0:00:00 > 0:00:02We're finishing earlier than normal on Thursdays this month because next
0:00:02 > 0:00:07on the BBC News Channel is meet the author.
0:00:07 > 0:00:13Sometimes, an author makes a big demand of a reader.
0:00:13 > 0:00:15Nick Harkaway does that in his novel Gnomon -
0:00:15 > 0:00:18an intricate, complicated story on a vast canvas, set in a future
0:00:18 > 0:00:20Britain where we're living in a surveillance state,
0:00:20 > 0:00:22although it's one that most people seem to believe
0:00:22 > 0:00:23is fundamentally good.
0:00:23 > 0:00:25But this is, among many other things, a murder mystery.
0:00:25 > 0:00:29Something's gone wrong and there is a fiendish puzzle,
0:00:29 > 0:00:31many fiendish puzzles, to be solved.
0:00:31 > 0:00:34Gnomon, after all, is the name for the part of a sundial
0:00:34 > 0:00:37that casts a shadow.
0:00:37 > 0:00:47Welcome.
0:00:52 > 0:00:55It is a tough challenge for a reader, this book.
0:00:55 > 0:00:57You even put a puzzle on the frontispiece,
0:00:57 > 0:00:59which is like an entry test for GCHQ.
0:00:59 > 0:01:01Something encrypted.
0:01:01 > 0:01:03You're saying right from the beginning, look,
0:01:03 > 0:01:06I hope in a good way, but you're going to
0:01:06 > 0:01:08have to work at this?
0:01:08 > 0:01:09Yeah, absolutely.
0:01:09 > 0:01:12And it's actually not the only puzzle in the book,
0:01:12 > 0:01:14it's just the only one that announces itself right
0:01:14 > 0:01:15on the front page.
0:01:15 > 0:01:18How do you go about planning a book like this that is full
0:01:18 > 0:01:20of ambiguities, double meanings, people who come and go
0:01:20 > 0:01:21in terms of time?
0:01:21 > 0:01:22It's extraordinary complicated.
0:01:22 > 0:01:31Very difficult to plan in advance, I would have thought.
0:01:32 > 0:01:33Yeah.
0:01:33 > 0:01:38In fact it was impossible to plan in advance.
0:01:38 > 0:01:44I didn't really understand what I was getting into when I started it.
0:01:44 > 0:01:47I had a direction and then I sort of dived in.
0:01:47 > 0:01:50But what I have to keep doing was write a piece and then write
0:01:50 > 0:01:53around it and then go back and make sure it all married up.
0:01:53 > 0:01:56In a sense, it is not so much planned as it is layered
0:01:57 > 0:01:58or accreted, like a rock formation.
0:01:58 > 0:02:00And it was difficult, but also incredibly exciting for that.
0:02:00 > 0:02:03I had to trust that I'd done it right the first time.
0:02:03 > 0:02:06We are going to have to explain something of the plot,
0:02:06 > 0:02:07although it is extraordinarily difficult.
0:02:07 > 0:02:09We could be here for half an hour.
0:02:09 > 0:02:12But we are talking, in effect, rather touchingly, about a murder
0:02:12 > 0:02:15mystery at the heart of it, but it is set in the future,
0:02:15 > 0:02:17in this country, in which people are experiencing the ultimate
0:02:17 > 0:02:18surveillance state.
0:02:18 > 0:02:21But the irony is they think it's quite a good thing,
0:02:21 > 0:02:23a lot of people think it is a good thing.
0:02:23 > 0:02:25Yeah, and it's not just a surveillance state,
0:02:25 > 0:02:27it's also a rolling plebiscite democracy, so they're
0:02:27 > 0:02:28all deeply in mould.
0:02:28 > 0:02:30The fact that they're transparent is actually
0:02:30 > 0:02:32supposedly to their advantage, because they want everything to be
0:02:32 > 0:02:35known so they can have all these amazing services they get.
0:02:35 > 0:02:39But I just sort of...
0:02:39 > 0:02:42I find it weirdly seductive at the same time as being terribly
0:02:42 > 0:02:46alarming, because it wants to solve so many of your problems for you.
0:02:46 > 0:02:48We are in science-fiction territory, really, to give it a genre title.
0:02:49 > 0:02:52But you must have felt...
0:02:52 > 0:02:57I know this book took you two or three years to write,
0:02:57 > 0:03:00as it inevitably would, you must have found that events
0:03:00 > 0:03:04around you were moving at a breakneck pace which made
0:03:04 > 0:03:06you rethink the whole time. Absolutely.
0:03:06 > 0:03:09The thing is that when I started writing the book, I was writing
0:03:09 > 0:03:11a science-fiction novel, or a novel with a
0:03:11 > 0:03:12science-fictional shape.
