The Kefahuchi Tract books are, in part, a riff on the concept of the Zone from the Strugatsky brothers’ Roadside Picnic. The third book in the series is called Empty Space, and the phrase “empty space” appears early in Roadside Picnic in a description of the Zone artifact the stalkers call “empties”:
“You can stick your hand between them—maybe even your head, if the thing has unhinged you enough—nothing but empty space, thin air. And despite this, there must be something there, a force field of some sort, because so far no one’s managed to push the disks together, or pull them apart either.”
With the trilogy of Light, Nova Swing, and Empty Space, Harrison offers us the literary version of the Strugatsky brothers’ empties. “Nothing but empty space, but there must be something there, a force field of some sort”: I can’t think of a better description of this baffling, fascinating trilogy. You can’t push these books together or pull them apart to find a “meaning.” They exist as they are, a force that resists interpretation yet still produces effects.
Antoine Volodine said of one of his novels that the meaning would be found not in the book’s pages but in the dreams people will have after reading it. Harrison achieves something similar here. He does things with words, and the words do things to you when you read them, but you’re never entirely clear what is happening to you. They do, but they do not mean. The Kefahuchi Tract books are about what it feels like to read the Kefahuchi Tract books. It’s a feeling that resists translation. I can’t put my finger on it, but there must be something there…
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