In Review

21 November 2008 19:50 BST

Debatable Space by Philip Palmer

Published by Orbit, out now, paperback, 469pp, £10.

In a nutshell…

Rather offbeat space adventure.

What's it all about?

Flanagan is a space pirate who has a plan to kidnap the daughter of the ruler of the known universe, and demand a huge ransom for her return. However, Flanagan and his motley crew will need have their wits about them as the despotic ruler isn't going to play by the rules. So the stage is set for a skewed take on the well-worn genre of space opera and other forms of literary science fiction.

Who's it by?

Philip Palmer has been a soldier of fortune; is fluent in a dozen languages, he's lived for a thousand years and has endured several Ice Ages.

At least in his imagination he has, declares the author. In reality, he's a screenwriter and a TV development executive whose credits include Taggart and The Bill, and Debatable Space is his first novel.

He lives in London with his family, and is the founder of production company Afan Films.

As an example…

"We were all of us (apart from Harry) variations on the same theme. We are comic book wish-fulfilment fantasies made real, par for the course for Doppelganger Robots. And our style options were, frankly, limited. There was a wide stock of out-of-service DRs available for us to hack into, and we took the least garish ones."

Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster

Palmer's prose would work well alongside the amazing animation used in A Scanner Darkly and although it wouldn't achieve blockbuster status, it has cult classic written all over it.

What the others say

"Well-written, fast-moving and weird in places – definitely a new voice worth listening to." – Jon Courtenay Grimwood, novelist.

So is it any good?

In his afterword, Palmer declares his admiration for Larry Niven's 1972 novel Ringworld, and there's more than a little of that nonchalant style on show throughout Debatable Space, as well as the influence of William Burroughs, KW Jeter, Michael Moorcock and Douglas Coupland.

As these with notable authors, Palmer intertwines his debut novel's space opera trappings with near-future narrative interludes, stream of consciousness and a grasp of meta-textural stylings.

However, there's an unnerving undertone of the author boasting of his cleverness, which fascinates but does little to draw the reader in, much less makes you care about the characters, something the aforementioned authors achieve, at least, nine times out of ten.

6/10

Lee Davis