HARM

by Brian W. Aldiss

Genres: Alien Contact; Dystopian; Space Opera

Synopsis

From one of science fiction’s greatest living writers comes an unforgettable near-future novel in the hortatory tradition of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Orwell’s 1984, and Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. Both a searing indictment of a fear-drenched political climate and a visionary allegory that shines a piercing light on timeless human verities, HARM is a powerfully compact masterwork that is sure to be one of the most passionately discussed books of the year.

The time is today or tomorrow—or perhaps the day after tomorrow. Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali, a young British citizen of Muslim descent, has written a satirical novel in which two characters joke about the assassination of the prime minister. Arrested by agents of HARM—the Hostile Activities Research Ministry—Paul is thrown into a nameless Abu Ghraib-like prison, possibly located in Syria, where he is held incommunicado and brutally interrogated by jailers to whom his Muslim heritage is itself a crime meriting the harshest punishment. Under this sadistic regime, Paul’s personality begins to show signs of radical fragmentation. . . .

On the remote planet of Stygia, a man named Fremant, haunted by memories of torture that seem drawn from Paul’s mind, is one of a small group of colonists struggling for survival on a harsh but weirdly beautiful world whose dominant life-forms are insects. The sole humanoid race on the planet has been hunted to extinction by the human settlers, whose long journey to Stygia has left them unable to understand their own history and technology.

Thrown back to a more primitive state, they seem destined to repeat all the sins of the world they fled to Stygia to escape.

Is Paul dreaming Fremant as a way of escaping the horrors of his imprisonment? Or is there a stronger—and far stranger—connection between the two men, whose very different circumstances begin to take on uncanny parallels?

As aspects of their identities blur and, finally, merge, astonishing answers take shape—and profound new questions arise.

Release date: May 29, 2007

Publisher: Del Rey

Print pages: 240

Sample

ONE
 
AUTHORITY ORDAINED IT. Lesser authoritarians carried out its orders. No nation ever lacks those who will carry out orders.
 
The man this tale concerns was taken into custody. There had been a carefree time for foolishness, but that time was gone. This was the time for seriousness, for a war against terror. A nation’s security was at stake.
 
         
CERTAIN LIBERTIES HAD TO BE CURTAILED—such as foolishness and satire and freedom of speech. They belonged to a bygone epoch. Now there was a new epoch. “Every man must brace himself against the hidden enemy among us.” So it said in the leaflet.
 
         
THE CAPTIVE WAS HOODED AND SHACKLED. He was young, although already aged by imprisonment and the fears imprisonment brings. Two soldiers pushed or dragged him along, complaining about the difficulty of the task as they went. They moved down a long corridor. Military boots echoed on tile. A door was opened. The prisoner was flung inside an empty room. A door slammed behind him.
 
He was known as Prisoner B.
 
         
PRISONER B LAY WHERE HE WAS, sprawled on the floor. Slowly he pulled himself into a sitting position and dragged the hood from his head. He simply sat there, breathing shallowly, trying to recover his wits. His ribs ached from the recent beating.
 
Gradually he became aware of his surroundings. He was in a large room, not a cell. The room was windowless. Such light as there was was supplied by a naked bulb far overhead. He crawled on hands and knees to the nearest wall. It was covered with a floral wallpaper, now faded. Evidently the room had been pressed into use as a cell for prisoners. Evidently, too, this place in which he found himself had once been a grand mansion, a mansion by no means devised for its present ends.
 
Leaning against the wall for stability, Prisoner B made himself stand. In one corner he saw a bucket and managed to walk over to it, where he relieved himself.
 
He propped himself against the wall, pressing the palms of his hands against it to stop their trembling. When he attempted to consider his situation, no thought came to him. He was simply a prisoner, totally within the power of his captors.
 
The hours passed. He had nothing to do but await the next spell of interrogation. It was impossible to imagine anything beyond the walls of this prison.
 
A bench stood against the far wall. He went over to it. An ordinary garden bench had been brought inside, presumably to serve as a bed. In his weakness, he lay down on it. The bench was too short for any sort of comfort. His legs dangled over the end of it. In any case, he felt too drained to get up.
 
