Rian Hughes

When I added [b:XX|51075314|XX|Rian Hughes|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1605089707l/51075314._SX50_.jpg|75888103] to my to-read list, I was under the impression it was a graphic novel. That is not the case - it is a very lengthy novel with graphic design elements. Knowing this I would probably still have tried to read it, but had I known what the experience would be like I wouldn't have bothered. At page 228 I seriously considered giving up and set it aside for a short while to read Marx's [b:Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy|409558|Grundrisse Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy|Karl Marx|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1485431093l/409558._SY75_.jpg|1194861]. I continued with XX mostly because there are a large number of five star ratings and reviews and I wanted to either understand why or be able to write a counterpoint. If anyone is going to force themself through 996 pages of a book that really annoys them, it should be me because a) I read fast, b) I enjoy the act of reading regardless of content, c) I'm unwilling to judge a book until I've read the whole thing. Here is my considered judgement: it was not worth the effort.

The book begins with an alien signal arriving on Earth. What could it mean? Who better to ask than Jack, a Special Genius Man with a tech start up company in Hoxton who is an expert in AI, all languages, and 'seeing patterns'. We are told that he is socially inept (although he has a manic pixie dream girlfriend whose artwork includes 'unicorns in gas masks and guerrilla corn-dolly installations') and 'semi-autistic', whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. Obviously the genius archetype can be done well, if the narrative shows the character's intelligence rather than just stating it. Unfortunately XX instead insists upon constantly telling us how smart Jack is, often through his own mouth, which I found deeply tiresome. He comes off as an arrogant asshole as, for example, he has 'Genius' on his business card while his coworker Harriet has 'Code Monkey' on hers. There is only one other employee at Intelligencia, his startup, and that's the CEO Nixon. The first few hundred pages merely establish these characters and that the alien signal is a mystery. This could have been a lot more succinct; in a thriller it would have taken three pages.

Thankfully an actual plot develops once the alien signal reveals its secrets. I appreciated the inclusion of Dana the astronaut, who is by far the most interesting character despite communicating solely in extensive infodumps. The use of graphic design, mostly distinctive fonts, for characterisation and worldbuilding is quite fun, but was done much better in [a:Grant Morrison|12732|Grant Morrison|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1658691226p2/12732.jpg]'s Invisibles series. Similarly, the incorporation of interviews, articles, a pulp scifi serial, etc would have been more effective had it been deployed more sparingly, as in [a:John Brunner|23113|John Brunner|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1336955014p2/23113.jpg]'s [b:Stand on Zanzibar|41069|Stand on Zanzibar|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1360613921l/41069._SY75_.jpg|2184253] and [b:The Jagged Orbit|470186|The Jagged Orbit|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1175028806l/470186._SY75_.jpg|2202667]. Here, such elements just bloated the book without adding much insight into the plot. The digressive pulp serial seemed particularly excessive. I found it frustrating that the narrative seemed to have more style than substance, while also being extremely substantial in length. There were some potentially appealing weird ideas, but they weren't done justice.

I think XX does something I've come across before in novels like [b:The Book of Strange New Things|20697435|The Book of Strange New Things|Michel Faber|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1394824754l/20697435._SX50_.jpg|28178740]: tries to tell a hard scifi story without the necessary skills. Hard scifi needs to deftly bridge the gap in scale between individual characters and the vastness of space and to convey complex technological ideas without just lecturing about them. XX manages neither, whereas [a:Adrian Tchaikovsky|1445909|Adrian Tchaikovsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1282303363p2/1445909.jpg] does both brilliantly in the [b:Children of Time|25499718|Children of Time (Children of Time, #1)|Adrian Tchaikovsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1431014197l/25499718._SY75_.jpg|45276208] trilogy, for example. This is not merely about narrative style, it's about handling epic scales and imaginary science in a compelling, comprehensible, and convincing fashion. I suspect that many of those who gave XX five stars were not be habitual scifi readers and thus lacked these expectations. In my opinion XX is ambitious, but thinks it is cleverer than it actually manages to be. The same points about ideas are made over and over again, without really adding anything original. It is also far too long - the story could have been told better in less than half the page total, while still retaining many of the graphic design elements that make it distinctive.

What took it down from three stars to two, however, is the characterisation, which reminded me of my annoyance with [b:The Atlas Six|50520939|The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)|Olivie Blake|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1579241117l/50520939._SY75_.jpg|75499539]. It's just clumsy, particularly for the female characters. (We're told that Harriet and Nadine enjoy being lectured by Jack about 'science'. Really??) Jack himself never ceased to get on my nerves, not only because he's such a cliché but because every other character treats him like the smartest specialist man in the world. This is the response to him committing treason:

"Jack, Jack, Jack... What am I going to do with you, my boy?" Daniel was sure Jack would never do something really foolish; his rigorous mind didn't deal in uncertainties. It was much more likely that his obsessive-compulsive curiosity had once again got the better of him.

