Robert Harris is one of those best-selling authors whose books you can find in any airport book shop, although they’re usually actually more interesting than the bland stereotypical thriller novels you’d expect in those retail outlets. Not least because many of his novels are actually genre, although never marketed as such. His first novel, Fatherland (1992, UK), was a straight-up alternate history and, while not the first ever “Hitler won WWII” novel, it has certainly proven to be the best-known (despite a terrible HBO made-for-TV film adaptation).
Since then, Harris’s novels have covered a variety of topics, from Ancient Rome to 1990s UK politics to the V-2 rocket of World War 2. The Second Sleep (2019, UK) is, perhaps, after Fatherland, the most overtly genre of his novels. The title refers to the practice in the Middle Ages of splitting the sleeping period into two. People would wake around midnight or one a.m., work for several hours, and then return to sleep. It has been suggested this practice is more natural for human beings than a single long sleep of seven to ten hours. No one is entirely sure why it stopped, or if indeed it proved of benefit. And Harris has only really used it as a springboard, and a belaboured metaphor, for his novel.
In Wessex — initially presented as the historical Wessex, although it quickly becomes evident this is not the case — Father Christopher Fairfax is sent to the village of Addicotte St George to perform the burial rites for the village’s recently deceased priest. He learns the priest died under mysterious circumstances at a nearby landmark, Devil’s Chair. As he investigates, against his will, he learns the priest may have uncovered a relic of the pre-apocalypse regime (ie, the present day). Because the ersatz mediaeval world of the book is actually England some 800 years after an undisclosed catastrophe.
The deceased priest had learnt that a pre-apocalypse prepper (actually a vocal scientist) had a link to Addicotte St George… which means the strange concrete structure at Devil’s Chair might be some sort of repository of old world tech. It is to Harris’s credit his plot unfolds much more in keeping with his world-building than this might suggest.
The concrete structure — a drum-like building several hundred metres in diameter and height, with no discernible entrance — and the priest’s death prove to be almost incidental to the story Harris is telling. The world he has built is dominated by the church and its hierarchy, and all references to earlier science and technology and history are rigorously policed. This is all very obvious. Fortunately, Harris dispenses with it very quickly as a driver for his plot, and focuses on the actual mystery of the death of the priest…
It works, as far as it goes.
And that is not as far as an explanation. There’s a twist, but the mystery behind the apocalypse is left unexplained (although the lack of explanation does not really impact the story). Even the true purpose of the concrete structure is left unexplained, although it is crucial to the book’s resolution…
But perhaps “resolution” is too strong a word. The Second Sleep is primarily Fairfax’s story, and the story of his interactions with the inhabitants of Addicotte St George, and how that calls his entire worldview into question. It’s slickly done, but genre readers will spot what’s going on very quickly. Harris makes no secret of the history behind his world, even admitting on several occasions the confusing calendar is due to the year of the so-called apocalypse being deemed 666 AD in reference to the “number of the beast”.
But, for all that, The Second Sleep feels like weak sauce. A semi-mediaeval world following on from some world-shattering event is a genre staple — and at least two novels generally considered science fiction classics make use of it. A more generous reviewer than myself might consider The Second Sleep in conversation with such books, or perhaps even in conversation with such books which posit alternate presents in which scientific progress stalled centuries before (cf Keith Roberts). I’m not convinced that’s the case — and the references to “second sleep” suggest as much. This is association by accident, not design.
Like Fatherland, Harris uses his central trope to hide the twist in his plot. And that, I think, is what lies behind The Second Sleep. Harris likes to surprise his readers with the obvious — but first he has to set up a situation, or world, in which the obvious is not, well, obvious. He succeeds here. He posits an historical world that savyy readers will quickly spot as a post-apocalypse world — and hands out clues with a free hand for those readers not so quick on the uptake… But it’s all sleight of hand.
The Second Sleep is a slight novel. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller (1959, USA) and Earth Abides by George R Stewart (1949, USA) cast long shadows. They were commentaries on the worlds they posited. Harris avoids any pall they might cast over his novel by avoiding commentary, but the end result, as in Fatherland, trivialises his world-building.
There’s a good reason Robert Harris’s novels are usually found in airport book shops. For genre readers, The Second Sleep is actually a good book to read on a flight of a couple of hours or so. It will not stretch their genre muscles, but it’s an entertaining read.
Sometimes, that’s all you want.
