A cleverly Borgesian, reality-distorting premise enlivens this tribute to Silver Age SF.
In Zinos-Amaro’s novel, a jaded SF fan deals with health problems, career frustrations, conspiracies, and alternate realities.
The story is set in a version of 1979 in which manned missions to Mars and moon bases exist, and decorative face tattoos are everywhere. Jason Velez subsists by installing virtual-reality interfaces but channels his passion into reading and collecting SF and joining fan societies. His failing eyesight and troubling dreams add to his general dissatisfaction, which is mainly shaped by the traumatic suicide of his brother 10 years before. Then Jason awakens to a slightly altered world where face tats never caught on, his friends have different relationships and memories, his brother died differently, and nobody has gone to Mars yet—but oddly, SF literature remains unchanged. One might think a speculative-fiction devotee would realize a parallel-universe plot was in progress, but it takes Jason a few more reality-leaps to sense a great conspiracy implicating his VR employer, a strange time-travel sect called the Progress Pilgrims, and a mysterious self-help organization called Equimedian. Philip K. Dick is mentioned, but not as much as expected, amid narrator Jason’s account of escalating paranoia and bewildered disquiet. SF shoutouts include such 1960s and ’70s cult favorites as James Tiptree Jr., Joanna Russ, Michael Moorcock, Daniel F. Galouye, Andrew J. Offutt, Jerry Sohl, Michael G. Coney, Joan Hunter Holly, and John Sladek, right down to paperback cover art and blurbs. Such references will certainly endear readers who’ve subscribed to Analog and Asimov’s Science Fiction, but those seeking salutes to Star Trek and Star Wars may be disappointed. Zinos-Amaro is a short-story writer and contributor to the SF journal Locus, and his odyssey through a fan’s angst provides a banquet for fellow fanatics, encompassing weekend conventions and even the role of imagination in the structure of the universe. Cerebral SF aficionados will appreciate lines such as “Science fiction lays waste to today by claiming undue influence over tomorrow,” although mundanes may not grok it.
A cleverly Borgesian, reality-distorting premise enlivens this tribute to Silver Age SF.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9798988082712
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Hex Publishers
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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