0:03:12 > 0:03:14But, actually, by the time it came out, it's actually not
0:03:14 > 0:03:17science-fictional any more in that the technology I amended
0:03:17 > 0:03:22of surveillance is all now pretty much existent.
0:03:22 > 0:03:25In the summertime, a woman called Doris Tsao at Caltech, in America,
0:03:25 > 0:03:28announced that she and her team had successfully pulled an image
0:03:28 > 0:03:29directly from the brain of a monkey.
0:03:29 > 0:03:34And it is a passport photo quality image.
0:03:34 > 0:03:42So the central McGuffin of the book that made it fantastical
0:03:42 > 0:03:46when I started writing is now just plausible.
0:03:46 > 0:03:50You've given it the name Gnomon.
0:03:50 > 0:03:52Explain that title, because it is something that
0:03:52 > 0:03:54will be arresting people.
0:03:54 > 0:03:57A gnomon is, apart from anything else, the bit of a sundial that
0:03:58 > 0:04:01actually tells the time.
0:04:01 > 0:04:03It is also just something that sticks out, something
0:04:03 > 0:04:06that is perpendicular to the rest of the world.
0:04:06 > 0:04:09And, obviously, detective stories...
0:04:09 > 0:04:11Different.
0:04:11 > 0:04:13Exactly.
0:04:13 > 0:04:16..are about things that stick out, clues and so on automatically things
0:04:16 > 0:04:20that attract your attention.
0:04:20 > 0:04:21You must be a puzzle fiend.
0:04:21 > 0:04:23It is pretty clear from the book.
0:04:23 > 0:04:24To be honest, I'm terrible at puzzles.
0:04:25 > 0:04:26I want to be a puzzle fiend.
0:04:26 > 0:04:29I love to have that kind of mind and I can set them,
0:04:29 > 0:04:31but I'm not very good at solving.
0:04:31 > 0:04:35You mentioned a code at the front of the book earlier and I set it.
0:04:35 > 0:04:37It took me for ever to do it.
0:04:37 > 0:04:39And I am convinced it is either something people will get almost
0:04:39 > 0:04:42immediately, by making one intuitive leap, or actually the method I used
0:04:42 > 0:04:45is too lossy and you can't get the information back.
0:04:45 > 0:04:47Because you don't tell anybody what the puzzle is meant
0:04:47 > 0:04:48to produce in the end.
0:04:48 > 0:04:51There is no indication of what you should do with it.
0:04:51 > 0:04:54But if you have, if you say, that kind of mind...
0:04:54 > 0:04:55Do you know anybody who has broken it?
0:04:56 > 0:04:57I don't know anybody who has broken.
0:04:57 > 0:05:00I know two or three people are working on it and they resist...
0:05:00 > 0:05:03They may still be working on it years from now.
0:05:03 > 0:05:06They may, or they may be working on it right now and solving it.
0:05:06 > 0:05:08They resist hints from me, so I can't...I have no
0:05:08 > 0:05:10notion of what's going on.
0:05:10 > 0:05:13Take us through the plot a little bit because it would be quite nice
0:05:13 > 0:05:14to get some of the names.
0:05:14 > 0:05:15We've got Diana Hunter.
0:05:15 > 0:05:18Now, speak about the name that has classical resonance, that's...
0:05:18 > 0:05:20Yes, absolutely, names are very important in this book
0:05:20 > 0:05:23and they all have sort of hidden meanings and so on.
0:05:23 > 0:05:24Nothing is only one thing.
0:05:24 > 0:05:25Everything is ambiguous.
0:05:25 > 0:05:28We have Diana Hunter, who is a refusenik, who rejects this
0:05:28 > 0:05:29surveillance society.
0:05:29 > 0:05:31She, we know on the first page, is dead.
0:05:31 > 0:05:34It is her death that Mielikki Neith must investigate through this sort
0:05:34 > 0:05:35of strange landscape.
0:05:35 > 0:05:36She is the police officer?
0:05:36 > 0:05:38Yes, well, the inspector of the witness, which is
0:05:38 > 0:05:39the police equivalent.
0:05:39 > 0:05:42The witness - it is almost... We are in an Orwellian world,
0:05:42 > 0:05:44although it's good rather than bad, we think.
0:05:44 > 0:05:47But the witness is a little bit reminiscent of where we are in 1984.
0:05:47 > 0:05:49Well, and where we are in 2017.
0:05:49 > 0:05:51We live in an absolutely very heavily surveilled country
0:05:51 > 0:05:53and it is becoming more true.
