Customer Reviews

Salt (GollanczF.)

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4 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

'Salt' is a story of colonists on a distant planet. But in this common SF setup Adam Roberts tells an uncommon tale. The science is there, but while he gives us the practical aspects of making a planet habitabal, Roberts drives us towards another tale. This is a tale of two human societies, who are so different, that they can hardly understand each other. And from these differences a conflict rises, that grows from heated talk to bloody raids. The novel has two narrators, representing both sides of conflict. From their subjective stories we can try to get an objective picture.

The ending is a bit of a letdown, but it is still an impressive work.

The book was written in 2000, and it is chilling how it seems relevant to the current situation in the world, particularly in Iraq. 'Salt' shows how the worldview of one society can be completely different from that of another. And how unwillingness to understand and blind faith in your way of life being the only right way of life leads to terrible consequences for both sides.

Intense, disturbing and prophetic. The fourth Roberts I've read, his first novel, and my second favorite after Gradisil. Ambitious themes, and complex implementation of them. The setup is the relativistic travel to and colonization of an alien planet, the titular Salt with all the material difficulties attendant on that. The main story is two first person narratives of people from two city states of differing ideologies and daily norms. The two communities have built up tensions, and eventually all out war.

One of most interesting things about this is the political parallel. There's a prosperous and plutocratic regime that undergoes a war in the desert to subdue another society, using the justification of faith as well as a recent and galling terrorist attack. It begins its reprisal with a major bombing to break the spirit of the populace, then moves in at force. Overt opposition is easily crushed and victory seems secured after a short time, but then it turns into a long occupation, attritional guerrilla warfare, and a slow disillusionment that causes political unrest. The invading country specifically paints all resistance against it as terrorism, insists such fighters are not legitimate soldiers and reserves the right to counteract such resistance through extraordinary and extrajudicial means. The reason I find this parallel good rather then eye-rolling is because Salt was written in 2000. Roberts had no way of knowing how much his scenario would resemble the reality of 9/11, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War. Here I'd say is a good example of SF's ability to be thematically predictive, and have a continued relevance to understanding the way we operate now and the way we might in the future.

In any case, the larger power of the story comes from the way that both main characters, both narratives and both societies are flawed. Things seem at first to be rather balanced in one side, but they each have a lot of problems and injustices that they wear as badges of pride, and in particular there's one rather monstrous action by the 'more sympathetic' character that in retrospect was well set up and that lends a measure of uncertainty to trusting everything about his perspective. Seeing the logic and rationalizations of both sides as they fight and project the worst into their enemy makes for a complex as well as dramatic situation. On a direct plot level the book has no real conclusion, but it says everything Roberts needed to say about the outlined terms of his work.

If taken purely as a sort of dual dystopia, the book would be of limited value. In the end it's not that unique or compelling to demonstrate than authoritarian nationalism and conformist anarchy. I'd say the book works beyond that in the way it plays with the form of narrative. In a dystopian novel, there's almost always a level of trust with the story and the viewpoint of the individual existing in opposition to the dysfunctional system. This perspective might come to a point of defiance fairly early on, as occurs in 1984, or it might be near the end, see Kallocain and We, but the sense of opposition exists, and we're encouraged to trust the viewpoint of the individual and distrust the larger society. In Salt, we're encouraged to see faults in the authoritarian and anarchist societies, as linked to and enabling the untrustworthiness of both narratives. Like with Stone the individual is not enough, and here we're given a more direct way that the personal narratives of two individuals becomes linked to the wider social environment. Furthermore the two polities aren't in the stark dichotomy that it first appears--the apparently over-intrusive dictatorship Senaar features a callous abandonment and non-regulation of the poor underclass, while the free Alys ultimately depends on violence and coercion to maintain its effectiveness. This aspect is something neither of the two perspectives come close to perceiving, every element of their stories reinforces the level of separation and mutually exclusive character for the two polities.

Another strong element from Salt is the titular environment, and just how stark, materially austere and demanding the planet surface is. That gives a degree of solidity to the account and its drawn out story of personality justification and political conflict, as well as building on one of the more memorable speculative fiction environments. For all the playing with perspective and political models, in the end this book is vivid and engaging at least as much as it's interesting.

Better than: Stone by Adam Roberts

Worse than: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

The debut of Adam Roberts which I've had for many years but never found the mood to read; a dark and somewhat depressing novel written in alternate first person narrations from two very different pov's - with an exception at the end that adds a lot - and who resembles an extreme take on The Dispossessed.

