My life in books

Mappa Mundi, Justina Robson

Natalie Armstrong is a British psychologist. She’s working on a secret project called Mappa Mundi. Its stated purpose is to map the human mind, create a fully analogous real-time model in programming code, and develop the capability to read from and write to living human brains. Natalie sees this as a way to help people, dealing with psychological illness, pain and trauma.

Jude Westhorpe is an American FBI agent. His sister, an Aboriginal rights activist, stumbles on the proof that Mappa Mundi has already been used by agents of the US government to manipulate and control people’s minds, behaviours and memories.

In Mappa Mundi, Robson has written a fascinating and complex story, part political thriller, part exploration of the nature of the human mind and soul, and part speculation on the ultimate relationship between consciousness and cyberspace. Some interesting ideas (which reminded me of similar themes in Gwyneth Jones’ Bold as Love sequence of novels), engaging characters, a unique approach to structure (which not only works, but fits well with the theme of the novel) and absorbing, tightly plotted action made this an intriguing and enjoyable introduction to Robson’s work for me.

And a special thank you to calico_reaction for the opportunity to discover Robson for myself. I won a free copy of this book, but I’ll be more than willing to put out hard cash for more of Robson’s books.