Gnomon by Nick Harkaway
What is the nature of consciousness? What is Identity? What is the best form of government? What is the nature of reality? I don’t know, and neither does Nick Harkaway. But he has clearly thought a great deal more about these questions than most, and decided to wrap those explorations in a gripping mystery novel whose plot structure requires non-Euclidian geometries to represent. Despite the ambitions of Harkaway’s prose, he manages to convey the story’s many layers in ever exciting and satisfying ways. It is the type of book which defies expectations, so I doubt knowing parts of the plot would affect MY enjoyment of it. But every person’s different, and a spoiler-free reading is probably better, so I’m just going to first attempt to convey the vibes of the book by describing other books that “defied expectations” in similarly enticing ways. It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to read the conclusion right after checking out a story about a work that was similarly affecting..
Gnomon Is a novel I could only describe as Pynchonesque. More specifically, it’s as ambitious and wide-ranging as Gravity's Rainbow, but with the tone and pacing of the Crying of Lot 49. Another influence is Umberto Eco, with a plot that’s a mixture of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum. Like Neal Stephenson, Harkaway clearly delights in “geeking out” over possible future technologies, but Gnomon is content with describing future tech in broad outlines and their effects, omitting detail to keep the story moving at a brisk pace. Other obvious literary influences are Jorge Luis Borges and David Foster Wallace.[3] Presumably also John Le Carre.[4]
Gnomon is an extremely difficult book to summarize, especially without spoilers. Therefore, if you want to experience the book “properly,” then I’d encourage you to skip to the “Literary Parallels” section of the review and continue on from there. Yes, I know that’s a slightly confusing way to structure a review, and people could complain about its placement. But now that I’ve warned you explicitly, people can point to this part of the review if you complain or give a low rating later as proof you were foolish. And do you really want to risk the scorn of nerds on the internet?
The Plot (Possible Spoilers)
Gnomon is set in a near-future Britain in which technology has allowed the populace to enjoy the safest and most egalitarian society in history. The country is governed by The System, a kind of direct democracy which is an aggregator/maximizer of the preferences of citizens participating in the System. Though controlled by AI, the code and decisions of the System are fully transparent to people, and the System enjoys wides[read popular acclaim. The System is upheld via The Witness, a panopticon-like system of information sensors which see and record everything. Our protagonist is Inspector Mielikki Neith, the Witness’s most trusted investigator. As she describes it, “The Witness is perfect because it can see everything, and that perception does not stop at the skull. In those rare cases where it is necessary, the Witness can enter the brain of a subject by surgical intervention and read the truth directly from the source. It is the key reason Inspectors exist. The machine can perform the function, but it is not actually alive. It is not appropriate that something dead have governance over something living. In the end, there must be oversight not because the Witness makes mistakes, but because the watcher must itself be watched and be seen to be watched. The System exists for the people, not the other way around, and it is the people who are empowered - and required - by the machine to make any and all of the hard decisions that arise.” When Diana Hunter, a reclusive 61 year old author and suspected dissident, is brought into an interrogation by the Witness, her memories are forcibly extracted, and her resistance causes her to die on the operating table. It marks the first and only time a death has occurred during a neural interrogation, and the inspector must determine whether a crime was committed, and who is to blame.
Gnomon’stitle comes from the name on the case file Neith is given. The apparently random word referring to the part of a sundial that casts a shadow is the first of many obscure words that weave throughout the narrative, but deployed skillfully to deeper meaning. When Neith investigates Diana’s Hunter’s home, she discovers that its been intentionally set up inside a Faraday cage, cutting the residence off from the Witness. However, while she is investigating, she is attacked by an androgynous figure who identifies itself as Lönnrot. Without access to the Witness, Neith cannot identify the assailant, nor can she see how they ever got into Hunter’s house, since none of the cameras or sensors picked anything up. Faced with no answers, Neith decides to figure out what Diane Hunter knew that she so resisted the System, by accessing the neural imaging from Hunter’s interrogation, and literally re-experiencing Hunter’s recorded memories. When Neith goes into Diana Hunter’s memories, she discovers some memories are Not - Not the memories of Diana Hunter, and therefore probably not “real” memories. Instead she experiences the life of Constantine Kyriakos, a Greek mathematical wunderkind who becomes a cynical financier playboy in the early 21st century. The next time Neith explores the interrogated memories, she finds Hunter “remembers” being Athenais Karthenogensis, the jilted ex-consort of St. Augustine. The memories of the ancient Greek woman include seemingly some Actual Magic in the alchemy of Athenais that not even she believes. The third remembered lifetime is an Ethiopian artist named Bekele Berihun whose worldwide fame in the 1970s made him the personal portraitist of Emperor Hailee Salasie in the 1970s, only for him to receive a death sentence when the regime collapsed. We know he miraculously escaped, because his story begins as a grandfather living in U.K. in a time period that’s roughly contemporary Britain. We later discover that the System itself might have originated in a Virtual Reality game that granddaughter designed, to which Bukele himself contributed most of the artistic designs and direction.
Between these deep dives into remembered identities, Inspector Neith learns more about Diana Hunter, The System, and the relationships between the two. Diana Hunter the eccentric old woman was real, but she did also really want to go against the System and have the expertise to do so. She realizes that both Diana Hunter and her assailant are resorting to steganography, the practice of hiding secret messages inside of something public.[5] Sometimes, she even worries that she missed out on subtle cues to…..
Spoiler and Egregore Containment Zone
I’m too lazy to properly detail ways to “safely” approach this book, so I’m just going to say if you’re reading this, you’re the kind of person who’s going to be thinking about this book for a long time. Whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on what this review actually says. It’s intended to be a living document, so later versions may have better updated information. Remember to put particularly dangerous ideas inside the containment barrier.