A very good debut that presages the awesome later novels of Adam Roberts that made him one of the best current sf writers

Adam Roberts, with SALT is a great read. Roberts assumes the reader has an IQ above average room temperature; is over 17 years old; and can pay attention to details. Salt is a could-not-put-down book. In brief, a string of deep space habitats and colonists, literally hitching a ride behind a comet, set off to a distant planet, one that according to data was much like Earth. Misunderstandings develop during the long journey, planting seeds of mistrust among the ideologically differing colonial groups. Their destination is not Earth-like. It is covered with salt and contains an atmosphere of chlorine gas. It's impossible to return to Earth and the colonists have no choice but to deal with the alien atmosphere, and ultimately, with each other. I think Roberts' story could have gone on for a few more thousand words and hope that his next book will pick up the saga.

By coincidence, I read this book just after a friend had shown me Tillich's discussion of three kinds of morality in his History of Christian Thought: heteronomy (the law of the other), autonomy (the law of the self) and theonomy (the law of God). Although both groups in this novel, the anarchist Alsists and the military dictatorship of Senaar, consider themselves, in some sense, ruled by God, their different flawed conceptions of God mean that they are actually autonomists and heteronomists, respectively.
The Senaarians can't be themselves, they can only be constituted by their society; but the Alsists hardly have a society, because nobody takes responsibility for anyone but themselves. In neither case do they have much in the way of compassion. The Senaarian dictator, for example, when talking about immigration from another city where there has been internal strife, assumes that the immigrants will have to be self-supporting economically; "there would be no point in them coming here to starve in the streets." Charity never crosses his mind. Economics (not free market economics, exactly, but something developed from many of its premises) governs the Senaarians as much as their militarism, and in this way they have a shadow side which is like the self-centred Alsists. The Alsists, on the other hand, work if they want to, but when asked, "What if someone never wants to?" - i.e., what happens to "free riders" - the Alsist narrator says that eventually their friends will get sick of it and beat them up. In other words, the enforcement of social conformity by the threat of violence which the Senaarians use is the shadow side of the Alsists.
Inevitably, therefore, they have a hideous and unnecessary war over their irreconcilable misunderstandings of each other, which each side justifies to itself in its own terms, and everything they can't admit to in their own society is projected onto the other.
The great tragedy is that the story is so realistic.

This starts off promisingly enough with an interesting concept of inter-stellar travel but degenerates quickly into one of the least believable scenarios I have read. Harry Potter is more believable.
Nothing about the Alsist society rings true, its all done simply for the convenience of beating the reader over the head with the totality of the conflict betwen them and the fascist Senaarians. The characterisations are weak and there are way too many flaws in the science to make it even remotely engaging. I'm sorry but any society that can fly between the stars is going to be able to commnuicate during a wind-storm and they will have no trouble picking out a buried vehicle from a satellite in orbit. Roberts simply ignores any common sense to tell his pointless story.
He creates no sympathetic characters which means that it is hard for the reader to give a hoot what happens. If it were a longer work I would definitely have stopped reading after about 100 pages but it is only 240-odd so I ploughed on in the hope that there might be some epiphany at the end that made it all worthwhile. There isn't, it peters out with the final section being told by one of the minor characters from the middle of the book who simply whines that no-one understands her and that she cannot confide in anyone amongst her group. Who cares!?!
I read some of the better reviews here to see if there was something I was missing but this book is rubbish, a complete waste of time. I threw it in a street-bin when I got off the bus after finishing it.

I loved this book. The imagery is so enticing. Nothing compares to Adam Roberts.

