Immediately after finishing Allen Stroud’s novel Anti-State, I struggled with the impression that there was something about this book that was incomplete. Stroud’s novel is marketed by its publisher as a standalone story set in the same universe as the author’s ongoing Fractal series, which is itself an extensive collection of interconnected novels and novellas following humanity’s efforts to colonize the other planets of the solar system. Specifically, Anti-State follows the attempts by various political factions to contend with a worker uprising which breaks out on a corporate-run Martian colony in the twenty-second century, with this uprising in turn gradually revealed to have possibly fallen prey to the same corrupting forces that have given rise to the system of indentured labor which its members are seeking to dismantle.
Yet as compelling as Anti-State’s premise is, the novel ultimately fails to do anything with the many ideas its plot introduces. As the book’s main story develops, Stroud’s characters fail to engage with the dilemmas and challenges that emerge around them, and instead move through their respective narratives only as unchanging figureheads for the abstract ideologies and philosophies they have been asserted to represent. This becomes a particularly significant issue at the book’s end, when the inability of Stroud’s characters to dynamically reflect on their experiences during the events of the story results in a simplistic work which ends by asserting an artificial resolution which is very clearly not supported by the events that have preceded it.
Out of the four characters around whom Anti-State revolves, the first to be introduced is a former soldier and pragmatically nihilistic corporate mercenary named Magnus Sirocco. As Magnus’s portion of the novel begins, he is introduced in a context which very directly establishes not only his motives and personal convictions, but also the particular ethical philosophy which he represents.
Specifically, as his story opens, Magnus is seated alone in a cafe in Naples, Italy, quietly observing the people around him with detached interest. Revealed to have long ago been dishonorably discharged from an unnamed military after becoming disillusioned with the idealistic rhetoric which initially compelled him to enlist, the inciting incident of Magnus’s narrative comes when he spots a couple in the corner of the cafe who are being threatened by a group of newcomers. Idly noting how the other patrons and staff of the cafe have begun silently vacating the area, while also observing the ways in which the police drones that normally patrol the streets outside have mysteriously vanished, Magnus pointedly decides to intervene on this couple’s behalf. After the individuals threatening the couple initially notice him, the text reads:
The man turns to his victim, Leonardo, who remains sitting at the table. “You know this shithead?” he asks.
Leonardo shakes his head. He’s telling the truth. We’ve never met, but I know people like him. Those who have been victims. I’ve seen plenty of them in my life.
“Don’t you lie to me!” the man says. “I’ll ask you again. Do you—”
“He doesn’t know me.”
I stand from the table. I can still see out of the window. Apparently, we live in a civilized world. But, if we were living in a civilized world, police drones would already have arrived after being summoned to an alert from the counter supervisor, or by any of the customers placing a call to local law enforcement. This whole situation would be recorded and used as evidence in the conviction of the man I’m staring at. The man whose name I don’t know.
It hasn’t happened. That tells me everything that I need in order to plan what will happen next.
Critical here is the fact that, as Magnus is introduced to the reader, he is shown to have not only abandoned an institution of authority to which he had previously dedicated his life (the military), but also now to regard the very concept of authority with skepticism. Yet, despite these convictions, Magnus is also simultaneously introduced acting to defend others from harm. As Magnus makes very clear, his decision to defend Leonardo and his spouse comes not from any sense of personal obligation or duty towards this couple, nor does it come from a personal grudge or hatred harbored against this couple’s attackers. Instead, rather than acting in accordance with the demands of an external institution, Magnus is compelled to act in this scene by the observation that the local authorities are either unable or unwilling to intervene in this crime, and as a result chooses to act in their place.
Stroud indicates here (or at least seems to indicate here) how Magnus’s system of ethics is one that, despite entailing a rejection of authority, remains predicated on a belief in a kind of justice and responsibility. Magnus could simply leave the scene as the other cafe patrons have done, but he chooses not to, and does so precisely because he realizes that the authorities will not intervene to arrest Leonardo’s attackers—but should do.
In any case, in the scene that follows, Magnus attacks and ultimately kills the newcomers, and then in the wake of this altercation, flees the cafe in the knowledge that he is now likely in danger from whatever group was threatening the couple to begin with. It’s as a result of this event that Magnus is contacted by a mysterious corporation called the Icono group, whose agent, Louisa Aymes, explains that her employer has been observing Magnus for some time. Due to his behavior in the cafe, Aymes wishes to offer Magnus a job on a Martian colony located in the Jezero crater, whose corporate-controlled government the Icono group had previously sponsored.
