Oh yeah folks, it’s time for some more politically tinged science fiction. Wait, what am I saying, the genre is inherently political. I had yet to purchase a ticket to the Richard Swan show, but when I heard his latest, The Infinite State, is about trying to jumpstart a democracy while living in an authoritarian regime, I felt my mouth salivate and my nervous system sigh. Instead of an interesting examination of how to break free from the system, The Infinite State presents a political thriller that discusses the make up of democracies as its main characters blunder through their lives.
The Decurion Empire spans a majority of the galaxy. It’s the largest political entity known to humankind. It’s an authoritarian fascist state with one goal in mind: productivity. Katherine is about to inherit an incredible amount of wealth from her husband after he perished under questionable circumstances. In her grief, she decides that it’s time to make a break with Pater Aeturnus, the political party her husband was a high ranking member of. With her inheritance, she plans to start a democracy outside the borders of the Decurion Empire. In her secretive plot she recruits people she’s not sure she can fully trust including Cyprian, a disgraced inspector with a drinking problem and hopefully Julian, a hypersled pilot who may help boost the reputation of her fledgling planet with wins on the circuit. But will Katherine find the right people to bring into her secretive conspiracy? Or will the long arm of the state find a way to smash her project before it gets off the ground?
The Infinite State can be an entertaining novel that starts to fall apart once you start asking it questions. It has dastardly villains that feel oppressive in both their presence within the protagonists lives and their force of character when it comes to dialogue. The plot is fast-paced, maybe a little too fast, and it’s absurd, in both good and bad ways. The characters’ relationship with the state is visibly drawn, if somewhat lacking depth. However, I do think that they are monumentally foolish in how they conduct themselves (more on this later). Swan introduces some fun concepts in his vision of humanity spread amongst the stars, but nothing that truly stands out (besides the gorilla factory – pin #2). The prose is serviceable even if it’s particularly blunt in places, and the dialogue mostly serves to move the plot forward. Characters are rarely expressed through how characters talk, but I will say that the majority of the male side characters have an air of authority to their cadence that is hard to dispel, especially since they often serve as the mouthpieces of the book. So if you’re looking for a good time where people find a way to fight space fascists, you should have no problem diving into a different book, The Big Ship At The End of the Universe. But let’s talk about The Infinite State instead.
I was not engaged in the story of The Infinite State. I knew going in that I was going to have an eye on the political commentary, but I wasn’t expecting to be incredibly annoyed by the story itself. Let’s start with Katherine, the woman with a grand plan to buy her own planet and leave the Decurion Empire to start her own democratic society on its borders. While I am sympathetic to her plight, I find her character intolerable in a number of ways. I am convinced that she would not be able to find her way out of a paper bag without someone telling her how to do it. I get that she earned specific privileges within the Party due to the high position in society her husband occupied (prior to his death) but the naivety she displays and complete lack of cunning is mind boggling. If she wasn’t a main character I’m sure she would have been given a bandana and a cigarette on page five without any hesitation. She feels like she just woke up from a nap she started in the 1990s in America, and finds herself in a completely different context. I want to like Katherine because of her action, but I also contend that she feels designed to be talked down to by the men around her. And because she doesn’t really know what she’s doing, she listens to their advice instead of forming her own understanding of the predicament she is in.
The second major perspective, Julian, is just a pod racer (hypersled racer) that uses his skills to save the day. I don’t really have much to say about this beyond the fact that a large portion of the novel is given to this character, and I don’t really get the impetus to include sports as a major lever around which this world revolves. One could argue the sportswashing employed by various authoritarian entities could have been an influence, but since The Infinite State doesn’t really highlight the scope or spiritual effect the sport actually has on morale, it just felt stapled on for me. The Infinite State spends a lot of time on the actual racing element, and very little on the optics of an Empire winning races in an intergalactic sport. It could have been interesting if it had drawn on the history of Nazis and the Olympics, but it failed even to give it the feeling of drawing on gladiators in Rome. I don’t really think it does all that much, but the characters all seem to place a large emphasis on hypersledding as an avenue for soft power. This man is also incredibly foolish, and while he seems like he could get through a paper bag, he would have forgotten that he got himself into a second one and will accept the second layer as the boundary of human existence. I just had a hard time buying that a man growing up outside the largest empire in human history, would have absolutely zero understanding that they mean what they say.