The novel starts off with the voyage to 'Salt'. The planet is so-named because the main element on the planet is a preponderance of sodium chloride. Not the most hospitable environment for a human; but as someone points out to Petja, if there was no supply of salt, then all the colonists would die (although the colonists' recycling process seems to cover all their needs). Petja is the opening narrator of the novel. He belongs to a community of anarchists called the 'Alsists'. Adam Roberts openly acknowledges that there is an element of intertextuality involved in the novel, referring to Ursula Le Guin's 'The Dispossessed', Nabokov's 'Bend Sinister'. There are various other religious groups making the same journey, all strung out like pearls attached to a comet (an inevitably risky form of transport, especially considering the cabin fever inside the various ships, but a speedy one at that). One of the Alsists commits suicide and threatens the whole mission. This causes concern in the Senaar ship, who bid to avoid a repeat performance. They ask the Alsists to send a delegate to discuss the issue, and Petja is sent. Not that Petja is any kind of leader: like all the Alsists, he's against any form of hierarchy. Thus begins the troubled relationship between Senaar and the Alsists, which is exacerbated by the fact that Senaar men have fathered children on the Alsist ship. The undisciplined Alsists then break ranks by deciding to land on Salt first, angering the Senaarians further without even realising it. Not that the Senaarians want to grab the best land for themselves, or anything. The Senaarians have a patriarchal, hierarchical culture. They're named after the place in Genesis where the Tower of Babel was built. Babel later became Babylon, and there is a settlement named 'Babulonis' in the novel, complete with water flowing uphill, just like the famous Hanging Gardens. Barlei, the Senaar leader, would have preferred the planet Salt to be called 'Kepesh', after the Hebrew word for 'silver', which most often seems discussed within the Book of Exodus. Indeed, Barlei later builds a 'Great Dyke', which he describes as a 'Pharaonic feat', without any hint of hypocrisy. It's debatable as to whether the Alsists or the Senaar are representative of 'The Chosen People', and it's Petja who seems most like Moses, despite Barlei's use of language from the Book of Exodus. When the debate is held on how the future Senaar should be built, there is the suggestion that it should be constructed in the shape of 'The Eagle of St. John', which may be a sign of freemasonry in Senaarian society. One of the Senaarians who has fathered Alsist children is called Beltane: perhaps by referring to the Pagan May Day, Adam Roberts intends to remind us of modern anarchists who now wander forth and protest on May 1? The anarchists are well drawn by Roberts, and he is quite topical in including them. Roberts' dystopia is just as biting. All those scenes where Alsists threatens to punch one another's lights out does reflect how an anarchist society would settle disputes (or so I've read). This contrasts with Petja's use of force, which is violently opposed by some members of the Alsists later on (although Alsist society has been more or less smashed by then). Although they have talked their way onto a religious exodus, only a minority of Alsists have faith in a divine being. Most of them reject religion as just another hierarchical structure. This probably explains why some of them are so found of the atheist Roman philosopher Lucretius, together with his ideas on the 'free movement' of atoms. Thus it's quite a spiritual novel, in tune with recent fictions like John Meaney's 'Paradox' or Mary Doria Russell's 'The Sparrow'. Adam Roberts also claims that 'Salt' is intertextually related to Frank Herbert's 'Dune', but I couldn't really see much of a similarity, except that both worlds obviously have dunes. There are rather more factions involved in Frank Herbert's epic. There is no feudal empire or choam company (no minerals worthwhile exploiting), no fabulous sandworms, no Mentats, and no Bene Gesserit here. One of the disappointments of 'Salt' is that it doesn't really throw up any of the gender issues embodied in anarchism. Okay, so Senaarian women are obliged to do their duty by staying at home, and Rhoda Titus has the most irritatingly girly middle name ('Blossom'), and Barlei misogynistically calls Alsist women 'Maenads' whilst viewing Alsist society as matriarchal. Maybe it's a fault of characterisation, but all the narrators seem a little bland and lifeless. None of them seem to have worthwhile aspirations, but then I suppose they are living in a dystopia. At times, it does seem at times as though 'Salt' has far more in common with 'The English Patient' than 'Dune'... For instance, there are dunes in 'The English Patient' also. A bit of a tenuous link, I'll admit. But what about this? If you look at the movie soundtrack listing to 'The English Patient' by Gabriel Yared, you might be able to guess what music Adam Roberts was listening to when he first started writing 'Salt', and why the Alsists all seem to have Hungarian names. First off, there's a settlement called Yared, Pteja seems to have got his surname from the Song "Szerelem" (meaning "Love" in Hungarian), Marta Cserepes is possibly related to Marta 'Sebestyen' (name of the mountains in 'Salt'), or maybe Karoly Cserepes, who arranged the song 'Szerelem'. Is it "As Far as Florence" or 'New Florence', 'Convento' or "Convento di Sant' Anna"? Hamar, Sipos, and Csooris also seem to belong to the Hungarian band 'Musikas', featured in 'The English Patient'. Swapsies Herodotus for Lucretius? Compare with pages 18 and 63 of 'Salt' and weep. I reckon that Adam Roberts should utlise Gabriel Yared's soundtrack for 'Betty Blue' next time - I've always thought that 'Zorg' would be a great name for an alien!