Should Magnus prove willing, the Icono group is prepared to offer him their protection—on the condition that once on Mars he make contact with an enigmatic figure named Antonio Sammatri, who is currently planning some sort of political rebellion. All that Aymes will reveal about this job is that she wishes for Magnus to give Sammatri encrypted information that is supposedly important to his revolution. What this information is, exactly, she refuses to say.
Aware that there is much about this arrangement he is not being told, Magnus nevertheless accepts this offer, and embarks on an interplanetary journey at the behest of a corporate entity whose ultimate objectives are unclear.
This story is directly contrasted with that of the second of Anti-State’s protagonists, Peter Iskander. As Peter’s portion of the novel opens, he is working for a religious organization known only as “The Temple,” and is introduced serving food at a cafeteria located within the same Jezero colony to which Magnus has been sent. The inciting incident of Peter’s narrative unfolds when, after completing a cafeteria shift, he and a small group of Temple followers volunteer for a dangerous job dismantling an orbiting battleship called the Asthoreth. We quickly learn this is a vessel that has been heavily damaged during a recent attack on Mars’s moon Phobos, and which is currently being stripped for parts by the Jezero government. Yet, when Peter and his followers arrive on the Asthoreth, they promptly attack the corporate overseer tasked with managing their work—and, after commandeering this abandoned ship, set course for deep space.
As Peter takes command of the Asthoreth and orders his newfound crew to set course for an unnamed destination, he reflects on how, while every one of his followers are Temple members who have volunteered for this mission, it is he and he alone who knows the group’s true objective. Much as with Magnus, then, Peter’s story very quickly establishes its central character to harbor a unique conviction regarding not only his relationship to authority, but also the nature of morality. Whereas Magnus is introduced in a context implying him to be inherently distrustful of authority in all its forms, Peter is introduced as being driven not by a distrust of authority but instead an allegiance to it.
This is highlighted in one scene appearing shortly after Peter’s group takes control of the Asthoreth, in which Peter meets with the corporate overseer, Weaver, whom he and his crew have taken hostage. Despite knowing that Weaver now represents an intense security risk to the Asthoreth’s mysterious mission, Peter is nevertheless reluctant simply to execute Weaver by pushing him out of an airlock. Instead, he attempts to win Weaver over to the group’s cause by convincing this man to convert to the Temple’s religion.
It’s in this conversation that we learn Peter’s Temple is not so much a traditional religious community per se, but instead a group of people who perceive themselves to be an amalgamation of every religion across all of human history. Followers of the Temple, at least according to Peter, can worship whichever god they wish, with the only requirement of Temple membership being adherence to some kind of higher authority: “I’m saying I want to have faith in you and for you to have faith in yourself as a creature created for a higher purpose,” he tells Weaver, “the betterment of humanity if you like. I want you to believe, then I can believe in you.”
In contrast to how Magnus’s story began by indicating his rejection of authority, Peter’s story begins with a sequence establishing—very directly—the extent to which its central character effectively worships the abstract concept of authority itself. Yet, in contrast to the moral convictions that compelled Magnus to defend a couple whom he doesn’t know, it is, in the end, only Weaver’s decision to submit to a religious authority (in his case, that of Christianity) which convinces Peter not to murder him.
Finally, these two stories are interwoven with those of Ellisa Shann and Avril Johansson, both of whom—as soldiers who seem to have dedicated themselves to serving the interests not just of Earth’s Fleet but (they claim) all of humanity—represent middle grounds between Magnus’s and Peter’s extremes. As Shann’s story begins, she is adjusting to life on Earth after a lengthy posting in deep space as an officer of Earth’s battle fleet. Yet, after Shann receives word of Peter’s theft of the Asthoreth, she orders the crew of her ship, the Gallowglass, to set course to intercept the hijacked vessel. Likewise, Johansson’s story begins as, while acting as a Fleet liaison in Martian orbit, she receives orders from Shann to travel to the Jezero colony, and—with the help of her wife, Chiu—learn everything she can not only about Peter Iskander but also about whatever group he is a part of. It’s in this way that Johansson and Chiu witness first-hand the totalitarian society existing on Mars, and learn how the vast majority of Martian residents have been lured to this world from Earth with the promise of future prosperity, only to be promptly sold into a system of indentured labor which the novel very explicitly equates to slavery.