The most interesting character by far is Cyprian, a mid level detective for the imperial police. He’s your typical drinking-on-the-job detective who ran into a wall, both metaphorically and psychically by asking too many questions and suffering the consequences. He has a cynical view of the world that is colored by his anxiety around upsetting the wrong people again. He is so traumatized by this experience that he beats his new partner within an inch of his life for trying to pull up too many rug corners. Unfortunately, the depth of his character is reduced over time. His former partner goes on a villain arc, and Cyprian kicks his bad habits after obtaining an implant outlawed by the Decurion Empire. No more neuroses, only pure professional security detail man with a lot to say about the nature of democracy. He does have divided loyalties in some ways, but they rarely create tension in the narrative. He does not miss an opportunity to make the new lady president aware of the stakes and explain to her the importance of what makes a democracy legitimate. She gets to question his logic, but in the way a five year old does. How freedom of religion is important within the context of The Infinite State is nebulous, but goddamn Cyprian is going to let you know that the new planet needs it to function properly.
The side characters though, were definitely the most interesting, probably because of how little time they get to spend in the sun. The Minister of Information, Droor, is a consistent shadowy menace that darkens every character’s door. His dialogue and presence are felt incredibly well through every interaction. The frequency of his visits does fuck with the atmosphere a little bit, making character stakes feel more personal than the usual lone soul against the behemoth of the state machine. The other characters contribute to the story in small ways, offering rare moments of breathing room along with betrayals and rallying cries. My main issue with their inclusion was that these are the folks I wanted to see more of – with the exception of Droor. Their minimal presence treated them like objects to be shuffled around to give impetus for the main characters to take action, forcing choices on them instead of them running into issues because they made a less than ideal choice.
Lastly, before I dig a little more into some of the thematic issues I had with the book, I want to talk a bit about the worldbuilding within the novel. The Infinite State suffers from a lack of prioritization. There are some fun science fiction gadgets and ideas that float around in this book, but when they appear they often suck all the air out of the room. We’re talking big space lasers that cut cities out of rocks and gorilla clone soldiers outfitted with cannons and personalities. These things add to the action-thriller aspects of the book and makes the world feel big and weird.
However, life within the Decurion Empire feels a little less fleshed out, relying on preconceived notions about authoritarian and fascist regimes in the real world and previous works within the genre, without actually engaging with the history. I have a lot of questions about how the state runs and interferes in people’s lives, whether they are regular people or sheltered wives of important men. But these things aren’t really explained. The empire is somewhat technophobic, so it doesn’t use it too much in ways of surveillance. So does that mean they employ informants? Is everyone already blackmailed to a certain extent so they have to report on others? There aren’t a lot of moments where the characters feel like they have to go out on a limb when interacting with people who might turn them in. The Infinite State adds its own explicit raison d’etre by focusing on the idea of “productivity” as the driving force, vaguely defined so that it’s easy to apply to anything from work output to making babies. The book doesn’t pretend that this is a new idea, but it’s the one it wants to focus on but it also gets dropped after a morning show talks to a main character about the potency of his seed. And this lack of atmospheric worldbuilding gives a lot of flexibility for the main characters to completely screw the pooch, yet somehow manage to get a small colony up and running despite telling everyone they know about their super secret plan to start a democracy.
Just on entertainment ground alone I struggled with The Infinite State. It lacked tension and consequences. The characters have a well defined opposition for the personal stake against the empire, but they also feel too stupid to execute the plan they have in mind. Things line up for the characters that mitigate consequences. The oppression of the state relies on readers bringing their own personal visions, avoiding the deep worldbuilding that would have made the Decurion Empire’s place in the galaxy feel like the menace it’s portrayed to be. And the gadgets are fun, but don’t really add anything beyond quick fixes or fun cinematic encounters that barely add to the plot or the themes. I’d have a hard time recommending the book beyond the curiosity of its existence. But if you want to peel back the curtain and dive into some spoilers, journey forth.
