Dr. Adder

       

        Okay, finally, a book I don't have to discount on the basis of it being a great book with an absolute shambles of an ending. A book I can feel proud to recommend despite it being one of the sickest books I have had the pleasure (and it was a pleasure) of reading. And maybe that's the point, that it's influential for not only the science fiction genre and the underground element of "bizarre fiction", but that it's also influential for the extreme horror genre, since it features one of the best gruesome operatic revenge stories this side of Sweeney Todd, only with a casual eye towards the kind of brutal grotesquerie that only the works of less well-known weird fiction like Geek Love and Freaks 'Amour (among others) can provide. While the book's plot is something of a series of potshots in a dark room centered around the titular doctor and the young man who is his assistant, the images are strong ones overall and stuck with me well after finally closing the pages. Even if I didn't necessarily understand the climax. 

              For those willing to brave the bizarre and sometimes downright sick and depraved (all good things in my opinion) world of the Interface and its inhabitants, you will find a hell of a good read, and one of the most shining examples of American dystopian fiction. For those who want something with a little less military grade hallucinogens, dying alien gods, and prostitutes destroying their own brains with permanent and harmful drugs, then you should probably look elsewhere, or at least get this out of the library before making a decision to commit fully to this classic act of lovingly poetic depravity. 

More, as always, below.

Nymphomation

                        It astonishes me that Jeff Noon has flown under the radar in this country for this long. His bizarre mix of post-cyberpunk, bio-punk, and hallucinatory fantasy is certainly unconventional in places, but in a genre fiction market where we've obsessed over victorian fantasy, zombies, vampires, and gritty medieval political fantasy for far too long, a voice like Noon's could be a breath of fresh air. If, that was, it wasn't drowned out by louder, more well-known voices. With his work, Jeff Noon creates brightly-colored and unsettlingly dark worlds that just border on assaulting the senses with colors, smells, sounds, and tastes. He layers these on top of bizarre crime stories about things that don't exist yet, like an illegal trade in hallucinogenic dimension-bending feathers or trying to hack a national lottery using black magic and unorthodox math. The result is a disorienting mix of weird visuals, strange plotlines, and despicable characters that comes together in something incredibly readable. 

                      And Nymphomation is easily the most accessible of his books, barring his tripped-out short story collection Pixel Juice, a strange mix of experimental stories. Its lack of jargon, more sympathetic cast, focused plot, and a more conventional, grounded approach to plotting than his free-associative works like Vurt and Pollen. But more than being just "most accessible", it's a well-written introduction to one of genre fiction's most criminally underrated authors. It's an odd look at cyber-culture that barely sets foot online. And, above all else, it is brilliant. It's twisted, unsettling in places, and flat-out wrong at times, but I've never read nothing else like it. 

More, as always, below.

Ready Player One

 "I'm seeing flying ostriches now in my sleep!"

-Art3mis             

     The most important film critic of our generation, a Mr. Roger Ebert, once said that when he reviewed movies, he tried to look at each film from a specific viewpoint. He said the first thing he would always do is ask "Who is this movie for?" That he couldn't review a movie until he knew who the filmmaker was trying to reach, and that he would then work forward from there and review the movie on the merits it had from that perspective.

                  I have had my mild disagreements with Mr. Ebert in the past, but I'm reminded of Lewis Carroll's maxim about the broken clock being right at least twice a day. And in this statement, he outlines something kind of important to remember about criticism. Especially with Ready Player One. You see, Ernest Cline is pretty clearly writing for a specific audience with this book. And if you're not in the specific audience, well, it can kind of get annoying when the unending spiel of anime, TV, movie, and music references fills up the page like brand names in American Psycho...though perhaps that might be the point, a self-reflective look at "geek culture" and internet culture and all of the numerous things that go along with that. It's hard to exactly say whether it's a culture-geek power fantasy, or making fun of it, but if it's as earnest as it seems in the book, I hope Mr. Cline got all the pop-culture references out of his bloodstream before he decides to write another one. 

              That isn't to say it's a bad book. Cline knows his way around a sentence, clearly, and he has some sequences that definitely work. While it's a deeply flawed book, it's an amazing first novel and when Cline works all the kinks out of his writing, I'd definitely like to read more of what he wrote. And I admit that there were some moments that definitely surprised me. And, at its core, it's got a really human message about growing up and learning to live in the world, or at least to make a place somewhere for yourself and your friends and your loved ones. But in the end, the sheer crushing weight of pop-culture eventually drowns out any message or heart or humanity the book has in its noise which, satirical or not, is still noise. And while at times it's worth the slog, most of the time it isn't really.

But how can it be all those things? Well, read on...

One of Us

"Sorry. Ambient light projector." 

- God

                     I should have known a book by Michael Marshall Smith wouldn't play straight with its own premise. Walking into this, I was ready to talk about a book that was just some kind of dark, twisted Noir story about a man who deals in memories and dreams for a living. I was ready to tell you that this was a slow, brutal burner about things going slowly wrong for Hap Thompson as he tried to dig himself further and further out of a slowly-tightening net. And I was actually surprised. But the words of a friend of mine, one I'll call Greg for the time being, came to me. And while they're not exactly the way they're supposed to be, I'll paraphrase them here:

"What part of 'written by (Michael Marshall Smith) didn't you understand?*"

              It's honestly a mistake I've made before. I made it with Darren Shan when I read Hell's Horizon, a book that started as kind of straightforward (if there can be such a thing) noir and then plunged into sacrifice rituals, blind priests, torture, and lesbian sex. I made it with Joe Hill when NOS4A2 seemed like it was just going to be a Stephen King book written by Joe Hill, not a book by the same mad scientist who brought us Heart Shaped Box and Horns. And I made it again with One of Us. Because halfway through the book, most of the major mysteries are connected and explained. But their answers just lead to a bigger mystery. 

               And it is in this bigger mystery that One of Us finds its most compelling cases. And quite compelling it is. It's not as brutal and twisted as Spares, but it exists in a space all its own, a space where what's going on is never quite what's going on, and it's well worth the time and effort of tracking it down to read it.

Why? Well, read on...

Spares

          

"You're an idiot, Jack."

-Numerous characters throughout the work          

         The first time I read Spares, I felt like I'd been punched. I'd read what I thought was future noir before. Oh, yeah, I'd been down that road with the usual series of detective and cop novels, I'd read Neuromancer about three or four times at that point, and I proudly owned one of the few copies of Burning Chrome that seem to actually be in existence. But K.W. Jeter was right. It ain't noir unless someone-- possibly everyone-- is getting screwed over. The best ending any of these people can hope for is bittersweet, the best outcome they have is knowing that maybe-- maybe they did the right thing. And there have been a multitude of books that have tried to do what Spares accomplishes. But none have the viscera, the twisted nature, the just absolute sense of wrong that Michael Marshall Smith manages to hit with every single page, every single note, everything he could possibly think of. I've read extreme horror that's less gut-wrenching than Spares was.

Why?

                           Because much in the way last month's author, Peter Straub, got it, Michael Marshall Smith gets it. There's an air of uncertainty in Spares that isn't present in a lot of other works. It's one of the few books that actually makes it unsure if anyone wins. Even after the climax, I was left wondering exactly who'd come out ahead. But while it's bleak, there are small glimmers of good things here and there, and it's those few glimmers that kept me reading. It's not a ride I can recommend all the time, but it's a brilliantly-written book and deserves to be spoken of in the same tones we reserve for grandmasters of the genre. Especially because about a quarter of those men and women are more important than good. This is a book that's well worth the ride, and I hope people read it one of these days.

More, as always, below.