The Flies of Memory by Ian Watson

Published in the UK in 1990; published by Carroll & Graf in December 1991

Although it's been about eight years since he last released a novel, Ian Watson has long been one of the most creative voices in science fiction. The work of a more recent author, the justly celebrated China Miéville, reminds me of Watson's. Both writers stretch the boundaries of the genre; both tend to address philosophical and conceptual issues rather than hard science. As a prose stylist, however, Watson is by far the better of the two.

The Flies of Memory was first published in 1990. Watson envisions memory as a force, like gravity. Memory is "the foundation of reality ... the source of all identity, the only link in a flux of perceptions and events -- not only for living beings but for the physical universe, as well." The counterforce of memory is imagination, the power to break the chain of events that constitutes memory.

Aliens known as the Flies come to Earth to perceive and remember, like tourists with cameras. The Flies, however, have no need for cameras; they absorb memories and then download them into memory tanks. They have come to Earth because their own world is full; there is no room to make new memories.

The Flies catalog memories of reality, but a lost memory can make reality disappear. The accidental death of a fly tasked with remembering St. Peter's Basilica thus causes the building's cupola to vanish. A good chunk of Munich later disappears when humans, bent on securing access to alien technology, cause Flies to die. But does Munich actually cease to exist? According to Watson, it is possible for people (and places) to travel on memory fields; remember a place you have seen and you can transport yourself to that place (at least if you have access to the fluid with which the Flies fill their memory tanks). And so Munich has disappeared from Germany but it turns up ... elsewhere.

The ability to travel on memory fields creates a crisis of faith for Kathinka, a Dutch nun. "If I can fly outside of space and time with the power of an angel -- then why believe in angels?" she asks. Kathinka is one of several characters who tell Watson's odd story from their individual points of view. Martine Leveret can see other people's memories, an ability that makes her a human lie detector. Body language expert Charles Spark is Martine's ex-husband; he's convinced she's crazy. Erika, a teenage girl who contends with the unwelcome advances of the self-proclaimed ruler of Munich after the city relocates, begins to perceive the ghost-like inhabitants of Munich since medieval times -- including a rather memorable face from the 1930s. KGB psychologist Valeri Osipyan has little use for New Age mysticism, but begins to question his sanity, his devotion to rationality, in light of the "web of irrational forces, waiting to erupt" that define his new understanding of the universe. Memory is important to Osipyan; as a matter of honor, he remembers everyone he condemned, because "people should not be erased, as Stalin had erased people."

Some of this richly imagined novel is tough sledding. The final pages, in particular, are almost surrealistic. I read some of The Flies of Memory twice and I'm still not sure I entirely grasp it. Yet the effort the novel demands from the reader is repaid with subtle and enriching ideas. In any event, strong characters and striking prose more than compensate for the occasionally obscure story.

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