![]() ![]() Two threads are set in the 25th century, far from Earth, out in the region of space dominated by the supremely alien Kefahuchi Tract, an outbreak of irreality, or strange physics, or cosmic craziness that has drawn humans (and, throughout galactic history, all manner of beings) like flies to carrion or rag-pickers to a trash-heap. Three very gradually converging story lines and their obscure connections supply narrative pull. ![]() Instead, as one of the book’s epigraphs indicates, nothingness is home to all manner of somethings, and the subtitle, A Haunting, suggests that encounters with them might be less than pleasant. John Harrison’s Empty Space (the completion of a trio of novels that includes Light and Nova Swing), the cosmos is not at all adequately summed up by that chilly but somehow comforting metaphysic. If ‘‘empty space’’ came up on a word-association test, my response might well be ‘‘atoms and – ’’, signaling both a long-ago undergraduate encounter with Democritus and a general materialist orientation, philosophy-wise. ![]()
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