”This is the story of a murder. It hasn't happened yet. But it will. (It had better.) I know the murderer, I know the murderee. I know the time, I kno”This is the story of a murder. It hasn't happened yet. But it will. (It had better.) I know the murderer, I know the murderee. I know the time, I know the place. I know the motive (her motive) and I know the means. I know who will be the foil, the fool, the poor foal, also utterly destroyed. I couldn't stop them, I don't think, even if I wanted to. The girl will die. It's what she always wanted. You can't stop people, once they start. You can't stop people, once they start creating.
What a gift. This page is briefly stained by my tears of gratitude. Novelists don't usually have it so good, do they, when something real happens (something unified, dramatic, and pretty saleable), and they just write it down?”
Samson Young is an American novelist whose career has failed because he doesn’t have the imagination to make anything up. After coming to London as part of an apartment swap with a far more successful writer, Sam witnesses Nicola Smith throwing away her diaries and recovers them. What he finds is the story of a woman who has the ability to foresee the future and has become a professional man-eater in order to willingly follow the path that will lead to her murder. In order to bring about her demise Nicola begins playing mind games with a mild-mannered upper-class gent Guy Clinch, and Keith Talent, a thuggish petty criminal with dreams of being a professional dart player. Sam sees an opportunity to write the book he always dreamed of by documenting the events leading up to Nicola’s death, and all of this takes place with the millennium approaching and the world seemingly on the brink of political and environmental catastrophe.
Nobody writes despicable people like Martin Amis…
This is only the third book of his I’ve read (Money and Lionel Asbo: State of England being the other two.) but one thing that jumps out at me about all three is that Amis has this knack of creating these violent brutes and then making them somehow entertaining. London Fields is a prime example of this with the creation of one of the most vicious creatures I’ve ever read in fiction: Marmaduke Clinch, Guy’s infant son.
Oh, did you think I was going to say it was Keith Talent?
As an unrepentant cheat, drunk and abusive spouse Keith certainly wouldn’t be winning any prizes as London’s best citizen, but compared to Marmaduke Clinch, he’s a choir boy. Marmaduke’s reign of terror includes physical assault, property damage, sexual harassment, psychological warfare and self-inflicted injuries. And he’s not even 1 year old yet. Amis describes it like this:
”Marmaduke gave no pleasure to anyone except when he was asleep. When he was asleep, you could gaze down at him and thank the Lord that he wasn’t awake.”
But Marmaduke is just one dark joke being told in this story. As Amis works us through the lives and motives of Nicola, Guy and Keith as told by Sam writing the story and fretting about writing the story, the whole thing becomes a swirl of death and sex and creation and humor and schemes and secrets. There’s enough layers and themes here to keep a college campus full of English students writing essays for years so I’m not even going to try to figure out what it all means here. I’ll simply say that I was laughing for most of this book, but I noticed that my chuckles got more and more uneasy the closer I got to the end....more
Jon Grady is a brilliant but unconventional physicist who has just made a breakthrough involving the mA-HA! Now I know why we don’t have flying cars!
Jon Grady is a brilliant but unconventional physicist who has just made a breakthrough involving the manipulation of gravity that puts him in the same league as Newton and Einstein. Before he can share his discovery with the world, Grady and his work is snatched up by the Bureau of Technology Control. As they explain it to Grady, the BTC was started by the US government after the moon landings to regulate the influence of technology on the public.
It turns out that stuff like fusion reactors and a cure for cancer were created decades ago, but the BTC deemed them too disruptive to society so they’ve kept the knowledge to themselves. Now they’ve decided that Grady’s gravity invention has to be kept under wraps, but they want him to come work for them and figure out new applications that they can use.
Grady doesn’t believe that keeping scientific knowledge locked away from the public is right and refuses to cooperate. Unfortunately for him the BTC has a secret prison and decades worth of futuristic tech and research to help persuade him to their way of thinking. Even if Grady manages to somehow escape, how can he possibly hope to stop a powerful shadowy organization that is so much more advanced than the rest of the world?
