Thursday 8 November 2018

World As We Don't Know It


Hannu Rajaniemi. Summerland (Kesämaa 2018)

Secret service agent Rachel White gets a tip that there is a high class spy in the system. In a classic setting of an espionage story she can't be sure who are supporting and covering the acts of the spy. Spy named Peter seems to have connections to the highest authorities of the society. After speaking to her nearest superior she is accused to have stress and incapable of continuing in her position. Therefore she is moved to lower rank work. Yet she doesn't stop the investigations but gets allies from both sides, the living and dead, to figure out the pattern.

If the setting of the story is classic the surroundings are anything but. The story takes place in 1938 British secret service.  The world though is not the same we know now. In the turn of the century the division between life and death has been broken. People can call to the other side to their friends and relatives. People who have passed can visit the living as unseen ghosts or hire a body from a person who can take in the spirit. The secret service has an office in both sides and these two are cooperating. The world doesn't know Hitler or Nazism which is an interesting choice. Usually stories that are set in that era take material from World War II happenings. I think it is a stylish decision not to repeat those in this novel. Horrors of that time have been used too often in entertainment I think. Still in the world Rajaniemi has created war is not absent. The wars are even more brutal and apocalyptic, if possible. Some soldiers are turned into monsters that take their fuel from souls.


In many ways the other side is very similar only the essence of everything is more abstract. If the world of the living is more material the other side is built on thoughts. This is an interesting and philosophical thought about the essence of life itself. We believe in the matter we see and touch yet we have no clue who we are and where we are. How Rajaniemi describes the other side tells about our constructions as human beings. Peter, the spy, has difficulties with his self-image and the appearance he builds every day might broke. Once he stands in public transport when his arms become arms of a boy. It is like we draw our lines daily to keep the surface but some situations bring out the insecurities and one's own history. The world around us is also abstract, the buildings, streets are a common agreements. We agree that those are there and we believe in the ideas of these things and accept those as a part of a shared reality. In the world on the other side all the material might disappear during the sleep and one has to make these constructions all over again in the morning. Peter's house is not the same, interior becomes bare after night. Like he has lost the common idea of the world and seen beyond.

One bigger theme in this science fiction novel is the necessity of life and death as a dichotomy we can't break.  In the world Rajaniemi has created life has no meaning because death is just one step that has no bigger influence. Death as we know it is scary, because we can't know what is on the other side. We have our own and shared beliefs that direct our look to afterlife. We acknowledge that life on the Earth is limited and then we go some place else. Yet our understanding and knowledge is narrow. Rajaniemi plays with the idea, what if we would know exactly what is waiting for us, how would it change our life? In the world where Rachel and Peter are living life has lost meaning. There is no progress made because of the lack of the driving force. No motivator to develop medicine and work with life expectancy. Neither death nor life has no meaning.

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