Spanning time, space and planes of existence, Empty Space is just breathtaking in conception. It may well continue stories from earlier books - Nova Swing is the name of the beat-up spaceship owned and run by Fat Antoyne and his two shipmates, and also the title of the Harrison novel immediately before this. It doesn't matter. Everything we need to know is here.
On what we might call the terrestrial, twenty-first century plane, Anna Waterman is a widow in her late fifties or early sixties, living in a prosperous village on the fringes of London. After two unsatisfactory marriages Anna has rather lost her way in life. At her daughter Marnie's insistence she is grudgingly seeing a London psychiatrist. Half the time Anna doesn't show up or forgets. Marnie fears the onset of dementia. Anna, however, is mapping out a future for herself. It isn't easy. Her summerhouse keeps setting on fire without being burnt, and there are copper-coloured poppies in her garden.
About as far away from this as it is possible to get, on the scrubby minor planets of the Kefahucki Tract, Toni Reno wants Fat Antoyne to collect and transport what can only be called mortsafes. This being the far distant future, the mortsafes are self-aware. Meanwhile an assistant investigator in Saudade City is called to a troubling death. The victim is suspended in mid-air, as if falling in empty space. Toni Reno soon becomes another victim, and the chop-shop proprietor who artificially enhanced (tailored) the nameless assistant. They may not actually be dead, but they are certainly fading away, literally.
One of the mortsafes might possibly contain the Aleph. The Aleph may be someone we have already met.
Harrison's skill in handling all the strands and bringing them together at the end is just staggering. I was swept along throughout, totally engrossed.
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