A hostile city where bots roam, a world of allies but not friends, a land with the mysterious dark blue building and the letters to February: these are the elements that make up the podcast Universe City. This podcast is central to the story that is told in Radio Silence by Alice Oseman. The premise of this book is a simple one: a coming-of-age story that focuses on Frances Janvier, the intelligent head girl with Cambridge University ambitions who is obsessed with a podcast. It’s a coming-of-age story for the digital age, featuring vibrant characters and essential themes. Through the characters, themes, and excerpts of podcast episodes printed in the text, Alice Oseman masterfully weaves a stark picture of internet culture and what it’s like to be a teenager in the twenty-first century.
While the podcast is what carries the novel, the characters are what breathe life into it. To succinctly provide context, the synopsis is as follows: “Frances Janvier spends her time studying and making fan art for her favorite podcast, Universe City. Aled Last is known as a smart, quiet kid: no one knows that he’s also the creator of Universe City and goes by the name Radio Silence online. When Frances gets a message from Radio Silence asking if she’ll collaborate with him, everything changes. She and Aled spend an entire summer working together and becoming best friends.” But when Aled’s identity is revealed, everything that makes up Universe City—and their friendship—is put at risk. (Oseman). Frances and Aled are vivid characters, but more importantly, they are relatable. Readers who spent their late middle school and early high school years primarily online will find camaraderie with the socially anxious and introverted main characters featured in Radio Silence. Characters like Frances and Aled weren’t often main characters at the time this book was written in 2017. So to many people, this book was comforting, as they were finally able to relate to a main character and not just a side character. Furthermore, the phrase “friendship” in this synopsis is extremely important to pay attention to. There is a tendency by some unfortunate members of the population to taunt things like “are you suuuuure they don’t fall in love? are you reeeeaaaaalllllyyy sure?” Statements like this only exacerbate societal expectations of heteronormativity and invalidate people who enjoy platonic relationships. The author was extremely aware of this, and wanted to make their message clear right from the start that there would be no romance between Frances and Aled. One of the advertising phrases used for this book was a quote from early on in the novel that states; “You probably think that Aled Last and I are going to fall in love or something. Since he is a boy and I am a girl. I just wanted to say—we don’t.” (Oseman, 101). The author knows their audience. They were sick of the same old coming-of-age stories, the same old romances, and the lack of representation for people who genuinely are and always will be just friends—because why is that such a bad thing to be? This inspired the author to write Aled and Frances, two best friends who have bonded over their love of media and specifically their love of Universe City.
In addition to the characters, the themes explored in this book are some that many people see in coming-of-age literature, but some are never talked about. This book touches on so many different themes: fan culture, abuse, mental illness, priviledge, and family. However, some of the most central themes are LGBTQ+ identity and education. LGBTQ+ identity is explored through a multitude of characters in this novel, but especially Aled. There are several moments in which readers see other characters feeling confident about their sexuality—Frances discussing her crushes on both men and women, Aled’s sister Carys confidently talking about the girls she kissed—but Aled is the exception. While it’s made clear that Aled is in some way a part of the LGBTQ+ community, he is never given a particular label. This is important for readers because there are so many people—specifically so many teenagers—who question their sexuality, and sometimes might not end up with a specific word that fits. In addition to romantic attraction, Radio Silence casually includes asexuality in a way that very few books do. Oftentimes when there is a focus on LGBTQ+ identity in media, it’s a character who is gay. Not much time is allowed for anyone else, though there are so many more identities than just that. Oseman provides space in this novel for those who find themselves in non-traditional relationships and who don’t quite know how to explain how they feel to other people. Another facet of LGBTQ+ identity that is explored is that of gender identity. There are several lines that indicate that Aled might not be cisgender, most notably, it is entirely possible that the the character Radio Silence in the podcast Universe City, who is agender, is a manifestation of how Aled feels. This is highlighted when Aled says “‘The voice in my head is Radio’s voice.’” (Oseman, 171). Not only do the very vague physical descriptions of Radio match up to how Aled looks in real life, but since Aled is the creator and the entire show is very personal to him, it would make sense that Radio is just Aled in another world. The book ends with no actual conclusion, but that’s part of the message: it’s okay to not know. You can still enjoy living without having a specific label attached to who you are. Overall, this is why this is one theme explored in the book that can really resonate with so many people. Of course, one of the most important questions this book circles around is the question of university and education. Frances is head girl, she gets the best grades in the school every single year, and she is going to go to Cambridge University and she is going to be happy. At least, that’s what she keeps telling herself. The interesting thing about Frances is that she almost seems to be going in circles: when she realizes that she might not actually care that much about university, she second-guesses herself. One notable quote is “I thought I enjoyed all this [Universe City] stuff, but maybe I was an academic at heart after all.” (Oseman, 302). At this point in the novel, Frances has stopped caring so much about Universe City, and has only been focusing on academic work. Since she isn’t interested in the show as much as she used to be, she wonders if it’s because she’s just outgrowing it, or maybe it really was just a passing phase. Questions like these are questions that many teenagers and young adults will find themselves relating to. Ultimately, these themes are what makes this book truly relatable to so many people and what makes it stand out. Aled’s journey with university is different, not only because he is a year older than Frances and therefore already in university, but also because his journey is explored through Radio in Universe City.
