Mappa Mundi was published in 2001, a year in which many things changed in international politics. It is a tensely paced and densely written novel, techno-thriller in substance but not at all in style, set a very few years from now—indeed, reality has caught up with Robson's setting rather more quickly than she perhaps anticipated. It is also a good read, which deserved its Clarke Award shortlisting.

The book centres on the development of new technology which will change the human condition forever, perhaps the most fundamentally scientific of sf themes. In this case, it is the Mappa Mundi software which offers its creators the chance to directly reproduce and control human thought processes. But where many authors would simply concentrate on the Gosh-Wow stupendousness of the technology (a problem I sometimes find with stories featuring nanotech, the Singularity, etc), Robson links in the human dimension effectively and memorably.

She does this in two ways. First off, the book begins by offering us glimpses from the earlier history of the main characters, making their stories human and convincing. Her central character, Natalie Armstrong, has a history of mental illness and an uncomfortable professional relationship with her father. (A good choice of name, too, for a scientist taking humanity in a new direction: "Natalie" has connotations of rebirth and redemption, and "Armstrong" is surely intended to remind us of the first man on the moon.)

While the story is largely Natalie's story, her friends and enemies are also well portrayed: Jude Westhorpe, half-Cheyenne US agent; Mikhail Guskov, Russian defector with many identities; Mary Delany, Westhorpe's partner, whose game is much deeper; Ian Detteridge, the man who is the first to be transformed by the new technology; Dan Connor, Natalie's vulnerable gay colleague (and flatmate); and White Horse, Jude's half-sister, still attuned to traditional ways.

The second aspect of the human dimension of the book is the battle for control of the new technology, effectively between Delany's branch of the US security services and Guskov's scientific team. Although this is an ideological conflict—Delany and the American government seeking state control, the ex-Soviet Guskov with a more libertarian agenda seeking to establish a Free Republic of mind (an intriguing concept which could have been explored more thoroughly)—Robson portrays it as a conflict of personalities; nobody's motives are completely admirable or despicable, every one of her characters has reached their position for their own individual reasons. There are no sock-puppet debates or Ayn Rand expositions of belief here.

Mappa Mundi attracted some unjust criticism when it first came out. Those who complained about the presence of a sexy male FBI agent and red-haired scientist side-kick must surely have seen very few episodes of The X-Files, however; Natalie Armstrong, an outsider in her own office and unwilling subject of her own reality-bending experiments, is a very different character to Dana Scully. There is better ground for the charge that the author skimped on her research of the US system of government, but it didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the book, and anyway we all know that the future is not going to be exactly like the present. (Indeed, the PATRIOT Act has already brought the US markedly closer to the security state Robson portrayed it as, writing in early 2001.)

Having said that, and having praised the book for its concentration on the human impact of the Mappa Mundi technology on its characters' lives, I could have done with a bit more exposition early on about what it was actually for, and the means and motivation of the research team in general; some more telling as well as showing. I was also a bit puzzled by a causality paradox arising out of Natalie's actions at the end of the book, which didn't really tie up the loose ends of plot from the beginning for me. But these are minor cavils about what is a very good book.

Nicholas Whyte works in international politics in Brussels, Belgium, and reads SF unashamedly.