On seminality

Certain things are said to be “seminal”. The early scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where a bone is thrown into the air and becomes a spacecraft, for instance. Other moments in the affairs of nations stand long in the memory. Where were you when . . . ? Very often your own personal circumstances at that time are fairly banal, in marked contrast to the earth-shaking event that has just unfolded elsewhere.

When Princess Diana died? I was getting out of the shower. For 9/11? Working from home in the back bedroom. (I remember going for a walk with my wife the next day and wordlessly sharing our shock with an older couple we met along the way.) Donald Trump’s election as US president? When I dropped our daughters off to school that morning, there was one word on everyone’s lips, like a distant drumbeat: “Trump. Trump. Trump.”

Certain books have a similar impact. One that stands out from my teenage years was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Uniquely – or so it seemed to my teenage self – this short novel combined high-flown scientific ideas with laugh-out-loud humour. No mean feat, that. The opening scene, in which Earth is demolished to make way for an intergalactic bypass, is genius. (“What do you mean, why? You have to build bypasses.”) The fact that the book was preceded by a radio show (from which it was adapted) added an extra angle to proceedings. (Of course, any audio adaptation usually comes after the book, rather than the other way round.) There was something new and exciting about the whole enterprise. It seemed unlike anything that had gone before.

I had a similar frisson when I read A Quantum Metaphor for Human Being for the first time. Here was an author – Ciarán Ó Néill, to give him his due – who was bridging quantum physics and human existence – namely, his own life. The novel is Joycean in the scope of its ambition (though, perhaps thankfully, it is significantly shorter than either Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake), and, as a piece of writing, is both impressive and somewhat bewildering. To hope for similar success for Quantum Metaphor as Douglas Adams achieved with Hitchhiker might be wishful thinking. But this new – and yes, perhaps seminal – work certainly deserves a fair rattle, and your full attention.

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A Quantum Metaphor for Human Being by Ciarán Ó Néill is available to order now