There’s something distinctly cinematic about Mark Wernham‘s debut novel – perhaps that’s because it follows in the  tradition of dark and satirical dystopia, a genre with notable successes in both book and film (with frequent crossovers): from the mind control of Nineteen Eighty-Four to the bleak streetscapes and casual brutality of A Clockwork Orange; from the grimy towers and ducts of Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil to the seemingly idyllic but actually grim social stratification of Huxley’s Brave New World; there are echoes of them all in Martin Martin’s On the Other Side (with more than a little bit of Woody Allen’s Sleeper thrown in for good measure), and it’s a book that’s easy to picture on the big screen. That’s not to say that this is an unoriginal book, far from it – Mark Wernham knows his onions when it comes to skewering the ridiculousness of the present through the invention of a possible future, and it makes for an enjoyable read.

The hero is the fabulously named Jensen Interceptor (named after a 60s / 70s British GT sports car in case you didn’t know). Jensen was raised in an institution, a sort of baby farm, and then sent to a college which meant his entire direction in life from that point onward would be pre-ordained, as part of an overclass, a political and governmental elite that clearly runs the country. When they’re not at work (and even sometimes when they are) they are constantly popping all manner of chemicals to get them high, sharpen things up, and so on – the most ubiquitous is Boris, but during the course of the book Jensen is a walking pharamacy of stimulants, uppers, and downers. The main social activity is to visit Starfucks for casual sex (as in Brave New World, sex is seemingly totally divorced from reproduction) and yet more pills. All of this would be depressing enough, but the true shock is the sheer ignorance of this elite: Jensen doesn’t even know he’s named after a car, doesn’t know any history, has never been outside of his cushioned Central London bubble, and he’s clearly intended to be representative. The central premise for this dystopia, then, is “what would it be like if the idiots were in charge?”.

Writers of this type of book have always known the role of language in signalling social values and preoccupations, and the fate of English here is truly awful, liberally peppered with expletives, gramatically coarse – real barrowboy argot – signifying the official mistrust of knowledge for its own sake and knowledge of the past in particular. In a country where the un-named PM seems to have adopted the approach of a classic dictator, with his own cult of personality, this is how civil servants talk:

‘They’re religious nutters. They believe that some dead bloke is going to come back to life and go around making everything better.’

‘I see,’ I say, even though I don’t.

‘It’s just some story, Jensen, out of an old book,’ says Brock.

‘A story out of a book?’ I goes, thinking about the books I’ve read like A Guide to Your Life and the We Think It’s Great series.

The plot concerns the aforementiond ‘dead bloke’, Martin Martin, a TV psychic from our own times, who appears to have the genuine ability to channel the voices of the dead and know things he shouldn’t. Jensen, co-opted in to the security apparatus of the government, is sent to infiltrate the Martin Martinists who pray for his return like Christians waiting for the Second Coming. In the course of his experience, he loses much of what he holds important (including his face, when his identity is changed for him), and undergoes a mind-bending journey through the outer edges of London, and through time and perception as well, as his experiences in the present and Martin Martin’s in the past become difficult to separate. Shades of Philip K Dick, then, in this warped and twisted ride.

As a dystopia, the world of Jensen Interceptor may not be the most plausible ever (it’s like imagining what would happen if you only let Nuts! readers run the country); and as a novel, there may be a few mis-steps and mis-judgments along the way. However, Martin Martin’s On the Other Side is enjoyable, raises plenty of smiles if not outright laughs, and marks the emergence of a talented new voice.

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