Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds is a Brexit novel. Not in the sense of, say, how Dave Hutchinsonâs Europe books (2014, 2015, 2016) captured the zeitgeist of the populist, Balkanizational energies which prefigured the referendum. Or not in the way literary fiction like Ali Smithâs Autumn (2016) uses the referendum aftermath as a backdrop for the relationship between characters. No, Elysium Fire is more focused than that, explicitly concerned as it is with voter manipulation in a society that prides itself on abiding by âthe will of the peopleâ (158) and offering us a villain who, with shades of so many prominent Brexiters, is the scion of privilege rather than âthe common man he makes outâ to be (15). In the process, Reynolds tackles the inherent inconsistencies of the Brexit movement specifically, as well as, in a more general sense, the manner by which voters making bad choices are the Achillesâ heel of otherwise robust democratic systems. To the authorâs credit, he does not settle for any easy answersâŚ
Please note: this post contains SPOILERS from here on outâŚ
A superbly paced sequel to The Prefect (2007; now retitled Aurora Rising), Elysium Fire is essentially a police procedural â âA Prefect Dreyfus Emergencyâ as the new series banner attests â set in the âGlitter Bandâ, a ring of ten thousand orbital habitats around the plant Yellowstone. Within the wider fictional history of Reynoldsâs Revelation Space series, the Glitter Band is humanityâs Belle Epoque and home to about âone hundred million living soulsâ (1). Each habitat is a world in its own right, each a place with its âown name and customsâ (1) yet all are united by a common belief in âDemarchistâ principles, in the sanctity of universal suffrage. Every Glitter Band citizen is equipped with neural implants which poll them constantly on âevery conceivable matterâ and through which âthe process of participation became as habitual as breathingâ (2). The integrity of this system is overseen by a limited force of âPrefectsâ such as series protagonist Tom Dreyfus, an independent monitoring taskforce â part police, part tech-support â who might best be thought of as lightly armed returning officers.
Yet the accepted utopian conception of the Glitter Band â where âwealth and power were in almost limitless abundanceâ (1) â has been upset. Public confidence in the Prefects and in the security of the Glitter Band has been damaged by the so-called Aurora Crisis of the preceding novel, and this has allowed for the emergence of other narratives. Specifically it has allowed room for a breakaway movement led by one Devon Garlin. As if to hammer home the Brexit comparison, our first glimpse of Garlin â ânot the only figure associated with the breakaway movement, but he was by far the most influential and outspokenâ (14) â occurs in a kind of idealised version of rural England which could not be further removed from the realities of a high-tech and highly connected inter-orbital economy. He makes his initial bid at separatism on a habitat where âmodest, stone-built homes dotted a gentle hillside, with smoke curling up from their chimneys. A waterwheel turned next to a mill, and off in the distance two woodcutters were at work with manual sawsâ (11). âWe surrendered our sovereignty,â he tells the inhabitants of the Glitter Band as though reading from a UKIP manifesto (13). He maintains that separatist habitats are â stop me if you have heard this one before â âtaking back controlâ (13): âControl to manage their affairs in a way that suits their needs, not those of some distant, disconnected network of overseersâ (13). Thus Garlin sets himself up as âthe voice of the peopleâ (15) and surrounds himself with âcommon thugs and bully-boysâ (287) as his ideas take âa toxic, ineradicable holdâ on the wider population (14).
I will resist the temptation to attribute aspects of Garlinâs background â the wealth, the private education, the supposed historic linage â to specific real-life figures from the Brexit movement but, suffice to say, the character emerges as a composite of the current British political rogueâs gallery. Yet Reynolds grants Garlin a far more interesting and compelling backstory than the Johnsons and Farages and Rees-Moggs of the world. Indeed, one could argue that Garlin, though despised by the Prefects as someone âwho disseminates lies and half-truths for their own endsâ (129), is in fact Elysium Fireâs most engaging character and, rather than simple villain, is a true tragic antagonist compelled by a mix of idealism and circumstances beyond his control. This is never clearer than in the strand of the novel which follows his childhood (on a landed estate, of course) growing up with his brother Caleb in a brilliantly warped re-imagining of the Cain and Abel story (pleasantly eschewing a one-to-one match-up for a remix of elements such as each brother making sacrifices of sorts to prove themselves; one being favoured by the god-like powers guiding them; a visible mark set upon one who is exiled after a fashion, and so on). Reynolds transforms this straightforward story into a rich and multi-layered personal history for Garlin, complicated by instances of targeted amnesia and, in Brexiter fashion, a conviction that he recalls an almost mythological version of history (in this case the near legendary âAmerikanoâ era of early interstellar colonisation). These inconstancies are eventually unsustainable for the character, who must in the end confront himself â in the most direct sense imaginable â when it is revealed that Julius is actually Caleb who has had his memories rewritten by the real Julius.
