Tom McCarthy and the Secret of New Modern Fiction

Just as all the events in Remainder develop from a déjà-vu, the plot of Men in Space revolves around the stolen icon painting. Nevertheless, the artwork is “more than a plot device – it is the intellectual pivot of the novel.” Indeed, the painting, just like all the “good” pieces of art, offers many possible interpretations. Nearly every character tries to interpret it, and it is through these interpretations that the novel itself can be decoded. Just like the protagonist of Remainder has the “scale models” of his re-enactments, the characters of Men in Space have this painting as a scale model of their world. Klàrà suggests as much in her professional analysis of the artwork: “Icons are cosmic maps. They conceive space metaphorically, as a series of levels leading into the world of the spirit”.

Therefore, in order to give an interpretation of some of the main themes of Men in Space, it is necessary to consider at least the three most relevant interpretations of the painting, made by the police agent, Klàrà and Helena.
As we have already said, it is the unnamed police agent who gives the first description of the artwork. He also gives his personal interpretation, which is obviously an unprofessional one, as he is not an art-expert like most of the other characters:

[…] what its action (if one can apply that term to such a static scene) most suggested to my mind was the transmission and reception of signals. The blocks to which the small men tended took on the character [...] of transmitters; the rough silver of the sky suggested a transmission medium, the bright gold around the floating figure’s head a zone of reception; the text, perhaps, depicted the transmission content – content which was as so often in our field of work, encrypted. The mountain were dotted with angular objects which protruded from them: these, to my mind, suggested aerials or antennae. This made sense: hills, mountains, outcroppings of rock and other such bodies adversely affect a signal, causing multi-path interference […]. (Tom McCarthy, "Men in Space")

The police agent is obsessed by transmission: even when he is seriously physically damaged by his receiving device, he does not stop using it. When he cannot contact any of his superiors and colleagues, and consequently cannot transmit anything anymore, he does not stop writing and recording everything he sees. Indeed, “he starts to identify with his surveillance equipment, feels himself a part of the transmissions and ‘interference’, continues to send his dispatches pointlessly into the ether”.