Literary Parallels
How could a book, or even a series of books, fundamentally change your cognition/consciousness? Well, I think the same way that many things about cognition works - slowly, and then all at once. The book starts out in a world very much like our own, but with an actually effective government that cares about the welfare of its citizens. The mystery at the heart of the novel is captivating, and the efforts of our detective protagonist blend both an interesting and exciting investigative work with discussions of technology and its impact on society. But as the story progresses, the sci-fi elements continue to feel more surreal, but the characterizations and reactions on the protagonist become more grounded; gripping you into the story. The interleaving story threads produce a feeling similar to reading David Mitchell’s masterful Cloud Atlas, and just as that book is much better experienced than described, Gnomon probably deserves the same treatment.[6]
The Inevitable Biographical Digression
Let me tell you a story. I originally discovered Slatestarcodex through a friend’s facebook post, linking to one of Scott’s articles. I read it, and thought, “yes, finally, someone who gets it.” I don’t remember which article, but I felt gratified that there was a writer who weighed all the doubts I had about the topic, and even threw in several things I hadn’t considered. But that was the extent of my initial interactions with SSC. Fast forward a few weeks or months, and the Discourse has shifted to something else, and a different friend shares a SSC article on that, and again I basically agree with it, and am just happy someone is taking a reasoned view of the issue, but I didn’t initially connect that these two articles were from the same person. Again, a few more weeks/months go by, the Discourse is on to something else, and the original friend shares another article, again, perfectly suited to me and my perspective, which articulates my general outlook and offers concrete evidence on a specific issue. Finally, I realize that these bangers are all coming from the same person, and bookmark the blog to keep tabs on.
Once i became a SSC reader, I came to believe that most of the other blogs/publications I was reading were inferior in a variety of ways (a little bit in the obviously subjective “literary quality” of them, but generally in the sophistication/nuance of their analysis), and started reading more of the authors/blogs Scott would link to, but I never became an avid reader of any of them. At first, every new SSC article was a surprise gift, since I didn’t know what Scott would want to talk about, and often had no real knowledge of the subject before. But I eventually got to predict what sorts of topics he might write about, but was still often surprised by the exact take he would give, and always felt I was learning a great deal with each new article. At some point, I decided I needed to engage with these ideas even more, and began a trek through the entire SSC archive from the beginning. Unlike the first articles I read, I do know the trigger for this action: discovering the World War II is not realistic blog post. At some point I had come across that previously, and it made a great impression on me for its humor and “reversed insight.” But then I find out “Scott Alexander and squid314 are the same person? I now really need to know how one person can think all these great thoughts!” So, I decide to read every post, even all the Culture War/Politics stuff that is no longer really relevant.
I perhaps should say, “I thought were no longer relevant,” but I hope fans of ACX will agree that while the object-level Discourse topics Scott wrote about were not particularly pressing after several years, the decision-making processes and analytical rigor applied to those topics absolutely was still relevant. So much so, in fact, that sometime through my trek across the archives, I noticed that the new SSC articles (I would still read every new one as soon as I could) were not particularly insightful to me. I would read the title and the topic Scott was discussing, and predict the points and evidence Scott would use to support his point. And I was freakishly accurate - but only for the topics and Discourse that I was familiar with. I would just think about my opinion on the topic, and what evidence and arguments I would make to support it. Through extensive “research” into the mind of Scott Alexander (reading his stuff in the order he published it), I had successfully made a very “accurate” (to the best of my abilities/knowledge) simulation of Scott in my head, but I became so attuned to it that I started using (my interpretation of) his thoughts and analytical process, that i simply decided they were better and started using them as my primary method of “thinking” for myself. Through a solely one-way interaction (I’ve never met or interacted with Scott, even in blog or twitter comments), I had been persuaded to adopt his worldview as my own. Honestly, reading the rest of the archives was much less interesting/exciting after this realization (though my completionist streak “required” me to do so). But, it also made me realize that I didn’t just want to be an ersatz Scott Alexander, but should focus on the other aspects of my beliefs/personality that Scott doesn’t really discuss, and develop them by reading/incorporating the insights of other authors that also spoke to me in ways that Scott didn’t. I think I can still generally predict the main thrust and points of a new Scott piece before I read it (it;s not like my overall opinions/worldview changed that much since Scott did originally strongly resonate with me), but now at least I often have some evidence or arguments for the position that Scott doesn’t make. In other words, my simulation of Scott and my simulation of myself still mostly overlap, but there’s now clear distinctions between them in my mind (since I incorporated the “insights” of other authors I learned to simulate in a similar fashion, and I have my own history/biases to differentiate me in ways that I feel confident are idiosyncratic but not “poor thinking”). So, I did not find the idea that certain books, if enough of them are read, will change your worldview too surprising. I think it’s been going on for approximately as long as books have been around (though which books work on which people is very much an unresolved question).[7]
Conclusion
Is Gnomon a perfect book? No, far from it. Characterizations and descriptions are sometimes shallow, relying on the reader to infer deeper meaning even in cases where it may be missing. The novel delights in introducing difficult vocabulary and using it precisely, usually for plot significance but sometimes indulgently. The science and story coherence also work most strongly on a “vibes” level, so overanalysing certain literary flourishes or not noticing certain plot threads could damage your reception of the work. But, this is the only book which captures the specific vibe of “I got really into a blogger, and by reading them over the course of a year I slowly adopted their entire worldview.” And this book manages that in only 700 pages!” If that sentiment sounds interesting to you, I’d encourage you to read Gnomon. If that sentiment sounds like a horror movie, I’d really encourage you to read Gnomon. If that doesn’t sound interesting at all, you can probably skip it. And if you’re still on the fence, this section has further details and thematic influences.[8]