0:05:53 > 0:05:55The witness is the collected surveillance and phone cameras
0:05:55 > 0:06:05so on of the society in which Mielikki Neith lives.
0:06:11 > 0:06:13We talked about it being science fictional, but actually,
0:06:13 > 0:06:15we could have that society within, say, five or ten years,
0:06:15 > 0:06:17if we decided to put the infrastructure together.
0:06:17 > 0:06:19That trend is in ours in Britain today.
0:06:19 > 0:06:22The story is very complicated and at various points in the story
0:06:22 > 0:06:24people are bound to say, hang on a minute,
0:06:24 > 0:06:25have I got this right?
0:06:25 > 0:06:28That doesn't seem to bother you.
0:06:28 > 0:06:31No, I think it's OK for a book to ask you to try hard
0:06:31 > 0:06:33and maybe to read it again.
0:06:33 > 0:06:34It is interesting.
0:06:34 > 0:06:37I was delighted, I had a first note back from somebody who is reading it
0:06:37 > 0:06:40for the second time and saying it's almost even better.
0:06:40 > 0:06:41Which is incredibly reassuring.
0:06:41 > 0:06:51It is just desperately what you want.
0:06:51 > 0:06:53You want something that people will pick up
0:06:53 > 0:06:55for a second time for a start.
0:06:55 > 0:06:58Gnomon itself, if I can call it and it, it is a kind of intelligence
0:06:58 > 0:07:00that operates backwards as well as forwards.
0:07:00 > 0:07:02Is that a reasonable way of putting it?
0:07:02 > 0:07:03I think it is.
0:07:03 > 0:07:05Yes, I mean Gnomon is the overtly science-fictional strand that
0:07:05 > 0:07:06runs through the book.
0:07:06 > 0:07:09Because, give no, and I'm completely comfortable with saying that.
0:07:09 > 0:07:12It is interesting, I had been querying whether the book as a whole
0:07:12 > 0:07:14this science fictional, because I think we use that term,
0:07:14 > 0:07:16particularly in news broadcasts in the UK,
0:07:16 > 0:07:19we use that to say, oh, by the way, you can stop listening now,
0:07:19 > 0:07:27because this isn't real.
0:07:27 > 0:07:30And I worry about that, because very often you hear it
0:07:30 > 0:07:32in connection with deep data-processing and with biological
0:07:32 > 0:07:34advances like Crispr Cas, where you can manipulate the gene.
0:07:34 > 0:07:37And the sort of tenor is, oh, by the way, this isn't part
0:07:37 > 0:07:39of the important cultural discourse.
0:07:39 > 0:07:41And it really is.
0:07:41 > 0:07:42We have to start paying attention.
0:07:42 > 0:07:49We live technologically and scientifically in
0:07:49 > 0:07:52an extraordinary time and I have very little patience with literary
0:07:52 > 0:07:54writing that refuses to engage with that,
0:07:54 > 0:07:56because I think technology has become the substrate,
0:07:56 > 0:07:58the underlying layer of our society and of ourselves.
0:07:58 > 0:08:00You can't be writing about humanity now and pretending we don't
0:08:00 > 0:08:01have a technological society.
0:08:01 > 0:08:03You're suddenly writing a kind of historical fiction
0:08:03 > 0:08:06based in sort of 1981, and it's not real, it's not honest.
0:08:06 > 0:08:09And, also, a technological society that can, at the flick of a switch,
0:08:09 > 0:08:12the blink of an eye, makes an extraordinary leap forward
0:08:12 > 0:08:13that we can hardly imagine.
0:08:13 > 0:08:16Yeah, but the reason we can hardly imagine is because very often
0:08:16 > 0:08:18we won't talk about it until after it's happened.
0:08:18 > 0:08:24There was a case in Ohio, a little while ago, where pacemaker
0:08:24 > 0:08:27evidence was admitted to break a suspect's alibi.
0:08:27 > 0:08:32Well, you know, if there is anything more intimate and private
0:08:32 > 0:08:34than the actual beating of your heart, it is
0:08:34 > 0:08:36what is in your head, and here we have technology
0:08:36 > 0:08:39which is, in the first instance, a medical research, medical
0:08:39 > 0:08:42technology that is supposed to heal that has the potential to be part
0:08:42 > 0:08:44of criminal justice, and if we are going to allow that,
0:08:44 > 0:08:47we should talk about how and when and how much,
0:08:47 > 0:08:50because otherwise it becomes very sinister.
0:08:50 > 0:08:58In other words, it's a book that makes you think,
0:08:58 > 0:08:59or should make you think?
0:08:59 > 0:09:00I hope so.
0:09:00 > 0:09:10Nick Harkaway, author of Gnomon, thank you very much.