Such is the division and confusion of Garlinâs true self (echoing divided characters found elsewhere in Reynoldsâs work such as the Ness sisters of 2016âs Revenger, Tanner Mirabel in 2001âs Chasm City, or the Chiku Akinya clones of 2013âs On the Steel Breeze) that, by Elysium Fireâs conclusion, even the identification of Julius and Caleb has been thrown into doubt as the separatist finds âan ending of sortsâ (391) in a union with his brother, their very bodies merging in a reckoning which is both as ambiguously ironic as it is ironically inevitable. For the reader, such irony has perhaps been foreshadowed by the chosen names (which are in fact his two middle names) of the novelâs separatist-in-a-time-of-Brexit: a merging of Devon, a county in southwest England, and Garlin, a commune in south-western France. The result is a character constructed, fittingly, to perform double duty. On the one hand Garlin, uncovering his true identity in the pursuit of his breakaway agenda, comes to embody the perceived dissolution of personal and national narrative certainty which some have glimpsed behind the Brexit movement. On the other hand, his very name announces the inescapability of blended European identity to the reader from the outset. In this way Garlin provides the link between the political allegory of the novelâs B-plot â the separatist movement â and its more recognisably science fictional A-plot, an investigation into a spat of citizensâ heads melting down (if ever there was a metaphor for the Brexit campaignâŚ) as neurological implants malfunction across the Glitter Band. In both cases the crime is the tampering with flaws in the fundamental and supposedly inviolable machinery of democracy, that being in the philosophical sense â the idea that democracy can only be preserved if it chooses self-preservation â and in the actual machinery emplaced inside the brains of citizens.
Within the Glitter Band, democratic participation is conducted through a cranial implant known as the âVoi kernelâ. The device is named after its creator Sandra Voi, the founder of Demarchist society and, not unimportantly, the ancestor of Julius Devon Garlin Voi and his brother Caleb. Aware that âtrue democracy embodies the possibility of its own dissolutionâ (158), Voi granted herself and her descendants the ability to âguide the hand of democracy, to keep it from undoing itselfâ or âfrom making choices it might come to regretâ (158). Voi intended such interventions to be âlimited to marginal ballots, where a one or two percent shift is all thatâs neededâ (184). It is this concept of âinterventionâ, along with the question of who should be allowed to intervene, which underpins the ethical quandary (of which Garlin is but a symptom) at the heart of the novel. The dishonesty within the Voi kernel, within the apparatus of democracy itself, may act, counter-intuitively, as a corrective inversion of the flaw within the righteous idea of democracy, but it is nonetheless a criminal act. Elysium Fire is clear that a âguiding handâ such as Voiâs is a bad idea, offering examples of the corruption and moral bankruptcy of Julian and Calebâs parents, as well as instances of how the brothers themselves abuse their privileged access, but nonetheless â and this is the uncomfortable but brilliantly executed slight-of-hand which Reynolds orchestrates in Elysium Fire â it is difficult for the reader not to speculate about how easily such a domestic intervention might have spared Britain from its current predicament. Certainly the figures given in the novel â again, a shift of âone or two percentâ â imply a certain preoccupation with the contemporaneous Brexit vote carried by a mere 1.9%. Changing such a result would, of course, have been fraud. It would have been unethical. It would in fact have been immoral. But, through the possibilities inherent in the Voi kernelâs backdoor, Elysium Fire nonetheless leaves even the most principled of readers considering if such intervention would have been correct?
That the question of Brexit should so preoccupy Reynolds in his first major work since the referendum is not surprising. After all, before he was a full-time author he spent almost fifteen years working for the European Space Agency in The Netherlands and so it is hardly a leap to wonder if the anger Prefect Dreyfus experiences towards Garlin might be a reflection of the authorâs own feelings at the damage being done by Brexitâs âshallow populismâ (289)? Yet as a novel rather than a work of political theory or moral instruction, there is no onus on Elysium Fire to offer actionable solutions to the self-inflicted wound that is Brexit. If anything, the novelâs implication that good old-fashioned police work can temper the worst ramifications of âpopulist, rabble-rousing nonsenseâ (135) is perhaps too naĂŻve for our current reality (in Dreyfus, Reynolds offers a robust investigative response, a strategy of following the shadowy money funding the breakaway movement, but one sees in real life how ineffectual such a response can too often be). For Dreyfus may be able to resolve his latest emergency by forcing Garlin to confront the inconsistencies in his identity and hence in his philosophy, but one suspects that real life Leave voters cannot be so easily convinced. The Brexit process they have set in motion has already proven too vulnerable to âmisjudgements⌠over-reaction on both sides. Regrettable acts. Provocation and counter-provocation. Wiser minds will attempt to slow the fragmentation, even turn it back. But that wheel, once started turning, will not be easy to stopâ (366).
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