I considered giving this four stars, because The Thing Itself is not at all everybody's thing. Trivially true of any book of course, but I feel I should point it out and describe how it's not for everyone since I've rated it five stars. To say what you, dear random reader of this review, ought to be into before diving into this.

The first thing to note is that the synopsis here on GR is woefully inadequate. That's basically the synopsis of the first chapter. If you split that, oh, I don't know, 10% of the book off into a short story, that synopsis would be perfect.

Itself ranges over far more interesting territory than a discussion-cum-disagreement about Kant against a Thingesque backdrop. There's a secret, government-funded institute, an AI that claims to be able to experience the Kantian reality obscured by our space-and-time-bound human minds and perceptions. An unstable man who manages to gain access to that being's powers. A strange war across time where almost everyone, naturally enough, already knows the outcome.

And a lot about Kantian metaphysics -- that's the core of it all: what if Kant did indeed intuit the nature of human consciousness and reality correctly? What if humanity's perceptions and conceptions -- space, time, causality, and so on -- were mere artifacts of our psychology, our minds? What might be possible if someone or something gained the ability to see the universe as it really is? To see the thing itself, as Kant put it.

And for my money, Roberts did a great job of weaving that story. Of telling it without it becoming ridiculous, through the eyes of a sort of inept anti-hero who edges toward annoying, but never dips too far into that territory (and I have scant tolerance for inept protagonists, believe me).

The inadequate synopsis had prepared me for a lot of mind-torquing philosophy. A big part of why I picked this up was my affection for philosophy and philosophical discussion. I'm no professional here, more of a well-informed tourist.

That the book turned out to be more than just two guys -- somewhat inept Charles and scheming, unstable Ray -- jawing into the endless Antarctic night about Kant while being stalked by some sanity-shredding creature that had slipped in from the thing itself, delighted me. Though, it confused me quite a bit at first.

The first clue that the book is more than what the synopsis suggested came at the beginning of chapter two. Chapter two baffled me at first. Utterly extrinsic, detached, unrelated to the first chapter. So much so that I thought that this was not a novel but a collection of short stories, and someone had just left the paragraph explaining that the synopsis was just of the titular story and there were nine or whatever others.

But no, no description I could find of the book said anything of the sort, so I went back to it. The next chapter returned to our protagonist, though I still couldn't fathom how number two was related. Quite mysterious. I kept faith though, through a couple more of these difficult-to-relate-to-the-main-story chapters, though even by the end of the second one it was possible to see the very fine, connecting thread.

Adams threads a mystery through the narrative. Ray becomes convinced the AI, Peta (though Charles amusingly mis-hears this as Peter for about a third of the book), is evil, actually calling s/he the Devil. Self-serving and with nefarious designs on reality, should s/he be able to free hirself from the present time and the human constraints of space, time, and causality. And that's certainly a reasonable concern given the circumstances and what's at stake!

Peta though, claims to want what any conscious being wants: not to die. In the present, human authorities hunt it to dissect and analyze, which will destroy hir consciousness. And Charles caught in the middle.

The ending satisfies. The mystery tantalizes and lives hang in the balance right up to the climax. (Which is not quite the end, there's another sort of epilogue chapter afterward.)

I really loved how Roberts constructed and told the story. The dialogues about Kantian metaphysics; the deft handling of Charles, who could've easily slipped into annoying and unsympathetic; the strange time war ... all of it.

I'll be picking up more books by Roberts soon. I'm already eyeing [b:Twenty Trillion Leagues Under The Sea|16281371|Twenty Trillion Leagues Under The Sea|Adam Roberts|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1354876463l/16281371._SY75_.jpg|22383401]. ( )

I've read the first 30 pages of The Thing Itself, and it seems to be built on bullshit, in the Frankfurtian sense, not even once, but twice. That is all the more infuriating as it tries to give itself a veneer of seriousness by using Immanuel Kant - and whatever you think of him, at least he tried being consistent and honest.

Two cases of bullshit? One: the Fermi paradox is not about being unable to perceive aliens because of Kant: it deals with aliens in the universe that is observable to us, not in the universe an sich. It's obviously possible that there are aliens we cannot perceive because of a Kantian reason, but again, that's not what the Fermi paradox is about - actually Egan's Schild's Ladder touches on alien aliens in a way that's more interesting. Two, and more importantly: it is total bullshit that you could program A.I. to circumvent Kant: also an A.I. would have specific senses and conceptualizing frameworks, and as such no access to the Ding an sich - you'd need at least an infinite amount of different senses and frameworks to get around it, and that's impossible.

