EQUIMEDIAN

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.