The fictional podcast featured in this book is one of the key reasons that the novel succeeds. Narrated by the university student Radio Silence—a student who does not want to be there and spends most of their time just trying to make it to the next day—the podcast appears, on surface level, to be an entertaining sci-fi story. Listeners follow Radio’s adventures through weekly twenty minute episodes to find out who Radio will fight and who they will ally with. But, of course, the podcast is an allegory, and this is shown right in the title: Universe City. UniverseCity. University. One of the big elements that defines Aled’s story is that if you aren’t looking for the signs, you’d never see them. This is why the idea of Universe City being an allegory stands. The very first episode of this podcast features an anonymous student—who tells listeners to call them Radio Silence—sending out a distress call, stating “Things in Universe City are not what they seem.” (Oseman, 1). Radio laments that the City monitors all communications, and long-outdated radio equipment might be their last hope. Readers can take this to mean that Aled is sending out a distress call in a way that his mother will never find out about. Aled’s relationship with his mother is one of the more poignant elements of the novel. The idea of him hiding his desperate cries for help from the watchful gaze of the one adult who is supposed to protect him is a sobering thought, and sadly one that readers can see themselves in, even if it’s not as extreme as in Aled’s case. In a later episode, Radio states that “There are things in Universe City that you cannot possibly imagine out there in the real world, creeping around in the metallic dust. Monsters and demons and synthetic abominations. Every day you hear of the latest fatality—some poor loner wandering back from a lecture, a tired geek in the back corner of the library, a miserable young girl alone in her bed.” (Oseman, 78). Allegories can sometimes be used to dilute information that’s too strong or evidence that doesn’t fit in with the overall plot of the work as a whole. That is exactly how the allegory is functioning within these few lines. Universe City is a dangerous place, that is made very clear. But the last line about fatalities is the important one. For a moment, let’s look at who is being discussed: a “poor loner,” a “tired geek,” a “miserable young girl.” Now, let’s look at where they are: walking alone, sitting in a corner, solitary in her room. Paints a very striking picture, doesn’t it? Let’s remember that these are described as “fatalities,” and it becomes clear what Oseman is referring to here. Aled is a character who is determined to not ask anyone for help, in part because he feels like he can’t, and primarily because he has given up. We can see this behavior mirrored through Radio, when they state “I can take a little beating now and then, old sport, believe me. I’ve been in this City for as long as I can remember, it seems. This hardly qualifies as a distress call anymore—by gods, if anyone was listening, I would have heard from you by now. I can take a little beating now and then. I’m a tough one…I’ll never break.” (Oseman, 236-237). The phrase “if anyone was listening, I would have heard from you by now” is highly indicative of Aled’s/Radio’s mental state. They are so used to these conditions that they have stopped fighting and stopped asking for help. Their messages on the radio, which started as a distress call, can hardly even be considered that any longer. They are reassuring themselves that they don’t need help, that they will not crumble, that they are fine on their own. This idea is allegorized in an excerpt from a later episode, where Radio says “I can see you now. Having a right old laugh to yourselves while we’re here, slowly dying from the city fumes, being murdered in our sleep…Have you even been listening to anything I’ve been saying? You’re just the same as everyone I knew in the old world.” (Oseman, 297). Here, Radio contemptuously exemplifies the gravity of their situation. They state how they and their fellow students are “dying from the city fumes” and critiques listeners for not helping. Like stated earlier, many things about Aled and his life are only made visible if you look for them. No one would pay attention when an anonymous university student says “I don’t know…I’m getting a bit tired…I was thinking, actually—I mean, I had a thought…I was thinking…what if—what if we were to end this? Ha-ha, no, sorry, that’s a—that’s not—” (Oseman 335). At this point in the novel, Aled’s situation has drastically deteriorated, and so has his mental state, therefore elucidating the fact that he and Radio are one in the same. Radio starts a story, but then cuts it off by saying “it doesn’t matter” and then stating the above quote. This is what the throes of complete and utter hopelessness look like for Radio. Will someone ever save Radio from Universe City? Well, that’s a story for next season.
Comprehensively, Radio Silence is a triumph of a novel that showcases some incredible lingering messages. Through the characters, specifically Frances and Aled, readers are drawn in. Through the themes, the author explores many of the pains that come with getting older. Through Universe City, a broader connection is made to our modern society. The irony, of course, is that Universe City takes place in another world. But in other worlds we can see our own reflected: and it is these reflections that we take with us when we journey through our own universe.
Works Cited
Oseman, Alice. Radio Silence. HarperCollins, 2017.
