Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway
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Titanium Noir
By Nick Harkaway
Knopf, 2023
Technological revolutions are nothing new. In recent history, our world has been dramatically altered by the internet, and AI technology is on track to change seemingly every arena of human activity we can think of. What happens when technology can substantively reverse ageing? What sort of world would we live in if such a treatment were possible and only available to the super-rich or those who have won their exclusive favor? Nick Harkaway playfully constructs such a world in his newest novel Titanium Noir.
The story takes place against the backdrop of a city called Chersenesos, the home of the Titans, with a view from its gleaming skyscrapers of the grand statues of Cronus and Gaia flanking the Typhon Pass across the deep, mysterious Lake Othrys. Greek mythology is a common theme enveloping this futuristic sci-fi crime procedural. Titans are similar to their namesake, with inhuman size, strength, and youthful beauty, brought on by a drug called Titanium 7 used in a “rejuvenation therapy” that regenerates the body. The Titans look young again and their lives are lengthened, but sometimes at the expense of their memories. The way these sybaritic super-humans live alongside everyone else, the former often skirting the law to make room for their excess, and the latter doing so to get by in a rough world, is represented to us from the sarcastic and comical perspective of detective Cal Sounder.
Cal is a regular, lonely, and not so well-liked human being operating in that gray, marginal zone between worlds, with one foot in the “fairy-tale” land of the Titans, and the other foot in the “shadow world” of everybody else. He is charged with the remarkable task of piecing together the story of a “nerd, a romantic, and a widower” called Roddy Tebbit, a murdered Titan. While shaking down some old contacts and chasing clues from one dead end to another, he is told a protean rumor about a couple in love, part real, part fantasy. His investigation takes him back into the deranged family matters of his ex-girlfriend Athena, whose father, the domineering, gargantuan, and semi-divine businessman Stefan Tonfamecasca, is the owner of the company that administers the highly desirable Titanium 7 treatment. Cal’s search for Roddy’s murderer puts him in ever more dangerous positions in the web of this family of Titans.
The story is peppered with fun, creative technology from an insufferably itchy “putty lattice” administered by a wizened nurse named Marcus, to a micro-injectile recognition chip that acts as a keycard and dissolves after 24 hours. Not to mention T7 therapy itself and how its results affect décor choices. The tech Harkaway uses is believable and fits snugly into the storyline, unlike the fantastic gadgets found in some sci-fi stories that either don’t make sense or are out of place in a future time period. Between the tech and the crudeness and theatrics, Harkaway also depicts law enforcement in a clear-eyed but sympathetic way:
Cop life is complicated. Three quarters of the problems they get asked to solve they can’t, and shouldn’t have to, and don’t know how. The rest are just fucking terrifying… Add in all the ordinary human vices and cops can be a mile away and to the side of the population they’re supposed to protect. Bad things will happen. I work near cops, around cops, between cops, but I’m not one of them and that makes a difference.
Harkaway puts Cal on the sidelines of several parts of this murder mystery, where a good detective ought to be. Besides cop life, he dips in and out of the world of the Titans, through the facades of the seedy lives of several criminal elements, and into the pathological life of a family he is tempted but hesitant to be a part of. After all, he says “more people get dead because of families and love than anything else.” Cal has to grapple with the trauma of his own shadowy past and the morally questionable direction of his present life, making him a character we want to get to know better, even if he is a bit too complacent with where his investigation ends up taking him in the end.
The world of Titanium Noir is a rich one that is creative and unique, and not too far afield from a technologically advanced future driven by greed and corporeal pleasure that is believable and realistic, in spite of its fantastic components. Of the dozens of characters, some important ones were begging for more meat on their titanic bones, and some aspects of the setting were ripe for more exploration, but the plot took us in a different direction that was still exciting. In spite of these, Harkaway’s imagination and skillful storytelling are working at full throttle in this highly original, hilarious crime novel that anyone interested in sci-fi and a good murder mystery should definitely give a read.
Lukas Killgore is a writer living in Los Angeles, CA. He has BAs in Philosophy and German from UCLA.