TRANSITION was published in 2009
It was published in the UK as a mainstream novel, but in the US as science fiction. This was decided by the publisher for the purely commercial reason that Iain’s SF has always sold better in the US.
A world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse – such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?
On the Concern’s books are Temudjin Oh, an unkillable assassin journeying between the high passes of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the dark palaces of Venice under snow; Adrian Cubbish, a restlessly greedy City trader; and a state-sponsored torturer known only as the Philosopher, moving between the time zones with sinister ease.
Then there are the renegades: the bandit queen Mrs Mulverhill, roaming the worlds recruiting rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, under sedation and feigning madness in a forgotten hospital ward, in hiding from a dirty past. As these vivid, strange and sensuous worlds circle and collide, the implications of turning traitor to the Concern become horribly apparent, and an unstable universe is set on a dizzying course.
Iain said, “[It’s] a wild splurge of fantasy, SF and mad reality frothed up together. Transition is mainstream. About as mainstream as The Bridge, admittedly, but still mainstream. Though not in the States. There it’s going to be published as SF. Confused yet?”
He would occasionally and gleefully describe the novel as ‘51% mainstream / 49% SF or vice versa’. But this was pre-Brexit when it was still funny to joke about such fine margins without succumbing to despair.
He said, “From the start the intention was to write something complicated, so the original idea got lots and lots of other, pre-existing, ideas thrown at it, like the eclipse/how-to-capture-an-alien idea and the story of the police torturer who insists on being punished (that might have been a short story otherwise; I have a lot of ideas that start out as possible short stories, but for about the last twenty years they always end up as parts of novels). The three rather exotic assassinations detailed at the start of Chapter 5, for example, had all been hanging around in the Ideas Vault for decades waiting for a home. Then the book started generating its own ideas, which is always a good sign.”