Daniel Suarez thinks big, and it shows in this one. The plot of a secret group hoarding technology was an intriguing one, and then Suarez uses the concept to introduce a starship’s worth of gadgets and futuristic ideas. Even though this is a sci-fi conspiracy thriller the theme about controlling information makes it thought provoking beyond the gee-whiz tech. Plus, there is plenty of action that will make for mind blowing visuals if this ever gets adapted into a movie. Someone get Christopher Nolan on the phone!
Grady’s plight also makes him a very sympathetic character and gives you plenty of reasons to root for him to get revenge on the BTC. I don’t want to give away too much, but what he endures in the prison is one of the most terrifying and horrific depictions of all the ways a human being can suffer that I’ve ever read. Suarez never lets it seem exploitative or devolve into torture porn though.
While there’s a lot to love here I did find a few things lacking. The book opens with a long discussion about Grady’s gravity breakthrough and while interesting it’s also a little slow for the opening of a thriller. Suarez writes plainly, and all the characters and their motivations are laid out like engineering schematics. The dialogue can sometime seem straight out of a comic from the 1950s in a “I won’t let your evil plan succeed!” kind of way.
Also, the BTC is quickly established as the villain here, and I found it a little strange that Grady instantly dismisses their claims that unregulated tech could be extremely disruptive to society. Grady so completely believes that all information should be shared that he’s willing to suffer immensely for it. Yet he never once thinks about what something like a fusion reactor would do to the world’s economy or how some of this stuff could be weaponized in the wrong hands. There’s an interesting ethical argument to be had about where we should draw the line on sharing science, but Suarez bypasses it completely to make Grady the uncompromising hero and the BTC the completely wrong bad guys.
These are minor complaints about a story I enjoyed great deal. If you’re looking for a fast-paced thriller with some big sci-fi ideas, then pick up Influx before someone decides it’s too much information to share and locks it away.
I never realized this before but when the machines finally become self-aware and Skynet launches its attack on humanity, I’ve got the perfect place toI never realized this before but when the machines finally become self-aware and Skynet launches its attack on humanity, I’ve got the perfect place to hole up nearby. So while you all are being enslaved by robots, I’ll be safe in SubTropolis with a lifetime supply of liquor and books. Don’t bother knocking. I won’t let you in, and I’ll just turn up the music to drown out your screams.
I knew from Daniel Suarez’s previous books, Daemon and Freedom (TM), that he gives good techno-thriller with some very cool ideas, and he continues that in this story where America’s use of remote controlled drones comes back to bite us in the ass when someone develops their own private air force of pilot-less aircraft and starts using them against targets on U.S. soil. Even scarier, these aren’t just remote controlled killing machines, someone is starting to use software and tech to allow them to act autonomously.
A shadowy special forces operative who leads a covert team and has a pair of trained ravens saves a female scientist who studies behavior patterns in ants when she’s targeted by the mysterious enemy. (Just go with it.) As they desperately try to track the increasingly sophisticated drones back to their source, a campaign is being mounted to scare the American public into drastic measures.
This could have been just sci-fi with a Tom Clancy twist, but Suarez does an exceptionally nice job of looking at what’s possible with today’s technology and then comes up with some terrifyingly plausible thoughts on what comes next. I also liked a sub-plot involving a couple of PR experts who use a variety of methods involving both mass and social media to herd the public into the direction they want it to go. (Enjoy this election year, my fellow cattle!)
While the characters are pretty much thriller archetypes, they’re relatable enough, and the action is fast and furious. If you’re looking for something that will make you think while getting your pulse rate up, this will fill the bill nicely....more
I originally gave this book 3 stars as harmless lightweight fun, but my opinion of it declined as time went by. Then after reading Armada I fully realI originally gave this book 3 stars as harmless lightweight fun, but my opinion of it declined as time went by. Then after reading Armada I fully realized what a talentless one-trick hack that Cline really is so I changed this rating. Plus, his outraged hardcore fans kept coming on here and telling me that I missed the point since I didn't give it 5 stars so I might as well give them something to really be mad about. If you're one of those Cline fans who wants to whine about it in the comments I will just delete it and block you.