That kind of tech messiah mentality is very hard to swallow when the World's Most Divorced Man is busy loudly and comedically dismantling twitter. The context of Daniel's comment is Jack hijacking a Jodrell Bank radio telescope to send a message to the moon, at a time when the whole world is panicking about alien invasion. Jack is able to do this because Daniel is incredibly lax about information security.

Rather appropriately, the ending shows humanity taking credit for aliens' hard work. Despite the huge expanses of space and time that are evoked, a sense of wonder seems distinctly absent. At least Dana gets to do some very cool stuff, although the startup seems to experience very few consequences for their actions. In short, XX is not an alien first contact story that I can recommend. The characterisation is perfunctory, the worldbuilding delivered awkwardly via infodumps, the plot dragged out over too many pages, and the graphic design elements insufficiently zippy to compensate for all of this. Instead I'd recommend reading [b:In Ascension|81360004|In Ascension|Martin MacInnes|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1674231481l/81360004._SX50_.jpg|98911813] by Martin MacInnes.… (more)

I read and enjoyed Hughes’s XX: A Novel, Graphic back in 2021. I knew his name from the excellent Dare graphic novel he did with Grant Morrison back in 1991. Central to XX was a pastiche of a Golden Age sf novella, presented as if in the pages of a magazine - a trick I’ve used myself. There’s nothing like that in The Black Locomotive, although there’s plenty of fancy typography, photos and line drawings. But these are more enhancements to the story, rather than part of it. A secret Crossrail link to Buckingham Palace comes to an abrupt halt when the tunnel boring machine hits some sort of artefact. It’s a vast doughnut-shaped chamber, made of an unknown substance. Researchers find a hatch in its floor, which they open. One man, a poet shadowing the Crossrail project, sneaks back and enters the hatch. Which then closes, and some sort of field triggers and stops all electric and electronic devices and machinery in London working. Riots follow. Meanwhile, the research team can’t re-open the hatch. Since he was a kid, the head Crossrail engineer was in a steam locomotive fan club called the Smokebox Club. It turns out they were more than just gricers, but a secret society with members in all levels of UK society. And hidden under Box Hill, in an old Cold War bunker, is a fleet of steam locomotives, kept against the day they might be needed. A dash across country to London, and into London, by rail follows, to use the steam engine to smash open the sealed hatch. Meanwhile, the poet has discovered the vast labyrinth beneath the chamber is an ancient spaceship, and it has activated, encasing London in a spherical field and taking it into orbit. At which point, the novel abruptly finishes. I’m hoping there’ll be a sequel. A fun novel, and the illustrations and design of the book definitely added to it.… (more)

Computer geniuses use software and their own developed virtual reality equipment to decode alien signals, while an astronaut based on the moon has a direct encounter with an alien species, whereby she manages to link up with it and develop her own amazing ability to relocate herself at will.
Any book that begins with Jodrell Bank and David Bowie's Starman must be good! A whole cacophony of interesting subjects: Aliens, Memetic engineering, the Wow! Signal of 1977, Skeuomorphs, Gogmagog, Kirlian auras, Electronic Voice Phenomena, Tesla's free energy, the paranormal, to name but a few.
Set in London, at Jodrell Bank, and on the fictional Daedalus moon-base, the novel is about mysteries of decoding messages from data streams from space; I can't help but love this story and notice a parallel with the same work major Briggs was working on in Twin Peaks. (Even the black box on the cover reflected the one featured in Twin Peaks). Many little things mentioned in the text made my heart swell with appreciation (eg Burroughs' cut-up technique, Dan Dare, and Joy Division).
The Daedalus footage section is very reminiscent of House of Leaves, or Blair Witch Project. Dana (the astronaut)'s expedition down the volcano tunnel in the moon to reach the anomaly, by pushing her way though...into an underground city was VERY ALICE!
Chapter 10 (each chapter number indicated by dominoes) was particularly descriptive illustrating Jack's over-thinking; the details running through his mind, to reply to a message. Turned out the alien could communicate through Jack; when he took random photos of words, the pictures revealed sentences. "Build me a body". Jack's creation of Digital Memetic Entities is fascinating.
The text itself has many variations in style (and fonts), included there is a huge Shakespearean-style rant from xx about "ideas", and their desire for a better world; and an excerpt on Plato's Socrates argument against the written word - that you cannot discuss, change ideas, evolve to better words; newspaper articles; emails; binary codes; Wikipedia entries; maps, photographs, and drawings; and a science fiction serial story between chapters.
This thought-provoking and stimulating book.
There's even some music been made associated with the book: Citizen Void by Celestial Mechanic.… (more)