What’s the place of humans in a world redefined by AI? Steve Toltz’s new novel has some ideas
- Written by: Seth Robinson, Lecturer, Professional Communications, Public Humanities & Creative Writing, The University of Melbourne
The conditions for Russell “Rusty” Wilson’s life were set with the roll of a dice. After his parents announced their divorce, Rusty and his twin sister, Bonnie, were split up in a move reminiscent of The Parent Trap: allocated to their respective parents. If they roll one to six, Rusty goes with his mother; seven to twelve, with his father.
Random, yes, but even so, it seems the odds are stacked. You can’t roll a one with two dice.
Review: A Rising of the Lights – Steve Toltz (Penguin)
Forty years later, we bear witness to the breakdown of Rusty’s marriage, the obsolescence of his career as he loses his job to an AI system, and a sense of anxiety that seems to permeate his being at a molecular level.
Over the next 300 pages, the question of the dice remains: what in his life is a result of circumstance or chaos – and when have the odds been stacked against him? All the while, Rusty both considers and rejects questions of human connection, and our place in a world rapidly redefined by AI.
Testing the bounds of belief
In his first, Booker shortlisted novel, A Fraction of the Whole, Toltz introduced readers to one family, the Deans, using their voices and perspectives to stretch his novel out over generations. A Rising of the Lights keeps a tighter focus.
We stay with Rusty in his discomfort, though his family and others in his life drive the novel, too, through both their presence and their absence. The spaces they leave seem to define him, as much as the moments when they enter his life.
This is as true for his ex-wife Alison as for his dice-rolling parents, the “Secret Alibi Club” (his high school friends, Edwina, Fergus and Charlie), his eccentric tech evangelist neighbour, Dennis, and his sister Bonnie, whose own life seems to have been lived in rejection of their twinhood.
“It’s hilarious and a little sad, now, that I used to avoid my reflection because of a presence at the edge of mirror. Do you know who that presence was?”“What? Who?”“You.”I imagined my face creeping in at the edge of mirrors — I liked that for myself.
Authors: Seth Robinson, Lecturer, Professional Communications, Public Humanities & Creative Writing, The University of Melbourne