Adventures in Time Mowing
After my laptop fused to my lawn mower due to a freak lightning strike, I discovered that I could use it to travel through time.
“Wow, where’d you come from?”
“I’m from 2011. Got a time mower and decided to come to the future. I’ll spare you the full origin story. My name’s Kemper.”
“I’m Wade Watts. Welcome to 2044.”
“Thanks. I gotta say, things are looking kind of grim around here. Are those mobile homes stacked up like hillbilly skyscrapers?”
“Yeah, I live in one of them. We’ve had a lot of problems once the cheap fossil fuels started running out. Life kinda sucks ass these days. Fortunately, we’ve got the OASIS.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s this virtual reality that’s kind of a combination of the Internet and the biggest MMORPG ever made. Here put this on, and I’ll show you.”
“Hey, this is pretty sweet, Wade. But what’s with all this old stuff here in your virtual room. It looks like the ‘80s vomited in here.”
“Oh, it’s part of my research for the contest. See the guy who invented the OASIS was this old nerd named James Halliday. He left an Easter egg hidden somewhere in the OASIS and whoever finds it wins the prize. He was totally obsessed with the ‘80s and nerdly stuff like computers, sci-fi, cartoons, movies, comics and video games. He left three keys to three gates hidden in here, and the clues have to be stuff that he loved. So a lot of people like me have to know all about the '80s to hunt for the egg."
“How long has this been going on?”
“For years now. Nobody has found the first key yet.”
“And you what? Watch movies from the ‘80s? Listen to the music? Read his favorite books? Play old video games?”
“It‘s even bigger than that. Because of the contest, the entire world is obsessed with the ‘80s. The clothes and hairstyles are considered cool again.”
“Really? Well, I gotta get the hell out of here then. Thanks for showing me this, Wade. How do I log out?”
“You’re leaving already? Don’t you want to…Oh, my god! You said you were from 2011? And you’re in your 40s, right?”
“Well, just barely…”
“So you actually lived through the ‘80s?”
“Afraid so. High school class of 1988.”
“That’s awesome! You gotta tell me all about it, Kemper.”
“Kid, why would you want to hear about that? You’re sitting here with enough computer power to download everything from the collected works of Shakespeare to the entire run of The Wire and you want to hear about the ’80s? Just for a contest?”
“I love the ’80s. It was the coolest time ever!”
“Uh, not really. In fact, I think the ’90s beat the shit out of them. That not worrying about the Cold War thing was a relief and the music was a lot better. Plus we got to wear flannel. That was fun.”
“But… you got to play the old video games in the actual arcades, and you saw the first generation of home computers come out. Plus, music videos and John Hughes movies and Rubik’s Cubes and Michael Jackson’s Thriller album and….”
“Yeah, Wade. I lived through it all. I remember when MTV played music videos and when Eddie Murphy was funny. But you’re making me sad, kid.”
“Why?”
“Lemme tell you a story, Wade. About ten years after I got out of high school, an old buddy I had stayed in touch with had a birthday bash and invited a bunch of us that used to run around together. So we’re at his house drinking and playing cards just like the old days and catching up and playing ‘Remember when?”. It was a lot of fun, but we’d been listening to hair metal and classic rock all night, and at one point, I was flipping through the CD’s.”
“Actual CD’s! Not downloads?”
