In Ascension (2023)

Why this one?

It’s that time of year again, and I’m taking a look at a few of the books on this year’s Booker Prize longlist that grab my attention for one reason or another. It’s an interesting list, this year, for sure. Quite light on established names, and missing a few books that everyone seemed to think were guaranteed to appear. On a personal level, I’m especially sad not to see Demon Copperhead acknowledged, even though it’s already been awarded to the hilt and that never bodes well (the Booker & Women’s Prizes notoriously don’t seem to enjoy duplicating each other,) and I’d also hoped to see the brilliant Biography of X on there. If you , I’d definitely check those out!.

I chose In Ascension for my usual fairly superficial reasons. It had an interesting and unusual Sci-Fi concept, and a stunningly beautiful cover. Just look at it! That cover needs to win some awards, if nothing else. It's written by Martin MacInnes (1983- ; active 2013- ), born in Inverness, Scotland. His debut, Infinite Ground (2016) won the Somerset Maugham Award and was followed by Gathering Evidence (2020) which saw him listed in the British Council's list of 'ten writers shaping the UK's future'. This is his third novel.

Thoughts, etc.
In Ascension is a novel is five parts, a languid yet grandiose journey that takes us from the deepest depths of our oceans to the farthest reaches of the solar system, set around a decade from now. Its protagonist is Dr Leigh Hasenboch, who we first meet in Rotterdam, in a section that focuses on her childhood. Her father, Geert, worked on flood defenses in the Netherlands, a centuries old challenge that is becoming ever more impossible as the climate breaks down, causing a similar deterioration in Geert's mental health, which in Leigh's telling we understand to be a motivator behind his outbursts of severe violence towards his daughters (her younger sister, Helena, is crucial later on.)

In the present, we find Leigh as a qualified marine microbiologist aboard a deep sea expedition in the Caribbean. The crew explore a newly discovered vent, which various readings seem to suggest is, improbably, massively deeper than anything previously encountered. Those who dive close to the vent suffer mysterious illness and disorientation, yet are also compelled to return to the water. While Leigh is focused on this mission, discovery of apparently extraterrestrial technology is announced to an excited world. While this excitement is soon tempered by the realities (we still won't be escaping our solar system any time soon) it still presents opportunities beyond present imagination.

Leigh is then recruited for a role in California, again shrouded in mystery, but that ultimately turns out to be around providing natural sustenance that can survive long space journeys at previously unprecedented speeds. She eventually finds out more about the extraterrestrial encounters that had have led to the technologies' rapid acceleration and finds out that her work is geared towards a mission to the Oort Cloud, a zone surrounding our solar system where, in the novel's world, a transmission from the Voyager I probe has been received, exponentially further away than it should have been following its launch in the 1970s. Alongside her research, she is enlisted as part of a 'third reserve' team of astronauts for the mission, which requires intensive training. As seems inevitable from this point, the first and second reserve teams are the victims of eco-terrorism (mission tests are being blamed for disturbing accelerations in climate disruption) and Leigh finds herself blasting off on a lengthy mission. Up to this point, and beyond, she has been unable to properly communicate her top secret work to even her closest family, leading to a fractious relationship with Helena, who is left to deal with the deterioration of their mother's health.

It's really a phenomenal novel, particularly for the first four sections. Its primary theme seems to be the innerconnectedness of everything, particularly our own connection to nature and the origins of the universe. Scientific analogies abound, with references to amoebic lifeforms that are able to organise and act collectively, and marine lifeforms whose young are fed on their own decomposing bodies. All the characters around Leigh suffer their own forms of deterioration and collapse, which are held in parallel with the collapsing ecosystem on Earth. Stories which are already dominating our news cycle today are becoming everyday reality - wildfires, floods, disturbing shifts in the patterns of animal behaviour, etc. The novel both posits scientific exploration as a source of optimism, and shatters that optimism - it's obvious from fairly early on that however well-intentioned the research, there are external forces already well in motion that mean that it becomes autodestructive: the undersea vent draws scientists in, but ultimately rejects their interference, crushing their probe and driving their leader to a form of suicide; the space mission is demonstrably contributing to the problems it claims to be trying to solve. Behind all of this is the sponsorship of industrial capitalism, which evidently sees the new technologies primarily as sources of new revenue (from mining to space tourism - again very resonant already.)

If all of this sounds overly technical and sci-fi-tastic, it's balanced out by the very human story of Leigh and her relationship with her family. She follows her parents by seeking solace in science, but as that knowledge has (in one way or another) destroyed both of them, it seems doomed to do the same to Leigh. Her relationship with her sister is also a humanising aspect of the novel, with the relatable frustrations of distant offspring being incapable of looking after their aging parents and the conflicts that brings. There's little love in the novel - where it's mentioned it's usually in its aftermath - and that does add to the oppressive sense of doom conveyed throughout - but it's far from a heartless novel.

Ultimately it's a book with incredibly grand ambitions - its focus is on the desperation of those trying to save our doomed planet, the barriers we put in place to any possibility of resolution on a planetary scale, and the contrast between the detailed rendering of messy and fraught human relations and the ultimate smallness of all of that in the face of the incomprehensible tragedy of climate destruction. In that, it's not a cheerful read by any stretch. At the same time, it's so brilliantly crafted through those first four sections that it's near-impossible to draw yourself away from its slow-burning yet hugely compelling storytelling. For me, its let down only very slightly by a last section which brings us thumping down to Earth, quite literally, with a jump forward in time and perspective shift from Leigh (in whom we've invested so much) to Helena. It's a jump back into a slightly more mundane reality, slightly lifted again by the final pages but a little jarring as everything up to that point has been so perfectly paced in terms of development and atmosphere.

Score

9.5

I thought this was going to be a nailed-on 10 for most of its considerable length, but I was just that little bit let down by its final section. Having said that, this is a spellbinding, eye-opening and absolutely bloody terrifying novel that feels hugely important and relevant to everything going on right now on the planet. Its ambition is massive and by-and-large it delivers. I’d be incredibly disappointed if this didn’t make the shortlist - even though it’s my first read from the longlist it’s hard to quite imagine anything else on there being so spectacularly and scarily relevant.

Next up

Continuing cherrypicking the longlist with Paul Harding’s This Other Eden (no apparent relation to the Ben Elton novel).