As all four of these stories begin to weave together, Stroud constructs an intricate narrative which initially seems prepared to explore the contrasts and parallels between his many protagonists. The problem is that, as Anti-State’s plot begins to develop in earnest, a concerning trend emerges in Stroud’s depiction of his characters, and the way in which the philosophies and motivations of these characters remain unexplored. The best example of this I think is Magnus, and the extent to which Magnus’s ultimate behavior in this story takes what initially appeared to be a compelling exploration of the ethical nature of political anarchism and transforms the character into an overly simplistic antagonist whose behavior jars very sharply with his stated objectives.
After he arrives on Mars, Magnus very quickly makes contact with the mysterious revolutionary leader Antonio Sammatri—the figure whom the Icono group has hired him to locate. Magnus learns that Sammatri is working to overthrow the Martian system of indentured labor. Indeed, mention of Sammatri’s very name is itself now regarded as a crime by the Martian authorities, due to an impassioned speech he once gave calling for the abolition of this institution.
Yet, in spite of the idealism of Sammatri’s rebellion, Magnus also learns that the movement is much less than it seems. Much of the success of the rebellion has been due to an alliance Sammatri has formed with an artificial intelligence called only “the Machine.” This is an entity which was originally designed by the Icono group, and which has secretly taken control of all Martian media so as to subliminally manipulate the Martian public in favor of Sammatri’s rebellion. Moreover, it is Sammatri’s allegiance to the Machine that has caused the Icono group to choose to align itself with his rebellion, with the encrypted data Magnus has brought with him to Mars revealed to be codes that will allow the rebellion full access to these automated systems.
Essentially, Magnus arrives on Mars to find a totalitarian world whose people are actively organizing a revolution against oppression, only eventually to discover that this revolution is false. While Sammatri claims to be working to end what he describes as modern-day slavery, Magnus discovers that Sammatri is in fact just be a figurehead being manipulated by an artificial intelligence he doesn’t understand—an artificial intelligence that is itself the creation of one of the very corporations he claims to be rebelling against.
There’s a way in which this twist in the narrative could have been better handled. Given Magnus’s firm distrust of authority, it only seems natural that, when he makes contact with Sammatri and learns Sammatri’s political rebellion to be false, Magnus would at the very least grow severely disillusioned with this cause. After all, when Magnus reflects on his time in the military, and his reasons for abandoning a career as a soldier, he cites specifically the way in which he was being manipulated by others:
As a child, you’re told that the nation you live in has a set of morals and ethical principles. The honorable ideals of your people are part of how you’re raised.
The appeal of the defense forces is that you get to be one of the people championing those values. That requires you believe in what you’re being asked to defend. Although, over time, you lose that naïve motivation. What was a vocation becomes a job. The morals and ethics start to blur and fade.
What’s left is jaded repetition and familiarity. You get frightened about leaving the world that is slowly murdering you because you don’t know anything else. You wonder if anything you’ve been taught is worthwhile and worry that the only things people will value are your propensity for violence.
And you learn to hate the people who decide who you’re supposed to be fighting.
Yet, after learning the truth of Sammatri’s rebellion—and the extent to which this uprising is only seeking to replace the current Martian government with a system beholden to exactly the same corporate forces—Magnus instead volunteers to serve this cause.
It’s in this way that we are in turn given an exceedingly violent and increasingly unbelievable sequence of action scenes in which Magnus proceeds to carry out the instructions given to him by the Icono group’s Machine. When the Machine orders Magnus to assassinate the leader of the Jezero colony, Magnus does so with brutal efficiency. Likewise, when the Machine orders Magnus to kill a member of Sammatri’s revolution who it has claimed is guilty of treason (a character whom we as readers know actually to be innocent), Magnus doesn’t hesitate to obey. Finally, when the Machine abruptly contacts Magnus and urgently explains that he must travel to a secretive scientific research facility so he can murder every one of the scientists inside, Magnus embarks on this mission, all while never pausing to reflect on the increasingly obvious fact that this violence, in addition to being needlessly brutal, clearly has nothing to do with overthrowing the Martian system of indentured labor.
To be clear, the problem here isn’t necessarily that Magnus ultimately becomes the novel’s villain. Instead, the issue is that Magnus’s inability to reflect on how he is very clearly being manipulated by the Machine strains believability. As was indicated in the scene in the cafe, Magnus’s rejection of authority was rooted not so much in a predisposition towards violence, but in a moral conviction that it would be unethical to stand by and watch while someone else was harmed. Yet, in spite of these early motivations, Magnus is ultimately depicted as being utterly incapable of reflecting on the consequences of his actions. The implicit assertion which Stroud seems to be making in these scenes is that, because Magnus has no central authority to which he has dedicated his life, he is open to manipulation by the Machine.