“Hell, I’m so old even my post-high school stories are dated now. Yes, Wade, real CD’s. Anyhow, I found a new Foo Fighters album, and I put it in. And this one guy made a face and asked me why I had taken the Guns-n-Roses out. And I said something like the nostalgia had been fun but I needed something from that decade. Being completely serious he said that he didn’t know how I could listen to that stuff, and that he still listened to the same exact music we did in high school. He had just replaced his old cassettes with CD’s. The guy had completely managed to miss grunge and was perfectly happy with the same play list in 1998 that he’d been listening to in 1988. And that was one of the saddest things I ever heard, Wade.”
“But maybe he just really liked that stuff.”
“I liked it too, once upon a time. And I can still belt out a pretty good version of Relax when Frankie Goes to Hollywood comes on the radio, but it was a certain time and place. Now it’s done. I find it depressing that someone of Gen X would want to be stuck there and never moved on to anything new. But it got worse after that, Wade. Because we got older and then the media started catering to us by going for nostalgia trips on everything from trying to remake the Knight Rider TV show to shitty movies like The Transformers and G.I. Joe to the goddamn Smurfs. I’m tired of it in 2011, Wade. I don’t want a new Indiana Jones movie, I want the NEXT Indiana Jones. But no one is working on that because all of us got obsessed with regurgitating our childhoods over and over.”
“That is kind of sad, Kemper.”
“What’s even sadder is seeing it happen to a generation that didn’t even live through it. When I was a teenager, I got sick to death of baby boomer nostalgia and there’d be these kids my age who tried to be like damn dirty hippies by wearing tie-dye shirts and going to listen to Grateful Dead tribute bands. They were nostalgic for an era that wasn’t even theirs, and I always thought it was a waste. Don’t be like that, Wade. You seem like a nice kid. Don’t sit here watching Family Ties reruns and playing Space Invaders and making jokes about Ewoks. That was then. This is now. It’s your time and you should be out there trying to find the stuff that will become part of your own memories of growing up, not rehashing ours.”
“Gee, Kemper. That’s a really good point. You’ve opened my eyes. Thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome, Wade. By the way, what the hell was this prize that was so good that it got the entire world doing the safety dance again?”
“Oh, the winner gets the controlling interest in Halliday’s company and his personal fortune which is about $240 billion dollars.”
“Did you say $240 billion? Dollars?”
“Yes, so how about we log off. Maybe I’ll take a walk and see if I can find this girl I like. I’ve been…”
“Screw that. Fire this rig up, Wade. Put on some Def Leppard and find me a pair of acid washed jeans and some high top Reeboks. Let’s start looking for clues. For $240 billion I’ll live through the ‘80s again.”
I didn’t actually hate this book. It did a lot of very clever stuff regarding an entire virtual universe. And for a member of Gen X, it was a fast and fun romp down memory lane. It was kind of like Snow Crash meets the Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World movie.
But I’ve got a personal pet peeve against people trying to live in the past and since this book is nostalgia porn*, the basic premise did rub me the wrong way. The idea that the kids of the 2040s are just watching episodes of ‘80s TV shows and playing Donkey Kong really kind of depressed me.
*I stole that phrase from Flannery’s review. Sorry, Flannery! It was just too good.
I might have been able to get past it a little easier if at least one of the kids said something like, “Jesus, I hate this ‘80s bullshit. I can’t wait until his freakin’ contest is over so I can live in the here and now.” But instead all of them treat it like it’s the greatest entertainment ever. So even though a few post ’80s things like Firefly or the Lord of the Rings movies get mentioned, we’re supposed to believe that nerd pop culture reached a zenith in the ’80s and nothing worth geek obsession happened between 1990 and 2040? Sorry, but that seems kind of unlikely and the kind of wishful thinking that an aging Gen Xer would write as he pines for his glory days....more
Warning! The following review contains humor. If you read it and actually think that I'm being critical of Huxley, try reading it again. (Here's a hinWarning! The following review contains humor. If you read it and actually think that I'm being critical of Huxley, try reading it again. (Here's a hint. Look for the irony of the italicized parts when compared to the previous statements.) If you post a comment that asserts that I'm wrong/ stupid/ crazy for this and/or try to lecture me on all the points you think I missed then I'm going to assume that you read it literally, missed the joke, didn't read the other comments where I've already answered this about a dozen times, and I will delete your post.
