The late Ian Watson’s sci-fi The Embedding is intriguing – but dated

The Embedding
Ian Watson, Gollancz

The acclaimed British science-fiction writer Ian Watson, author of more than two dozen novels, died this April. His fame may have faded over the decades, but his debut novel The Embedding was greeted with acclaim when it was published in 1973. The Spectator declared it “the most spectacular thing in science fiction since the outstanding Solaris by Stanisław Lem”. Watson’s later work, both sci-fi and fantasy, included novels relating to Warhammer 40,000 games and a stint developing the script of A.I. Artificial Intelligence with Stanley Kubrick.

To my embarrassment as a reviewer of sci-fi, I had never heard of Watson until his death and I decided to put that right, starting with his debut, which remains the best-known of his novels.

The Embedding is a first-contact story that centres on linguistics. Chris is running an experiment on children in a British research institute. The idea is to see what happens to children if they are brought up speaking an experimental language inspired by the work of Raymond Roussel, a (non-fictional) poet who died in 1933. Chris believes language is fundamental to how we perceive reality and that his experiments could unlock a new understanding of the universe. Meanwhile, in the Amazon rainforest, Pierre, a former friend of Chris’s, is studying a people called the Xemahoa.

The Xemahoa have two separate languages, A and B. The second language can be articulated and understood only with the help of a local drug, and it seems to involve many of the “embedded language” concepts that Chris is working on in the UK. What a shame then that US contractors are about to flood the tribe’s ancestral lands…

It is against this backdrop that aliens arrive on Earth. They come in search of live human brains that will help with their project to discover languages that might unlock a new reality. Of course, they are very interested in what Chris and Pierre are up to.

If you like your sci-fi with big philosophical ideas at its core, this may well be for you, but just to warn you, in case you like your sci-fi very cosy: everyone in the book is horrible, bar a few inconsequential side characters.

Chris carries out cruel experiments on children. Pierre, in the Amazon, has sex with a young girl (a child?) and is simply pleased to be integrating with the locals. The Xemahoa, in reaction to the impending flooding, trap a pregnant woman in a hut and feed her huge amounts of the local drug, with horrific consequences. The aliens are here for live human brains. The government officials dealing with the aliens have no scruples about providing those brains. There is not a hero in sight, in short. (This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course.)

I should also add some “product of its time” provisos. The book contains descriptions of people of colour that may have seemed OK in the UK of the early 1970s but are simply racist in today’s world.

Secondly, as with so much literature of its time, whether sci-fi or not, this is a book by a man about men. The women and girls in the novel are (mostly) there to be tortured or to seduce the men. If you’ve read a lot of sci-fi (written by men) from the 1960s and 70s, that won’t come as a big surprise to you.

Anyway, The Embedding is a fascinating work. I intend to try reading some of Watson’s later fantasy novels next, as they come highly recommended.

Emily also recommends…

Book
Arrival
Ted Chiang

This excellent collection of short stories, including the one on which the (sensationally good) movie Arrival was based, was originally published as Stories of Your Life and Others. Chiang’s ideas of aliens with a very different concept of time, and one linked to their language, is reminiscent of some of the ideas in The Embedding

Emily H. Wilson is the author of the Sumerians series (Inanna, Gilgamesh and Ninshubar, all published by Titan) and she is currently working on her first sci-fi novel. She is a former editor of New Scientist and you can follow her on Instagram @emilyhwilson1