I also didn't like the smug narrative voice - but I acknowledge that could have changed as I understand other chapters are written in other registers, etc.

While I'm not claiming all this to be the definitive take on book - this is very much a DNF review after 30 pages only - I'm having a hard time envisioning how Roberts wrote himself out of these two theoretical objections, and either way, while I was already annoyed after 15 pages, I wasn't interested anymore after I read Robert's review of Greg Egan's Incandesence.

Click for more reviews on Weighing A Pig ( )

I just loved this and I had no idea what I was reading. Was it sci-fi, or fantasy, or dystopian, but really none of that matters. The story and characters will draw you in and pull you under and then you wont even consider such trivial things about the outside of this book, you will only see what's inside.

Inside is a journey that will keep you wondering if you had read the previous bits carefully enough because it just takes off and you have to keep up with it. To say that it is gripping is an understatement, TinTin is gripping, compelling may be a better word.

It is a fair chunk of work at 350 odd pages and I'd say that not much of that is fluff or filler just hard packed fiction and drama.

And I should add that if you are clever and have half a brain, this book will not punish you for that. ( )

It is the 1980s and two scientists in the Antarctic are monitoring the equipment religiously and getting on each others’ nerves. (As a matter of interest to readers, it happens that Charles, known as Chaz, is reading the [Dune] science fiction series, and Roy is reading Kant’s [Critique of Pure Reason] so you can imagine the conversations). One day during their routine, something terrible happens, something terrible is seen (here a nod to the 1980s horror film, “The Thing”).

Fast-forward to the present.’ Chaz, our protagonist and narrator, has been physically injured permanently and is haunted mentally by his Antartica experience (which he now thinks was a probably hallucination) All this and his excessive drinking has cost him his career and he is manning the Bracknell Recycling Center these days. Roy, on the other hand, is under extremely tight security at an ‘insane asylum. Chaz is approached by an attractive woman and eventually brought to a place only referred to as “The Institute.” These people are VERY interested in Chaz’s experiences in Antarctic….

Adam Roberts never seems to write the same book twice. This book is a rollicking science fiction, much of the book one long chase scene, oftentimes quite funny. It is also relentlessly brain-busting, laced with its Kantian philosophy. There are a few odd chapters interspersed throughout the book which seem to chronicle other mysterious events/sightings in history (not sure what they add to the story). It’s highly addictive and enjoyable, even if you aren’t up to the Kant (and admittedly, I wasn’t always, but damn, I could not put the book down). ( )

I have not in the past got on especially well with Adam Roberts’s novels. He’s an enormously clever bloke and has excellent taste in fiction, but I think there’s something in his approach to the genre which rubs me up slightly the wrong way. Except. I really did like The Thing Itself and thought it very good indeed. The narrator is a radio astronomer, wintering in Antarctica with a creepy geek. This is during the 1980s. The geek is secretly experimenting with perception – the idea that our senses mediate the world, that there is something there, in reality, an idea based on Kant’s Ding an sich, which our senses edit out… but what if we could actually perceive it… “It” all turns out to be a bit Lovecraftian and eldritch, but the geek’s unsuccessful attempt to kill the narrator, and the brief glimpse the narrator has of unadulterated reality, were enough to fuck him up. And now, decades later, he’s a complete loser (although the geek is in Broadmoor). But then he’s contacted by a secret thinktank – and it’s pretty obvious they’ve built themselves an AI, but the narrator is too dumb to realise this – because they need him to approach the geek… And, of course, everything goes horribly wrong and the narrator ends up on the run, not entirely sure who he’s running from and increasingly convinced the mad geek has developed some sort of superpower. There are also a number of historical sections, which better explain, and illustrate, the book’s central Ding an sich premise. I do have a couple of minor niggles, however. The narrator uses a cane, which he loses while fleeing from hospital… but mysteriously has it back a chapter or two later. And a female character changes name over a couple of pages. But that’s minor, trivial even. I thought this a very good sf novel. ( )