John Mauro's Reviews > Lake of Darkness

My review of Lake of Darkness is published at Grimdark Magazine.

Lake of Darkness is the new hard science fiction novel by Adam Roberts that asks whether an intelligent being could evolve inside the infinite darkness of a black hole. As the novel opens, two starships are in orbit around a black hole known as QV Tel. Although the crews have been sent to gather data near the event horizon of the black hole, they are suffering from severe physical and psychological trauma after traveling near the speed of light.

The journey takes an especially large toll on one of the starship captains, Alpha Raine, who suffers a complete psychological breakdown, murdering his crew. While others question his sanity, Raine believes he is receiving communication from a being that resides within the black hole itself. Raine undergoes evaluation by Saccade, the other lead character of Lake of Darkness, a historian of twentieth century Earth culture specializing in the psychology of serial killers.

The title of the novel is an allusion to King Lear by William Shakespeare: “Frateretto calls me and tells me Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness. Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend.” Frateretto is the name of a devil, and the Nero reference points back to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, where the Roman Emperor is found fishing in hell. This quote accurately captures the pitch-black vibes and demonic overtones of Lake of Darkness. Although this is a hard sci-fi novel saturated with astrophysics, Roberts delves just as deeply into both the philosophical and theological implications of a black hole developing sentient life.

Adam Roberts is a professor of nineteenth century literature at Royal Holloway, yet he clearly knows his physics. The author’s grasp of challenging concepts from general relativity to cosmology is spot on. The true genius of Lake of Darkness is how Roberts constructs a story from the so-called black hole information paradox, which arises when applying a combination of general relativity and quantum mechanics to black hole physics. The paradox concerns the ultimate fate of information sucked into black holes: when a black hole decays due to Hawking radiation, is the information truly lost or could it be re-emitted? More specifically, could the information serve as fuel for evolving an intelligent entity within the black hole itself?

Although Lake of Darkness is a heavy read, there are also some lighthearted moments, especially related to the characters’ misunderstanding of twentieth century Earth. For example:

“…whatever the actual name of the first individual to walk on the Earth’s moon, it was clearly not Arm-Strong. ‘That’s a title, not a name: clearly it reflects the warrior ethos of that belligerent and martial age. Whoever they sent to the moon, he would be a great hero—a masculine figure, since antique Earth valued the male over the female—and an individual of immense physical strength. Hence strong-of-the-arm.’”

Lake of Darkness is not a casual read by any means, but it is highly rewarding for readers willing to devote the necessary effort. It is rare to find a book that delves so deeply into science, philosophy, religion, and psychology, while also delivering a compelling story with complex, morally gray characters. Personally, I found myself unable to resist the gravitational pull of this dense yet darkly alluring opus.