufficiently imaginative.
Bernard Beckett's Genesis is a Wonderful surprise: at once a fast-paced thriller, a philosophically provocative commentary on the evolution of consciousness and a work of astonishing literary ingenuity. The book was "discovered" last year, was bought by Quercus for a six-figure sum, and is now being published worldwide in 21 territories.
Its story, set in the last years of the 21st century, revolves around the cross-examination of a young woman, Anax, who is being put through a gruelling exercise in interpreting the history and origins of her society. If she passes, she will, so she believes, be admitted to the Academy—the elite institution that runs the country she lives in.
Through her answers, we learn that, following a war that left most of the world devastated, the inhabitants of Aotearoa (New Zealand) cut themselves off by erecting a fence round their two islands. All approaching boats, exploratory aircraft or refugees were shot on sight. By 2052, a fascist republic had been established, based on a rigid caste system where individuals deviate from their roles at their peril.
So far not so different from other brave new fictional worlds. But Beckett rapidly pushes his narrative into more intriguing terrain. We learn how one man, Adam, comes to pose a grave risk to this republic by insisting on his right to make independent judgements. Unable simply to execute him because of his public following, the republic instead imprisons him and sentences him to share his cell with Artfink, an experimental robot. Artfink has an artificial mind which—if it is to become fully conscious—must be educated by interaction with a human thinker. In the event, Adam succeeds too well, passing on to the android not only human-like intelligence but also his own rebellious spirit. Together, the two of them plot their escape. But Adam is betrayed. Artfink kills him and proceeds—with an army of replicas of himself—to exterminate the human population.
Thus, by the time of writing, all the present inhabitants of Aotearoa are themselves androids, the descendants of Artfink. These are highly intelligent, sophisticated, even morally good beings, with a civilisation based on worthy post-human ideals. Yet their society remains potentially vulnerable to the emergence of old-fashioned, "mutant" ideas. And, in a shocking denouement, we learn that the examination that Anax has been going through is not what it seems. Far from being a test of her fitness to enter the Academy, it has in fact tested whether or not she has been infected by "Adamist" ideas of freedom. If so, she must be liquidated. Suddenly, the trial acquires an archetypal dimension: Anax is an Antigone, a St Joan, locked in a battle against paternalist state power that she cannot win.
I am, as a rule, no fan of science fiction. At least, not when a story strains credulity. Perhaps I want the kind of reassurance Percy Shelley gave in his introduction to his wife's Frankenstein, that "The event in which this fiction is founded, has been supposed by Dr [Erasmus] Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not impossible of occurrence." But here, Beckett remains firmly on-side. The events on which Genesis is founded have already been given a test run and found not impossible by the heirs of that other Darwin.
At the core of the book is the debate between Adam and Artfink about the nature of life, intelligence and consciousness. Here, Beckett has been much influenced by the philosopher Daniel Dennett—as well as by the form of the Socratic dialogue—and he skilfully follows Dennett in routing "mysterian" ideas about the mind. He provides, for example, the neatest refutation I've yet read of the "Chinese room" argument, devised by the philosopher John Searle to demonstrate that machines cannot be conscious.
The philosophical drift may not be wholly original. But Beckett certainly has new things to say and new ways of saying them. Repeatedly, he introduces ingenious turns into the argument, using the story itself to make his point. The cleverest cut of all comes at the end, with the revelation that Anax herself has a brain made of silicon. We, the readers, have unwittingly been participating in a kind of Turing Test, to see whether a machine could fool us into thinking her human—and so she has.
There, I've given the game away. But I won't have spoiled the story for you. For Genesis is at heart a tragic romance. And—as is the way with all tragedies—it gains in power when you know where it must end.
