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Book Review of Omega: An Alternate History of Sorts

Haris Durrani ’11
Opinions Editor

“The hardest task for the historian… is to consider the evidence without prejudice. We all have prior agendas and tend to find what we’re looking for while ignoring anything contrary to our expectations. So history, because it is a human pursuit, is always partial and prejudiced no less than our own interior lives: both are just a sum of contingent memories.”

In a sense, British science fiction author Christopher Evans’ “Omega” is an innovative, 346-page definition of history in novel form. It’s an alternate history with an S.F. slant.

Most alternate history novels deal with one past, different from our own. An influential figure dies, a war is prolonged or prevented, a new technology is developed–some random factor that changes the real sequence of historical events.

Evans’ new novel does paint a stark alternate history quite well. Still, at that, it would only be half worth reading. What sets “Omega” apart from other novels of its genre is that it does not deal with only one history–it deals with two: our own, and the military-consumed world in which the mysterious Omega weapon exists.

The novel kicks off to a brisk start when Owen Meredith, an average British citizen the world we live in, experiences a shocking explosion which he later learns never took place–he was simply hit by a car in the middle of the street. But he soon finds his consciousness switching from his own to the mind of his parallel self, Major Owain Maredudd, a soldier in the world of Omega. Owain, on the other hand, did survive an uncanny incident that he believes was not the simple, accidental explosion which the higher military brass assured him he had been victim to.

Owen’s mental jump between histories at first might make him seem simply insane–the alternate world a figment of his imagination–and the novel doesn’t settle entirely on whether this is true or not, much like Philip K. Dicks’ dystopian novels of uncertainty and psychological confusion. Evans leaves off, though, hinting that the Omega weapon could be the cause of Owen’s apparent insanity.

The novel works like Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughter-House Five,” only with a formal rather than casual tone and a more logical feel to the storyline. While the Omega weapon itself is only somewhat creative, the ideas it brings to mind protest war and the power-hungry military authorities who instill fear in the enemy and press buttons from the sidelines, while brave soldiers put their life on the line. Although the plot does not jump around through time as in Vonnegut’s novel, it does hop from our history to another, and there are several scenes in which Owen transfers back and forth a number of times, rendering him confused and dazed.

In this other history, set in a very different present, World War II never really ends and merges with the Cold War. Nations give in to military governments. The Earth is ravaged by violence as armies fight for territory and power, the environment ruined by eternal war.

In a camp for Middle East refugees, despite the suffering, the human spirit continues to survive–to fight back: “Walls were daubed and over-daubed with ancient posters, insignia and exhortations in Arabic, Turkish, Greek, all of which suggested a determined vibrancy, an insistence on sheer existence.”

It’s a pre-apocalyptic nightmare, and with the novel’s eventful beginning, the contrast between the two worlds seems the heart of the story. But as the plot appears to lag during the middle sections of “Omega,” not much happens, and Evans begins to focus on the characters’ suffering instead.

Owen was an everyday citizen: running a television show on military history. Owain was an everyday soldier: following orders and respecting those of higher rank–a true English patriot, for the times he lives in. As the novel develops, Owen struggles to regain his own mental stability and full assurance of his identity and family, while Owain deals with the disastrous psychological effects of war and gradually begins to question the military authority he would once have died to protect. Both fight to maintain lost memories, and their own sanity.

All the same, when “Omega” reaches an action-packed, yet tragic, climax, the reader realizes that it isn’t only the distinct histories or the characters that take center stage, but both. Owen and Owain are microcosms of their own worlds, and those worlds are macrocosms of the two characters.

Evans delivers a powerful message of war and identity–a call for hope no matter how bad a situation is. Things can always be worse. Owen endures hardships, but the magnitude and quantity of Owain’s setbacks in his war-addicted world is far worse–and the same situation goes for their two histories.

While “Omega” slows down and follows unnecessary tangents, from an overall view, the novel’s well-built characters and vivid alternative dystopia make it all the better.

Science fiction, more than other genres, is a genre of ideas. Evans’ sci-fi tilt turns “Omega” into different kind of alternate history novel–one rich with powerful concepts.
As the novel comes to its bittersweet close, Owen remembers his father, a skeptical–though at times brilliant–historian, remarking that “in his final writings, [he]speculated that our certainties, our sense of consciousness even, arose out of a swirl of mental imponderables like the froth of the manifest world on an unfathomable quantum ocean. In which case, our mutual lives are based on a necessary consensus rather than any bedrock of reality. We live by articles of faith rather than reason.”

[openbook booknumber=”9781906301064″]

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