Steven Shaviro's Reviews > Titanium Noir

Nick Harkaway (IRL Nick Cornwell, the son of the great novelist David Cornwell aka John Le Carré) has written a number of conceptually dense science fiction novels, all of which I have read. He has also written some mystery/thriller novels, which I have not read, under a different pseudonym. This new novel combines the elements of both sorts of books. It's a mystery thriller, told in the first person by a detective protagonist. But the novel is also set in a near-future world, that differs from the one we know.

The novum that differentiates the world of the novel from our reality is the existence of Titans, people who have been given extended life and (in effect) superpowers by treatment with a gene therapy known as T7. The recipients of this treatment are wholly rejuvenated; their bodies in effect revert to adolescence and undergo another growth spurt, resulting in extremely strong bones, repair of all damages due to injury and aging, and an enormous physique. Titans with one treatment are seven or eight feet tall; repeated treatments leave you even larger and stronger. Your lifespan is also extended by decades with each treatment. T7 treatment is both extremely expensive, and in the hands of a monopoly that controls its use. Even if you have the hundreds of millions of dollars needed for treatment, you may not get it if the head of the corporation does not like you.

Cal Sounder, the first-person protagonist of the novel, is hired by the police as a consultant when there are crimes involving Titans. These are fairly uncommon, since the Titans themselves are usually too strong to be crime or murder victims, and since they are also rich enough to buy off anybody who might question them.

Nonetheless, the novel begins with the murder of a Titan, and Cal is called in to solve the case. Everything turns out to hinge -- as one would expect given the genre -- on both massive corruption and nasty family dynamics. Cal himself is not a Titan but he knows them from the inside due to his previous connections (on which I will not elaborate, because this would entail spoilers). I will just say that the central metaphor/novum of Titans works really well, because it literalizes, in physical form, how rich and powerful people are for the most part exempt from all the rules, norms, and necessities that the rest of us are subject to. In the course of his investigation, Cal is exposed to multiple perspectives on the situation, ranging all the way from an overtly marxist critique to the 'cynical reason' that is used to justify the actually-existing system.

The novel is pessimistic about the possibilities of social reform, but it gives us a satisfying more or less happy ending for the detective himself. The plotting is intricate and very well done. The most interesting sections are the ones that explore the sleaze and nastiness in which Titans, unlike ordinary people, are able and willing to indulge. Being rich and powerful allows people to get away with a lot, and the ugliest sides of human nature are thereby enacted right in the open. The most memorable character in the book is one in whom the T7 treatment has gone wrong; so that instead of joining the elite, he instead becomes a vicious crime lord. He is more entertainingly twisted than the regular Titans, but in fact no more depraved than they all are.