A challenging British dystopia in which, in a near post economic catastrophe Lewes, a small British town in the South Downs, is ruled by the Process, an impenetrable algorithm whch closely controls people's lives in an Orwell-like fashion. Enter a manufactured soldier from World War One whose role is both a catalyst and destructive in unravelling the true nature of the appointed local Bailiff, his wife and other's lives. Both bucolic and an oppressive love story set against the background of an enigmatic dictatorship of sorts, this tale of reality askew is also a powerful meditation on the nature of war, the misuse of technology and the grit and determination of the common man. Thoughtful, at times frustrating but well worth the final reward, and stylically elegant, a different kind of science fiction. ~ Maxim Jakubowski
James has a scar in the back of his head. It's where he was wounded in the Battle of Suvla Bay in August 1915. Or is the scar the mark of his implant that allows the Process to fill his mind with its own reality?
In IF, the people of a small English town cling on after an economic collapse under the protection of the Process. But sometimes people must be evicted from the town. That's the job of James, the bailiff. While on patrol, James discovers the replica of a soldier from the First World War wandering the South Downs. This strange meeting begins a new cycle of evictions in the town, while out on the rolling downland, the Process is methodically growing the soldiers and building the weapons required to relive a long lost battle.
In THEN, it is August 1915, at the Battle of Suvla Bay in the Dardanelles campaign. Compared to the thousands of allied soldiers landing on this foreign beach, the men of the 32nd Field Ambulance are misfits and cranks of every stripe: a Quaker pacifist, a freethinking padre, a meteorologist, and the private (once a bailiff) known simply as James. Exposed to constant shellfire and haunted by ghostly snipers, the stretcher-bearers work day and night on the long carry of wounded men. One night they stumble across an ancient necropolis, disturbed by an exploding shell. What they discover within this ancient site will make them question the reality of the war and shake their understanding of what it means to be human…
File Under: Science Fiction [ Trust the Process | A Debate With Bullets | Algorithms For War | Omega John ]
'Matthew de Abaitua has written a novel about employment, about daily labour, about the dignity or otherwise of the working individual. If Then is a love story, the history of a marriage, a topical meditation on the end of capitalism; best of all, it is a bone-deep, blood-sweet British fantasy, naive and ingenious as William Morris and as warpedly nostalgic as Richard Jeffries' After London.' Simon Ings, author of Wolves
Author
About Matthew De Abaitua
Matthew De Abaitua was born in Liverpool in 1971. After graduating from the University of East Anglia Creative Writing MA studying under Malcolm Bradbury, he lived and worked as Will Self’s amanuensis in a remote cottage in Suffolk. His first novel The Red Men (Snowbooks 2007, Gollancz ebook 2013) was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award. He currently lectures on Creative Writing at Brunel University and Writing Science Fiction at the University of Essex.
