I had read Justina Robson's first novel, Silver Screen, and been unimpressed by it. But this, her second novel, turned out to be a beast of a different stripe. From the outset, we had a selection of well-rounded characters, and a situation that was quite novel - a research project into using nanoware and brain scanning techniques to build a therapeutic tool for psychiatric disorders. But of course, having mapped the interface between the human mind and the actual neurological structures within the brain, the work comes to the attention of various players who see the opportunity to use the tool for nefarious purposes - nothing less than being able to exercise mass mind control over a population.

We are introduced to one of the scientists leading the research; her flat-mate; an FBI agent investigating the whole project because it touches on other areas that he is investigating, either officially (who is the mysterious Russian defector who does not appear to have a past - or has too many of them?) or unofficially (why was the agent's sister attacked on the reservation where she lives by neighbours who she grew up with?); and a fellow agent who has multiple layers and seems to be playing at least two games for different bosses simultaneously; plus a lot of walk-on characters who are more than just bit players.

The setting is also unusual - a lot of the action takes place in the UK city of York, which is quite well drawn, and the setting of a research institution has a ring of authenticity about it. The race to control and understand the wetware is well-described and the outcome always in doubt.

The book was slightly spoiled for me because of some sloppy editing, which in turn allowed some sloppy writing through. These were all details, rather than anything that would derail the plot, but I stumbled over them nonetheless. For example, York is some distance from any major airport (an hour to Doncaster Robin Hood, and hour and a half to Manchester) from where one of the protagonists is due to get a suborbital flight direct to Washington; yet everyone talks as though "the airport" is just down the road, and when another character follows, they give themselves 30 minutes to get to the airport and make their flight. The thing is that Justina Robson is a northern Brit and ought to be expected to understand these things. And there is a character (the FBI agent's sister) called "White Horse", which I persisted in reading as "White House" nearly all the way through, which seeing as the book involves plottings in the US military was quite possible. (In fact, the last instance in the book really was "White House", which took me completely by surprise.) And for a thriller about conspiracies in the US and British governments, Robson shows little sign of understanding exactly how these bodies work and are organised.

But these are minor issues. What really struck me was this: in 2001, when the book was written, an author could only imagine achieving mass thought control through complex and potentially dangerous nanoware infestation. Twenty years later, we seem to have achieved that through the far simpler vehicle of social media. The arguments are all there: a boon to humankind vs. a threat to freedom and democracy; how people identify with groups/tribes and how they react to new ideas or cleave to old ways. And bad actors from all sides are active in the novel as in real life. I found the whole thing rather chilling and quite compulsive reading. ( )

I bought this when it was published 16 years ago, but I seem to have missed reading it and it’s only now I’ve finally got around to it. The novel opens with six prologues, each of which is based around one of the main narrative’s major characters. I’ve never been a big fan of prologues, but I like books that play around with narrative structure… And six introductory prologues strikes me as an interesting structural choice, even if their content doesn’t add all that much to the plot. Which concerns a pair of government projects, one in the UK and one in the US, based around some sort of neurological mapping technology, which could allow governments to control, and program, the thoughts of their citizens. Elements within the US security apparatus want control of the technology – and have already run a hugely illegal, and unsuccessful, test on human beings on a Native American reservation. In the UK, the research is being performed by a company owned by a mysterious Russian scientist (whose chain of identity changes forms one of the six prologues). When a test on a human subject is sabotaged, leading to a Dr Manhattan-like series of events, and infecting main character Natalie Armstrong with a more powerful version of the Mappa Mundi software… it kicks off a transatlantic techno-thriller plot that reminds me a little of a Cronenberg film, and in which the science-fictional technobabble floats uneasily on a well-realised real-world setting. The two main characters, Armstrong and half-Cheyenne FBI agent Jude Westhorpe, also felt a little good to be true. I suspect I’d have been more impressed with Mappa Mundi had I read it in 2001 (it made the Clarke Award shortlist, but lost out to Gwyneth Jones’s Bold as Love, and rightly so), but Robson’s subsequent novels have all been very good indeed and she’s one of the authors whose books I buy as soon as they’re published – even if it takes me sixteen years to get around to reading them… ( )

Very different to my first introduction to Justina Robson via the Quantum Gravity series. Hard SF and not a demon boyfriend in sight. Mostly. The seeds were there.

