XX – Rian Hughes

Part modern ‘hard SF’ novel, part homage to vintage SF, part intertextual blend of traditional narrative, epistolary sources, visual media, graphic design and much more, Rian Hughes’ debut novel XX is not for the faint-hearted, but rewards a brave reader with a genuinely unique, utterly mind-blowing experience. Take a mysterious signal from outer space, a bunch of senior scientists from assorted space agencies, and a cutting-edge tech startup staffed by a trio of fearless young innovators, and throw in the possibility of first contact with an alien species (in a very modern way). Filter this story through the lens of augmented reality, fold in a strong theme of modernism, lashings of mind-bending maths and science and even a story within a story, and what you get is out of this world in theme, style, intent, complexity and – ultimately – impact.

Most of the story is told from the perspective of pattern recognition expert (and all-round modern mad scientist) Jack Fenwick and his partners-in-technology Harriet and Nixon, but it also takes in astronomers at Jodrell Bank, badass astronaut Dana Normansson, and even the digital personifications of accreted human ideas (this may sound utterly bizarre, but it’s actually one of the easier concepts to understand!). As the Signal is analysed, explored, shared and put to all sorts of creative uses, the scope expands from possible alien contact to the exploration of new realms of virtual possibility, which promise to shed light on not just these particular aliens but humanity’s very place in the galaxy. You like your SF on a grand scale? This story is largely Earth-bound, but in the end it’s as grand as you can imagine.

As much as anything, that’s because this book, a distillation of Hughes’ own wild imagination and experience in both written and visual fields (more on the visual stuff in a bit) is all about ideas. What is the Internet if not a vast repository of ideas – stories, even – and the (current) result of thousands of years of human knowledge-sharing from early forms of non-verbal communication through language, oral histories, the written word and so on. Hughes touches on all of this and more, wrapping his plot around philosophical musings on the origin, development and transmission of ideas, and what all of that might mean in context of the wider galaxy. It’s hard to say more without spoiling anything, but suffice to say this is packed to the brim with its own ideas (how very meta) both large and small. Some of these are easier to wrap your head around than others, but it’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement of it all, complexity be damned.Or at least that was my experience (yep, I’m making a rare foray into first person for this review). In just the core narrative itself there’s a lot to take in, but while this is a long (980 pages in hardback) and often complex novel that takes its time exploring and developing its themes, the payoff is that it’s endlessly thought-provoking and deeply satisfying. If it’s a little slow at times, the pacing is helped by short chapters that nicely prevent the narrative from becoming too dense – I regularly found myself scratching my head and pausing to let things sink in, sometimes having to just put the book down and do something else for a bit, but each time I was quickly drawn back into the plot. While I’m normally a pretty speedy reader this one took me well over a week to finish (compared to my usual 1-2 days), by virtue of both length and complexity, but once I got started there was never any question that I wouldn’t finish it.

While once again I want to avoid spoilers, I can’t talk about XX without mentioning the somewhat less conventional elements of this book. Wikipedia articles, interview transcripts, email correspondence, newspaper cuttings, photographs, maps, data visualisations, unknown languages, patterns found in real-world signs and snippets of text, not to mention all manner of visual design elements from unique fonts to beautifully elegant use of negative space in paragraph layout…there’s a good reason for this being billed as “a novel, graphic”, but really that barely scratches the surface! From the use of unique fonts to identify individual speakers (which is WAY more effective than I’d ever imagined) to the additional context that can be provided by visual media, reading this book becomes an experience in its own right. These elements are all carefully, beautifully considered and added so much to my enjoyment of the story.And then there’s the eight-part novella that’s serialised throughout the book – Ascension by Herschel Teague. I admit it took me a while to get my head around whether this was actually a ‘lost’ 60s cult novella or something Hughes wrote specifically for XX (I’m almost entirely sure he did…and just look at the array of covers he created for it, displayed on the front endpapers!), and likewise it required a bit of an adjustment to get used to the different tone of voice, story style and use of language. It’s a bit mad, and I won’t give away what happens, but the way it links in to the wider narrative turns out to be another example of just how cleverly Hughes has put this whole crazy novel together. There are even a couple of oblique in-universe references to it. Oh, and I love it when fantasy/SF books have maps, and of course Hughes created a map for Ascension – printed both at the start of the novella’s first instalment and on the book’s final endpapers.

Let’s be clear – this book categorically will not be for everyone. It’s not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination, in fact it requires patience and concentration over and above the vast majority of books I usually read! If it all sounds a bit too bonkers for you, that’s entirely fair enough. For me personally, though, it was like a direct line to the part of my brain that wants to be challenged and entertained in equal measure, the sort of book that takes everything I put into it and returns it with interest. It doesn’t really matter if you fully understand the maths and science (I’ll be the first to admit I only grasped a fraction, but that was enough – just don’t think too hard about it), or grasp the full complexity of all the ideas (again…I know I didn’t), as the core narrative is strong enough to shine through and there’s enough emotional content for everything to land in a powerful, satisfying fashion. Your mileage may vary of course, but in my eyes this is an astonishing achievement – narratively rewarding and visually stunning – and is going to stay with me for a long time.

Many thanks to Picador and Rian Hughes for sending me a review copy of XX in exchange for an honest review.

Internal images and Ascension covers: credit Rian Hughes and itsnicethat.com

Buy XX.