I don’t expect a hard outline on “how to build a democracy” in a science fiction novel. But I think it would be pertinent to ask questions about “democracy” as characters fumble around in the dark to re-establish a government that according to the synopsis “hasn’t been seen for a long long time.” Instead, we get directed monologues about the important aspects of certain amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Granted, I think they are important aspects, but feel out of place when juxtaposed against the worldbuilding in The Infinite State. They are easy and clean wins in a narrative filled with potential for mess, disasters, and nuanced discussion about how to build a new world in the long shadow of a still functioning empire. And instead of grounding it within the context that the characters are operating from, we get a long explanation about why freedom of religion is important in a galaxy that has no nod to any sort of religious life whatsoever. Or that the planet is being founded as a colony for those deemed “unproductive” by the state without explaining the conditions that lead to the label beyond vague nods to queerness and disability and how the state currently deals with them on a systemic level. And because of that, we can cheer on the protagonists because they’re doing the good and right thing, without really engaging in the actual project they have tasked themselves with fulfilling.
I think this is borne from the fact that the book wants to be a good story that serves as a rallying cry against the kind of authoritarian system it’s “investigating.” It has all the flashy stuff that gives the reader a knee-jerk reaction to protect their rights (in a real world that is doing its best to negate them) and follows them with simple explainers about how enshrining those things in a constitution would prevent the government from trampling on them. Within the story, they have barely even set up anything towards a democracy, and people behind the scenes are waging clandestine warfare through mercenary groups because the state stepping in too early might elicit a reaction from the unaligned planets (which the book states are not in a position for war). So even within its own world, this scary, oppressive, militaristic, fascistic authoritarian state is kneecapped by an intergalactic agreement that can’t conceivably be enforced by the other planets. And listen, that’s sort of fine. It just reduces a lot of the tension, guiding the conflict down a specific set of rails. It reminds me of Star Wars in that the protagonists have a vague defined ideal that they are striving for and find breathing room by exploiting one weird trick. I’m not saying this story is worse for that method. It can make for an entertaining story; see Star Wars again. But this story isn’t really that unique. And as I’ve laid out, I hardly found it entertaining.
I wanted to end this review by boomeranging all the way back to pin #2, the gorilla factory as I think it points to all of the issues I’ve had with the book. Spoilers for the climax of the book follow. Katherine attends a weapons convention outside Decurion Space to find ways of dealing with the military defense of her dream. There she purchases the services of a company that can gestate cybernetically enhanced gorillas with integrated weapons platforms in 24 hours. These gorillas are given language through computers in their brains, and they are fully formed in 24 hours with all faculties ready to go with an undying servitude to the client programmed into their psyche. These are creatures that, as a reader, and probably as a client, you expect to die for the cause, and they do. They die heroically and give the baddies what for in the process. But Katherine and Cyprian, with zero reflection on the provenance of their relationship with these biomechanical beings, give a few of them names and symbolically induct them into their burgeoning nation. I’m not saying this is a bad thing – but it barely addresses the circumstances. If they had survived, would they get the right to vote as well? What other protections would these non-human sentient beings be granted? Would it be up for a vote? Or do Katherine and Cyprian get a blanket power to decide that all thinking beings, regardless of how they come by their thinking, get full protection of the law the way a citizen would? I wish these were the kinds of questions the book engaged in, even if they weren’t answered. And so because this is barely considered, we barely have an understanding of what the book considers worthy of the title of democracy. This makes it easy for the reader to put their own definition into working order, without developing a consensus to work from.
The problem with The Infinite State’s approach to all these things is that it hints at the possibilities of discussion, without even glancing in their direction. There are so many opportunities for The Infinite State to really blow your mind on how to view the politics within its world and ours, and instead the novel chooses to emulate Star Wars. There is a big bad, who does mean things to individuals on a galactic scale and we just have to break away and take them down. It feels unnecessary. And that’s a disappointment considering the kind of world that’s knocking on our doors with one fist, and holding the battering ram with the other.
Rating: The Infinite State– An expansively ill-considered endeavor.
-Alex
I received an ARC of this novel for a fair and honest review. The thoughts and opinions shared here are my own.