I have to apologize for this review. The concept of this book was so outlandish that I think it made my mind wander, and you may find some odd random thoughts scattered in it.
Anyhow, this book was so silly and unrealistic. Like any of this could happen. In the far future the babies are genetically engineered and designed for certain stations in life with a large workforce bred to be happy with menial jobs that don’t stress them physically or mentally. I really should look into getting that data entry position I saw in the job postings. It’d be a lot less stressful than what I‘m doing now.
In addition to all the genetic modifications, the children are raised by the state, and words like ’father’ and ’mother’ are considered obscenities. Subliminal messaging through infancy and childhood also condition people to repeat idiotic platitudes as if they are genuine wisdom. I’ve been in a bad mood today. I need to turn that frown upside down. And since the world economy depends on constant consumption by the highest classes, they’re encouraged to be wasteful The collars on a couple of my shirts are a little frayed. I should go buy some new ones and throw the old ones out. and to engage in activities that demand spending and resource use. Should I get a new set of golf clubs? I lost my old ones when we moved, but I hadn’t played in a long time. But would I play more if I got new clubs? There‘s that really nice looking course right down the street. I don‘t know how they keep the grass that green in this heat. The population even gets to zip around in their own private helicopters rather than cars. Man, when are they going to come out with jet packs for everyone. It’s 2011 and I’m still driving around in a car like a chump. I want my jet pack!
Casual sex is actively encouraged. Wow. These condom commercials on TV have gotten really racy. The population is also programmed to be constantly partaking of some form of entertainment and to never just sit quietly and think I’m bored. Writing is boring. or to be alone Let’s check Facebook and see what all my friends are doing.
One of the sillier ideas is that the foundation of this society is Henry Ford’s assembly lines and that Ford has become the most revered figure in history. Like a businessman could ever become that popular. Is Steve Jobs making any announcements this week? I get itchy when there‘s no new Apple products.
While everyone seeks to be constantly entertained, all of the entertainment panders to the lowest common denominator. Hey, Jersey Shore is on! and the emphasis is on presenting it with gimmicks to engage the audience like ’the feelies’, movies that the audience can also smell and feel the sensation from. I wonder if they’ll re-release Avatar at the movies so I can see it in 3D again like James Cameron intended? At one point, a character complains about the feelies, “But they’re told by an idiot….works of art out of practically nothing but pure sensation.” I should go see that new Michael Bay Transformers movie.
Perhaps the most far fetched idea in this is that the population has been trained to sedate themselves with a drug called soma that relives any potential anxieties and keeps people from thinking about anything upsetting. I want a beer.
I guess this Huxley guy might have gotten lucky and predicted a few things, but he was way off base about where society was going. ...more
We have taken your family hostage. If you want to see them alive again, immediately write a dystopian novel that incorporates the folDear Dan Simmons,
We have taken your family hostage. If you want to see them alive again, immediately write a dystopian novel that incorporates the following ideas:
1) The election of Obama in 2008 triggers a wave of socialist entitlement programs that bankrupts the United States. Be sure to repeatedly point out that the debt run up by the liberals is the key factor in this. Do NOT mention that Bill Clinton‘s administration paid off a huge national debt that had increased dramatically during the Reagan and Bush Sr. years or that a surplus once again became massive debt during George W. Bush‘s two terms.
2) 75% of the US population does NOT pay taxes, but is entitled to expanded benefits like retiring at 50 with full Social Security benefits. Do NOT point out that it’s usually the Democrats who are accused of wanting more taxes or that current conventional wisdom regarding Social Security is that the retirement age will be raised, not lowered.