This is paralleled by the way in which Peter’s contrasting worship of authority is seemingly celebrated. As the Asthoreth nears its mysterious destination, Peter continues to periodically reflect on the ethics of his mission, and the extent to which he should perhaps reveal to his crew the endlessly mysterious truth of the dangerous objective they are apparently pursuing. Yet, rather than giving us a story in which Peter is eventually confronted with a meaningful ethical dilemma which compels him to question the total obedience to authority that he claims is representative of his religious faith, Peter instead moves through his narrative simply by holding to these convictions without reflection. Worse, it is ultimately because of this refusal to question his own motives and ethics that he and his crew are shown to survive. In the end, Peter chooses to align himself with Ellisa Shann, when she and her crew finally intercept the Asthoreth. He does so not out of any concern for the safety of the people under his command, but instead out of a realization that, just as how he follows the authority of the Temple, Shann follows the authority of the Fleet, and therefore can in Peter’s view be trusted.
The implication of all of this seems to be that Peter’s earlier claim to Weaver—that a person can only be trusted if they have dedicated themselves to authority—is something which we as readers are expected to accept. While Magnus harbors deep-rooted ethical convictions compelling him to act in what he thinks is the common good, the book ends by showcasing a weirdly artificial scenario in which Magnus’s anti-authoritarian convictions are framed as suspect, due to how they are not subject to the control of an external power. Magnus is dangerous, in the end, because he cannot be controlled, while Peter and Shann are highlighted as virtuous because they are obedient.
And, unfortunately, this is a reading of Anti-State’s politics that is supported by the way in which the eventual Martian revolution is depicted. When the day of Sammatri’s rebellion comes, we are given a sequence in which Johansson and Chiu, as soldiers of Earth’s battle fleet stationed on Mars, are forced to flee the colony due to the violence of this uprising. Of particular note is the way in which the people engaging in Sammatri’s rebellion are described. The revolt is perceived by Johansson as dangerous not because its ideology is violent, or its many participants misguided, but instead because its aim is to overthrow authority. It is this very act of defying authority—any authority—that Johansson’s narration articulates as a threat:
There’s no one outside the apartment block as we leave. That’s a good sign. Sooner or later, the mobs are going to engage with all symbols of authority. If they aren’t thinking about us right now, we’re less likely to be observed, although I’m pretty sure the computer system will have monitored our exit through security cameras and that information will be with whoever is hacking everything to manage the riot.
The assumption that Johansson puts forward here is that, in the absence of the controlling influence of a government—even a totalitarian government whose rule is inherently violent and dehumanizing—the people of Mars will naturally become violent themselves. While Stroud makes clear that the Martian rebellion is necessary—that the system of indentured labor is indeed a form of slavery that must be overthrown at all costs—it’s also the case that we never see any indication of an underlying organizational structure within this revolution. While there are brief references to Sammatri making contact with various factions in the Martian workforce who supposedly have important roles in this movement, in practice all we see of this revolution—whether from the perspectives of people outside of this movement, or within it—is a disorganized mass of enraged people running around in the streets with the aim of indiscriminately destroying things.
Johansson’s story concludes with her having never been confronted with a meaningful choice or dilemma requiring that she contend with the ideas regarding authority that the plot continually showcases. Instead, she and her wife successfully survive a series of action scenes as they fight to escape danger. Likewise, Shann’s narrative concludes with a legitimately tense sequence in which she uncovers an imminent mutiny among her crew, and must feign ignorance as she gauges the loyalty of her officers. Yet, while these individual sequences are skillfully written, nothing about them demands any meaningful confrontation with the book’s themes of authoritarianism. Finally, Magnus’s story ends ambiguously, after he has successfully completed his string of murders at the Machine’s behest only to find that the Machine has very predictably decided—now that he has served his purpose to its cause—to murder him.
The end result of all of this is that, while each of its narratives are individually well structured, the novel concludes in a manner that leaves the reader feeling as though nothing has really happened over the course of this story. Characters travel to locations, learn important information, and fight off enemies. Yet, despite ostensibly being a story about a labyrinthian interplanetary revolution, it’s hard not to feel that Anti-State is not just a book that happens to end in exactly the state in which it started, but one that only manages to arrive where it started because it never really left.