After a while, he fell into a feverish kind of sleep.
 
Two guards came and woke Prisoner B in what he believed to be the middle of the night. They wore rough civilian clothes. He was slightly encouraged by this and asked them, as they hauled him into the corridor, “Where am I?”
 
They gave no answer.
 
“I mean, what country are we in?”
 
One of the men said, “We’re in fucking Syria, aren’t we?”
 
Fresh terror assailed him. “Syria? It can’t be. I thought Syria was an enemy state.”
 
“Shut the fuck up” was the only response.
 
They took him to one of the interrogation rooms.
 
He was in a small room with what he took to be a Turkish decoration on one wall. A voiceless thing within his head kept repeating “Syria, Syria, Syria.” In his disturbed state, he could not recall where Syria was. But there was little chance for anything resembling speculation. Soldiers stood alertly in the room, cuddling carbines. He was made to stand before a desk, behind which sat a thin man with a square jaw and heavy eyebrows. His head was shaven.
 
He sat quietly, his large red hands folded on the desktop, regarding his prisoner through a pair of unblinking eyes.
 
“Are you okay?” he asked. A friendly enough opening.
 
“Fine.”
 
“Then stand up properly. You’re not in whatever stinking hole you came from.” He paused. “I shall ask you some questions. You will answer without lying. Understand?”
 
When Prisoner B nodded, the interrogator roared, “Do you bloody well understand?”
 
He switched on a desk lamp so that the beam shone in Prisoner B’s eyes.
 
“Yes, I understand.” He lifted a hand to shade his eyes.
 
“Put your lousy hand down. What age are you?”
 
“Twenty-one.”
 
“What age will you be next year at this time?”
 
“Twenty-two.”
 
“Twenty-two or dead. Say it.”
 
“Twenty-two or dead.”
 
“Name your father.”
 
He did so.
 
“Name your mother.”
 
He did so.
 
“Name all your brothers.”
 
He did so.
 
“Name your sister.”
 
He did so.
 
“She is a filthy prostitute.”
 
“No.”
 
“She is a filthy stinking prostitute, I said. She is in another room even now, servicing our soldiers of low rank.”
 
“Not by choice.”
 
“Of course by choice. She can’t get enough of it. You are here because of a report from ISID incriminating you.”
 
“I don’t even know what ISID is.”
 
“Don’t play the fucking innocent with me. ISID is the Pakistani antiterrorist organization. What is your job?”
 
“Writer.”
 
“Why do you write lies?”
 
“I don’t.”
 
“You are paid to write lies about us.”
 
“No.”
 
“You are paid to write lies, you little bastard!”
 
“No. What lies do you mean?”
 
“You wrote this filthy book, Pied Piper of Hament. There you slandered the religion and the leader.”
 
“No. You cannot prove I did that.”
 
“You did. You were flogged for it.”
 
Silence.
 
“Why was the book published in countries hostile to us?”
 
“It won critical approval.”
 
“Do you know these bastards?”
 
“What bastards?”
 
The interrogator read from a laudatory section of a foreign review. “It says, ‘Some of the scenes in the novel are particularly vivid, particularly those set in London. The Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace is most amusing, described as a relic of an old imperial system, now redesigned as a tourist attraction.’ And so on…”
 
“That critique contains some inaccuracies. I was never in that reviewer’s country.”
 
“Yes, you were. The year before last. We have proof.”
 
“Oh yes, just for two days.”
 
“You stinking treacherous liar.”
 
Prisoner B was kicked from behind, again and again, on his buttocks and thighs.
 
“That’s enough! How long have you been a member of Al-Muhajiroun?”
 
“I don’t even know what it is.”
 
“You bloody liar! It’s an extremist Islamic group, full of evil bastards and suicide bombers. A man was arrested last week in Kensal Town, in the street next to yours. You belong to this group.”
 
“I certainly don’t. Are you arresting everyone in Kensal Town?”
 
“Look, don’t try to be funny with me, you shit! We’re just carrying out EU policy.”
 
They beat him up.
 
The interrogation lasted for another hour.
 
Prisoner B had heard most of the questions before.