2) Muslim extremists now rule most of the world because Obama and the liberals appeased them at every turn. Do NOT mention the so-called Arab Spring or how Obama ordered a SEAL team to appease Osama bin Ladin.
3) The US has lost several states to secession and the southwest has been captured by militarized Mexican gangs.
4) Global warming was proven to be a myth. That’s it. Just say that.
5) The US wasted the last of its money researching worthless green technologies. All the cars are now electric pieces of shit with extremely limited range. Make sure that at some point the hero pins all his hopes of escape on obtaining a V8 muscle car and that his idea is inspired by Mad Max and The Road Warrior. Do NOT point out that a huge expansion of power by countries promoting radical Islam would probably have to be financed by oil production.
6) Right wing radio commenters have been banned and broadcast as pirate radio stations while the state sponsored NPR is the official news channel. Do NOT mention Fox News at any point.
7) The liberals stripped the US military of its nuclear arms and funding. However, the military is now farmed out as a mercenary army to raise cash. If the army was gutted, why would anyone hire it as a mercenary force? Do NOT raise that question.
8) Be sure that there is a character who is an aging academic who is realizing that his type of well-meaning but fuzzy headed liberal thinking was the reason the world has gone to hell.
9) Japan now effectively controls the US.
10) Texas is an independent republic that is the last bastion of real American ideals like keeping most of what you earn to pay for your own health care. Wait. Didn’t we say that we wanted you to have most of the old US paying no taxes and that was part of the downfall? Oh, well. Write it up like that anyhow. No one will notice.
You may incorporate whatever sci-fi elements you feel necessary to entice your usual readers. We suggest a drug that most of the country is addicted to that allows users to relive their favorite memories over and over. Also, mystery stories are popular so incorporate some kind of plot with a detective. Perhaps a former cop who is now addicted to this drug after the death of his wife? We leave those details up to you so that you can get your fans to read this political manifesto.
Once this book is published, we will release your family unharmed.
I’ve always wished that I had the engineering knack so I could invent something like a robot that does laundry or flying cars or something cool like tI’ve always wished that I had the engineering knack so I could invent something like a robot that does laundry or flying cars or something cool like that. Hell, I’d be tickled if I could figure out something fun like dropping Mentos into Diet Coke. After reading this book, I’m kind of glad to be technically challenged because it seems like there’d be a dark side to being that kind of guy.
This realistic sci-fi story takes place in the near future where economic woes have left corporations as shells of their former selves. When a rich entrepreneur comes up with a plan to finance smart people who use all the leftover tech laying around after a generation of poor sales to come up with off-the-wall ideas, a new economic model called New Work is invented. The concept revolves around coming up with an idea that can be generated for a relatively small costs thanks to cheap production methods available via new ‘printers’ that can be programmed to manufacture materials, selling the product until cheap knock-offs take the profit out of it, and then coming up with a great new idea.
Lester and Perry are two good-natured and talented geeks who do things like scavenge microprocessors from discarded toys to build small robots, and they quickly become the poster boys for New Work thanks to the blogging of a business journalist. Despite coming up with great ideas and making some money for their investors, New Work doesn’t last, and years later, Lester and Perry have built a museum/tribute/theme ride to the New Work revolution. When their ad hoc concept becomes an underground phenomenon, a rogue executive from Disney becomes frightened that the guys have hit a new type of amusement park ride that could threaten the Mouse House, and he starts taking drastic action to shut it down.
On the surface, this could have been just another story about brilliant underground types fighting an evil corporation, but it isn’t that simple. Lester and Perry have their own problems in trying to reconcile their simple desire to just build cool things to the business demands placed on them by their own successes. And the story points out that if you want to do something big, whatever system you build to make it happen will almost invariably become some type of corporate infrastructure. Plus, when people start believing in what you’re doing and try to help build on it, what kind of responsibility does that put on the creators?
In the end, even two good guys who just want to cobble together stuff in their workshop will find that the demands of what they create will test their own convictions and their friendship, and they’ll learn that the ideas and the building are the easy part compared to dealing with what you do with what you’ve made.
