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Living Next Door To The God Of Love by Justina Robson
01/04/2006 . Source: Paul Skevington 
pub: Pan/Macmillan. 480 page hardback. Price: £17.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-4050-2116-0. pub: Bantam Spectra. 453 page enlarged paperback. Price: $13.00 (US), $18.00 (CAN). ISBN: 0-553-58742-0. Buy Living Next Door To The God Of Love in the USA - or Buy Living Next Door To The God Of Love in the UK  check out website: www.panmacmillan.comwww.bantamdell.com
In order to fully appreciate 'Living Next Door To The God Of Love' it is necessary to read the book that preceded it, 'Natural History'. This earlier novel introduced the concept of Stuff and described man's first known encounter with what created the universe that 'Living Next Door To The God Of Love' is based upon. However, 'Living Next Door To The God Of Love' is not a conventional sequel. The characters from 'Natural History' do not appear within it, except in passing reference, and there is no specific continuation of events that occurred previously. More importantly, the thematic and atmospheric differences between the books are vast. 'Natural History' read as an adventure story, filled with action and exotic locales. It had a futuristic setting, containing 'Forged' humans with the bodies of spaceships, sometime living in a virtual-reality universe called Uluru. It had advanced cybernetic technology in common usage and artificial intelligences readily available to the public. Adding novelty to this was the intriguing bio-mechanical material 'Stuff'. A substance that existed in eleven dimensions, but whose four dimensional form was capable of translating everything it came across, including other sentient life forms, into more of itself. Once a sentient being underwent the process, they lost their individual identity and became a part of a gestalt entity with no self-awareness and no capacity to act on personal desires. As you would expect, very few people were keen for this to happen to them. Luckily Stuff only translates you if you use it in some way. Unfortunately, by the time most people had figured this out, it was too late for them. In other words, they were Stuffed!
Although 'Living Next Door To The God Of Love' does make use of this back-story, authorial intention has had a transformative effect on previously familiar elements. As a tool, it can be used in the creation of different objects, so setting is employed to create a book that deviates strongly from the blueprint set out in 'Natural History'. The fear that Stuff engenders in the populace is downplayed. Humanity is now co-habiting with Stuff, in places known as sidebar universes. These are areas on distant planets, reached via gateways on Earth, which have been constructed out of Stuff and are reflective of the desires of their occupants. Living alongside the human citizens are Stuffies, four-dimensional manifestations of Stuff that are self-aware but live in constant fear of being absorbed by what they call Unity - Stuff in eleven dimensions.
Stuff's ability to do and be anything is changed from a source of continual fear into an intoxicatingly adaptable device, allowing the author to indulge her wildest and weirdest visions. With it, she conjures up Sankhara, a 'high interaction' sidebar universe - a land of cable-car houses, bizarre aquatic snakes, elves and mermaids.
It's a move that takes the book in a very different direction and doesn't feel like straightforward SF anymore, which can only be a good thing. After all, the anomalous and the innovative often go hand-in-hand. There is a strong feel of the fantastic within the book. The descriptions of the city and its inhabitants reminded me of the Eternal Champion sequence by Michael Moorcock with its magical, astounding cities containing an edge of brutality to equal their outlandish natures. Sankhara is a wild and strange purlieu of the Earth-based cities of humanity. In the hands of a less careful author, its bizarreness could certainly have proven off-putting to an unprepared reader. However, Robson has a natural ability to acclimatise her audience to her fictional worlds. Although the human culture of this book is divergent to ours, there are enough recognisable elements within it to forge a connection with even the most staid of readers.
As should be becoming clear, 'Living Next Door To The God Of Love' is not an adventure story. The tropes of the Romance novel play an important role in the book. Jalaeka, the titular 'God of Love' is a splinter of Unity, acting independently, immune to forcible re-absorption by it. Near the start of the book, it encounters a runaway fifteen-year-old girl named Francine. From then on, a large slice of the plot revolves around their relationship and what it means to the people who know them. It's not a conventional romance. Francine's boyfriend is capable of doing or being anything, only personal restraint stops him from acting like a tyrant or, indeed, a God.
Robson deliberately subverts the clichés of the romance novel, using this situation to invite a detailed exploration of love and what it means to the individual: exactly how selfless is it and what is its true nature? She effortlessly ties this in with a debate concerning the importance of identity. Is love expressed by a growing closeness between two individuals or must a clear division be maintained for the emotion to have any meaning at all? The depiction of the emotional trauma that Jalaeka had experienced in previous incarnations serves to underline this discussion forcefully and disturbingly.
'Living Next Door To The God Of Love' is not a perfect book. As it approaches its climax there is an increasing amount of confusing digressions, just when you need a bit of clarity. The structure of the book is not as fine tuned as I would like it to be. It's like a sexy sports car that travels at 140mph most of the time but occasionally makes an unnerving twanging noise when you're travelling around a bend. The twangs are never bad enough to cause a full-scale collision though. We move straight back into the fast lane before we even knew we had left it.
Determined in its uniqueness, thoughtful and explosively creative, this book is a sign of things to come. Keep watching for sudden moves, this author will never make the same one twice.
Paul Skevington
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