I liked it quite a bit. Great characters, totally believeable premise. Lots of women characters being awesome and not so awesome, but definitely themselves either way.

( )

Overall, this book left me very satisfied, and it’s something I can easily recommend to anyone reading or writing SF. This does just about everything well, and since Robson’s a stylist, the prose is almost always a joy to read. I will warn that she has a wonderful handle on metaphor, but because this is speculative fiction, there are times, especially at the beginning, where one isn’t sure if what’s happening is literal or not. This is definitely not a deal breaker, and this isn’t a problem once you get into the story itself. But it is something to be aware of. :)

I’ll definitely be looking into more of her books.

For a full review, which may or may not include spoilers, please click here: http://calico-reaction.livejournal.com/22000.html ( )

http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2006/04/mappa_mun.shtml

Mappa Mundi was published in 2001, a year in which many things changed in international politics. It is a tensely paced and densely written novel, techno-thriller in substance but not at all in style, set a very few years from now—indeed, reality has caught up with Robson's setting rather more quickly than she perhaps anticipated. It is also a good read, which deserved its Clarke Award shortlisting.

The book centres on the development of new technology which will change the human condition forever, perhaps the most fundamentally scientific of sf themes. In this case, it is the Mappa Mundi software which offers its creators the chance to directly reproduce and control human thought processes. But where many authors would simply concentrate on the Gosh-Wow stupendousness of the technology (a problem I sometimes find with stories featuring nanotech, the Singularity, etc), Robson links in the human dimension effectively and memorably.

She does this in two ways. First off, the book begins by offering us glimpses from the earlier history of the main characters, making their stories human and convincing. Her central character, Natalie Armstrong, has a history of mental illness and an uncomfortable professional relationship with her father. (A good choice of name, too, for a scientist taking humanity in a new direction: "Natalie" has connotations of rebirth and redemption, and "Armstrong" is surely intended to remind us of the first man on the moon.)

While the story is largely Natalie's story, her friends and enemies are also well portrayed: Jude Westhorpe, half-Cheyenne US agent; Mikhail Guskov, Russian defector with many identities; Mary Delany, Westhorpe's partner, whose game is much deeper; Ian Detteridge, the man who is the first to be transformed by the new technology; Dan Connor, Natalie's vulnerable gay colleague (and flatmate); and White Horse, Jude's half-sister, still attuned to traditional ways.

The second aspect of the human dimension of the book is the battle for control of the new technology, effectively between Delany's branch of the US security services and Guskov's scientific team. Although this is an ideological conflict—Delany and the American government seeking state control, the ex-Soviet Guskov with a more libertarian agenda seeking to establish a Free Republic of mind (an intriguing concept which could have been explored more thoroughly)—Robson portrays it as a conflict of personalities; nobody's motives are completely admirable or despicable, every one of her characters has reached their position for their own individual reasons. There are no sock-puppet debates or Ayn Rand expositions of belief here.

Mappa Mundi attracted some unjust criticism when it first came out. Those who complained about the presence of a sexy male FBI agent and red-haired scientist side-kick must surely have seen very few episodes of The X-Files, however; Natalie Armstrong, an outsider in her own office and unwilling subject of her own reality-bending experiments, is a very different character to Dana Scully. There is better ground for the charge that the author skimped on her research of the US system of government, but it didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the book, and anyway we all know that the future is not going to be exactly like the present. (Indeed, the PATRIOT Act has already brought the US markedly closer to the security state Robson portrayed it as, writing in early 2001.)

Having said that, and having praised the book for its concentration on the human impact of the Mappa Mundi technology on its characters' lives, I could have done with a bit more exposition early on about what it was actually for, and the means and motivation of the research team in general; some more telling as well as showing. I was also a bit puzzled by a causality paradox arising out of Natalie's actions at the end of the book, which didn't really tie up the loose ends of plot from the beginning for me. But these are minor cavils about what is a very good book. ( )