The Infinite State is a sci-fi novel by Richard Swan and published by Gollancz. It is due for release on the 6th of August, 2026. This review is intended to be free of spoilers, but none of us are perfect. Consider yourself warned! I was provided with a review copy by the publishers. There are affiliate links at the end of this review.
Blurb
WHO GIVES YOU LIFE?
PATER AETERNUS.
Katherine Fuller’s husband is dead. As an esteemed member of Pater Aeternus – governing party of the fascist, galaxy-spanning Decurion Empire – he has left behind an estate of immeasurable wealth. And Katherine is going to inherit it.
WHO GIVES YOU PURPOSE?
PATER AETERNUS.
Life under the Eternal Father is rigidly stratified, surveilled, and controlled – each new day to be endured, not lived. But with Katherine’s newfound fortune, she is presented with a rare and dangerous opportunity: purchase a virgin world, and create a better, fairer society.
WHO GIVES YOU JOY?
PATER AETERNUS.
But the Empire cannot allow its wayward daughter to succeed. And as Katherine works in secret, recruiting allies she’s not even sure she can trust, she will discover exactly how far Pater Aeternus is willing to go to stop her. Because Katherine is going to create something nobody has seen for many years.
A democracy.
Review
The Infinite State is Richard Swan stepping sideways into science fiction and discovering, almost immediately, that the genre suits him. The book opens in a totalitarian empire so rigid and joyless it feels like someone took the worst instincts of the 20th century and let them metastasise across the stars. It’s not subtle, but it’s not trying to be. Swan isn’t here to build a quirky space opera; he’s here to show you what happens when a society decides that surveillance is safety, fertility is duty, and obedience is the only moral currency left.
The novel follows three characters who are all, in their own ways, trapped. Katherine, the political wife who loses a child and then a husband, is the most immediately compelling. Swan writes her with a kind of bruised clarity, as a woman who has spent her life performing the role assigned to her, only to realise the role was the whole prison. Cyprian, the disgraced detective, is the sort of character Swan writes well: tired, compromised, and still trying to do the right thing even when the right thing has been redefined out of existence. And then there’s Julian, the hypersled racer imported as propaganda, whose storyline is the strangest and most uncomfortable. Watching him try to adapt to a society that wants to own him, body and soul, is one of the book’s sharper threads.
The worldbuilding is the real engine here. Swan builds the Decurion Empire with the same methodical attention he brought to the Sovan Empire, but the tone is different. It’s colder, more claustrophobic, more recognisably drawn from the anxieties of our own moment. The fertility hierarchy, the ministries at war with each other, the constant threat of “accidents,” the way language itself becomes a tool of control: it’s all depressingly plausible. Several reviewers compared it to 1984, and they’re not wrong, but the book feels less like homage and more like someone updating the operating system of a familiar nightmare.
It’s not a fast book. The first third takes its time, and depending on your tolerance for oppressive atmospheres, it might feel like wading through fog. But once the three storylines begin to converge, the novel finds its rhythm. The political manoeuvring sharpens, the stakes widen, and Swan starts pulling threads together with the confidence of someone who knows exactly where he’s going. There’s a twist late in the book that genuinely lands, not because it’s shocking, but because it reframes the entire project in a way that feels earned.
What surprised me most was how hopeful the book manages to be without softening its edges. This is a story about people who have been shaped, broken, and disciplined by a system that wants them small. And yet the novel keeps returning to the idea that resistance doesn’t always look like rebellion; sometimes it looks like refusing to let the world tell you who you are. Katherine’s attempt to build something better (more democratic, more humane) is messy and naive and occasionally misguided, but it’s also the emotional centre of the book. Swan doesn’t pretend that building a society is easy. He just argues that it’s necessary.
It’s not perfect. The pacing drags early on. The dystopian elements occasionally lean too hard on familiar imagery. And the hypersled racing subplot, while thematically relevant, won’t work for everyone. But the book’s ambition, its clarity, and its willingness to take its characters seriously more than make up for the rough edges.
The book is big, bleak, thoughtful, and surprisingly humane. Swan’s best writing is still ahead of him, but this is the book where he proves he can build a world, break it, and still find something worth salvaging in the ruins.