Antediluvian - Wil McCarthy

Antediluvian is a standalone novel from Wil McCarthy, and I’ll say this: it’s imaginative work, and it tells a good story. You can pick it up and lose yourself in other times, other places, other people; the story is intriguing, and the characters have depth and weight. It reminds me, in a lot of ways, of the sci-fi tales of the seventies, boys-own adventures, which had the capacity to dazzle and amaze, and also to keep you turning pages past your bedtime. Like them, this story has its flaws, its problematic passages and conceptualisations, and doesn't always hit its mark, but also like them, it is ultimately a fun ride.  

The big idea of Antediluvian, which I cannot promise not to misspell as we go through this review, is that genetic memory is real. That with enough budget, enthusiasm, and scientific knowhow, we can reach into that memory, and live the lives of our ancestors. See through their eyes. And here, I won’t lie, the book absolutely shines. The idea is a bit bonkers, of course. But taking it on its own terms lets us delve into other times, other places, to tell the stories of people so utterly unlike the modern reader, but also still wonderfully, recognisably human. 
It's worth noting here that the science, as presented, feels only a few steps ahead of where we are now. That technically it feels plausible, even if the results might be open to question. McCarthy has clearly done the research, and made it into something accessible, something approachable something that helps drive a fascinating story. 

McCarthy expertly melds myth and legend to bring us a set of stories which may not be true, but could be. From bronze-age hunters dealing with what they think of as trolls, to an Atlantean civilization swept away by a flood, from a garden of plenty to things far worse – these are the myths of the western world brought to life. Well, some of them anyway. But to life, nevertheless. I was particularly fond of the not-Atlanteans, a civilisation with complex astronomy, with a religious subtext we only see the edges of, with architecture and dreams of conquest, with currency, with families whom they care for. The art is in the way that these people are given viewpoints different enough from our own that they feel strange, but close enough that they feel almost familiar, second cousins, twice narratively removed. As one of the men whose eyes we look through argues with his mother-in law, with his brother, we can feel the pang of the domestic, even as we gasp at the soaring ziggurats, and shiver in anticipation of the encroaching waters.  

The worlds that McCarthy spins from the tattered edge of myth are beautifully realised ones, within their perspective. Richly detailed, plausible, internally convincing. They’ll draw you in with their sights and sounds and smells, and you’ll care. You’ll see the struggles of the people, the conflicts, the deals, the internal agonies and the white-hot violence, and you’ll care. There’s so much to explore here, so much potential, and to be fair to the story, it gives you all sorts of different adventures in its time travelling tour of its narrator’s ancestry.  I would’ve been delighted to explore further through the times and places, seen other worlds that are ours, through other, older eyes.  

I did think that the focus on male perspectives was a bit of a shame. The story justifies it internally with a bit of sciencey handwaving, but it felt like a missed opportunity. In that regard, the text picks up some of the bad habits of its own ancestors – like not giving the women who are on the page enough to do. The biggest issue though, I found, was our interlocutor, the modern college professor whose Weird-Science-esque experiment drives the tale. His name is Harv, and he’s equal parts science action hero and unreconstructed sex-lizard. The rest of the story centres around its men, but it works, because those men are sympathetic characters, thoughtfully cast so that we can feel for them, empathise and sympathise even where we don’t agree. Harv I struggled with, perhaps because the old-school masculine style he embodies is a bit more problematic these days than when it graced the pages of Astounding and Asimov's.  

Still, with that caveat, Antediluvian is a fun story. It’s snappy, and if you let it, it’ll pull you into its universe of time-travelling genetics, and you’ll have a good time. It has issues, yes, feeling like something of a throwback to an earlier time in genre history, and with that in mind, it’s probably not for everyone. Personally, I appreciate its ambition, many of its well-drawn characters, and its lush, vivid worldbuilding and so much of what it's trying to do, but can't help seeing the potential to realise that ambition more thoroughly. But like Marmite, some of you will be willing to look past the flaws, past the aggravating central character and the old-school all-boys-together focus, and will absolutely love it. If that sounds like you, then give this one a whirl.  It has some great ideas, and with them, it reaches for the stars.