This was a great concept, and it was interesting to read a sci-fi book that was mainly about speculating about where business and the economics of the easy and cheap availability of high tech gadgets is going to take us, but done in a story that was very relatable....more
I should have hated this book. 1079 pages of small text with loooooonnnnggggg paragraphs and little white space so it feels like you’re reading a newsI should have hated this book. 1079 pages of small text with loooooonnnnggggg paragraphs and little white space so it feels like you’re reading a newspaper from 1881. Plus, 96 goddamn pages of endnotes. *1 The plot, such as it is, doesn’t really come into focus until several hundred pages into it, and even though it’s set in the near future where something very strange has happened in North America, this doesn’t get explained until about mid-way through the book so you’re left feeling confused and bewildered a lot of the time.
There’s an almost endless cast of characters. Long sections of the book have detailed descriptions of things that don’t seem crucial to the plot. *2 And then there’s the fact you have to use two bookmarks because you’re constantly going back to the endnotes. *3 Some of the endnotes contain long wandering passages that also don’t seem relevant to anything. *4
The ending isn’t very satisfying. *5 The main plot point about the search for a cartridge of ‘entertainment’ so good that it will literally make anyone who sees it immediately stop living their live and stay in front of the television until they die because they’ll refuse to do anything but watch it, including eating, drinking, using the toilet, etc. *6, isn’t given much resolution, either. The book just kind of stops, and you have the distinct impression that DFW could have done another 1000 pages or so without breaking a sweat if he hadn’t eventually eliminated his own map. *7
So after all that, why was my first instinct after finishing it to go back and immediately start re-reading it? *8
I was completely engrossed when I was reading this book. No matter what weird detours it took, I was more than happy to just keep turning pages like one of those poor suckers who got snared by The Entertainment. If this book was endless *9, I probably would have spent my life cheerfully reading it and then asked for a copy on my deathbed just to try and squeeze a few more pages in.
I’m not sure why I liked it so much. In fact, the way this book got into my head gives me a slight case of the howling fantods *10 Considering it’s a book that deals a lot with obsession, this is more than a little unsettling.
I’m sure someone with an English degree could spend the rest of their life trying to deconstruct this book, but I don’t have the intelligence, skill or patience to even try. Wallace did something unique and crazy with this, and he had the talent to make it work. I don’t know how, and I think that figuring it out might be like when you learn how a magic trick was done so I’m just going to shelve it, always be glad that I took it on and managed to finish it, and re-read it someday once the memory of the endless pages of endnotes has faded. * 11
Oh, and I would have given it 5 stars, but you know, the endnote thing… *12
*1 - Yes, 96 goddamn pages.
*2 - I now know way more about tennis drills and Alcoholics Anonymous than I ever really wanted to learn.
*3 - Seriously, there are 388 endnotes in this freaking thing.
*4 - There’s an 8 page filmography listing all the movies that were supposed to have been made by one of the characters.
*5 - Somebody email me and explain what the hell happened.
*6 - The closest comparison would probably be a really kick-ass episode of The Wire or Battlestar Galactica.
*7 - ‘Eliminating maps’ is a slang phrase from the book meaning to either kill someone or kill yourself.
*8 - I didn’t. Mainly because I couldn’t bear the thought of dealing with the endnotes again.
*9 - And DFW did his best to make it that way…
*10 - ‘Howling fantods’ is another slang term from the book that means to get creeped out. E.g. Seeing Michael Jackson’s horrifically surgically altered face on magazine covers after his death gave me the howling fantods.
*11 - Some of the endnotes are so long that they have their own endnotes. That’s just messed up.
*12 - I’m not kidding. They are completely out of control. ...more
I used to wonder how Phillip K. Dick came up with all the trippy concepts in his stories until I read A Scanner Darkly. That’s when I realized that thI used to wonder how Phillip K. Dick came up with all the trippy concepts in his stories until I read A Scanner Darkly. That’s when I realized that the drugs probably had a lot to do with it.
Originally published in 1977 and set in the mid ‘90s, the book tells the story of Bob Arctor. Arctor appears to be just another burned out druggie who lives with a couple of other dopers, and they spend most of their time getting high on Substance D and assorted other drugs. Bob is actually an undercover narc for the Orange County CA sheriff’s department, and in the future, the cops undercover are in so deep that even their bosses don’t know who they really are. Arctor wears a special scramble suit that blurs his features and voice when reporting to his boss Hank, who also wears a scramble suit to conceal his identity.
Bob has been trying to buy bigger quantities of Substance D from Donna, a spacey hash addict, so that he can work his way to the source, but he’s actually fallen in love with her even though she refuses to sleep with him. He gets a tricky new assignment when Hank orders him to start keeping tabs on a new target; Bob Arctor.
Since he can’t reveal his identity, Arctor has to play out the fiction that he’s investigating himself, but his brains have gotten so slushed from Substance D that he’s having a hard time keeping track of who he actually is.
Bob’s increasing confusion about identity and reality is the kind of theme that Dick specialized in, and Bob’s progressive meltdown is some of my favorite writing he did regarding that. However, while this has a thin veneer of sci-fi over it with the story being set in what was the near future, it‘s actually a chillingly realistic look at drug abuse. Dick spent a couple of years in the early ’70s where he ran with the Just Say Yes! crowd, and this book is a semi-autobiographical account of that time.
Where it really shines is in its portrayal of the drug culture with long sections dedicated to things like an addict who begins seeing bugs everywhere or a botched suicide attempt that turns into a psychedelic eternity of recrimination for past sins. The long rambling conversations with Bob and his fellow druggies are darkly hilarious in that they show a kind of weird creativity while also being completely devoid of logic and apt to go in paranoid directions. For example, a problem with a car eventually leads to their certainty that the cops have planted drugs in the house and that the only solution is to sell the place.
Dick does a masterful job of showing how people could end up living in a perpetual haze while ignoring the long term damage being done even as they see their own friends die or get turned into little more than vegetables by their own behavior. As he puts it, their sin was in wanting to play all the time but the penalty was far harsher than they deserved.
On a side note, I also loved the movie version of this done by Richard Linklater that featured a hand drawn rotoscope process over filmed scenes to give it a feeling of realistic unreality. Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson give great performances as Bob’s druggie housemates, and Keanu Reeves was born to play the brain fried Arctor. ...more
This is the story of a small town hell raiser named Buster ’Rant’ Casey who did some slightly unusual things when he was growing up like collecting buThis is the story of a small town hell raiser named Buster ’Rant’ Casey who did some slightly unusual things when he was growing up like collecting bucketfuls of his classmate’s teeth. Young Rant also angers more animals than Steve Irwin so that they’ll bite him and infect him with rabies which he deliberately spreads to his class mates. After he grows up and moves to the city, Rant joins a disenfranchised part of society forced by law to stay in their homes during the day and who get their kicks by crashing cars into each other. After his spectacular fiery death, the government labels him a bio-terrorist who unleashed a deadly outbreak of rabies while others claim that Rant may have had a larger destiny than anyone can imagine.
And that’s not even the weirdest or most twisted part of the story…
This is my second favorite Chuck Palahniuk novel after Fight Club. Rant’s story is told as an oral history by a variety of friends and enemies. The mishmash of weird anecdotes about a guy who seems to be completely fucked in the head eventually coalesce into a wild narrative that almost makes an audible click as the story starts locking together.
Like all of Chuck P.’s books, it’s disturbing and gory and gross and funny and definitely not for the faint of heart or easily offended. As soon as I finished it the first time a few years ago, I knew I’d come back to it again because this is one of those story where knowing the ending gives you a whole different spin on things your second time through. ...more
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