The Bookian » Cult

The Time Travelers Wife

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:49:17 +0000

Audrey Niffenegger is a truly wonderful writer, and can create highly psychological science fiction right up there along the lines of the most intense victorian mind-game plans. The Time Travelers Wife taxes the ability of a journalistic style but she pulls it off. Lo, the days of having to pseudoname yourself to be taken seriously as a woman writer must come to an end. This book is well worth the read. – reviewed by clock

Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle , The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch , Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , Ubik

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:39:17 +0000

Ecstasy! Jonathan Lethem is channeling philip k. dick in this upcoming volume for the Library of America (yes, it sounds like Voice of America.. and it was started with NEA seed money in 1982.. perhaps to fight the Great Threat of Russian Literature trying to Swamp Americas Patriotic Heritage), but who cares about that. These are four great novels. Particularly Ubik and the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Jonathan Lethem is a lucky guy, kinda like getting your name carved onto the replicas of tombstones of famous people made for tourists in Guyacanal, Uruguay. Walking up steep mountain paths and watching the children drink gasoline in the garbage dumps. Like proximity to God. Or, in the case of Palmer Eldritch, proximity to… whatever that thing is. With the teeth and the eye-slit. We dont usually review books that havent even been printed yet, in case dogs urinate on monuments to the successful sales of the book a billion years in the future on bleak planets surrounded by ghosts. The only downside is this book looks like it will be a hardcover with patriotic American colorstripes on it, and no lurid 1960 watercolors of dementia being zapped with rayguns. Plus 10 for content, but Minus 5 for style, ok, Zaphod? – reviewed by palmer Eldritch

The Solid Confessor: Science Fiction Classics

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:30:17 +0000

Ab.So.Lute.Ly. Demented. This book has awesome art and is crazy. If you open it like the I-Ching, and start reading anywhere, it says something demented. The back-copy marketing-goo says its like textual arcology, and yes. It is. As far as I have been able to figure out, its kind of like reading that early Russell Hoban book, Riddley Walker but with all the crazyness of William Burroughs, theory of the Strugatsky Brothers, science fiction Witkiewicz and Franz Kafkas The Castle plus I dont know, Marshall McLuhan, old sci-fi pulp magazine writing from Astounding Magazine… its like reading an economic textbook noir thriller biology textbook on panspermia with thomas pynchon on virtual philip k. dick drugs. I admit I havent finished it yet. Its too demented. Ive been lugging it around like the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy for reference whenever I encounter the world of the Straights. I give it Three Full Stigmata fresh from Palmer Eldritch.
—–
From the Publisher…
The anonymous cult classic of the early machine age “The Solid Confessor” has intrigued readers for over a decade: its literary dementia is akin to the best of 1960s Russian Science Fiction set within a gritty, distinctly American Beat literature perspective. Often compared to everything from Economic Genre fiction to Textual Arcology, “The Solid Confessor” continues to defy convention and easy definition: an apocalyptic, dense, horrific, hyper-referential document of the intrusion of information science upon the biologic, “The Solid Confessor” is in the end a documentary of dystopic technocracy. This edition, lavishly illustrated by Kjell Otterness and with a new forward by A.J. Specktowsky, brings our nightmares of a world dominated by science, technology and biological mutation out from the dark and into the present. Vol. VIII in the Machine-Humanist Library.

“Pynchon meets Rabelais with all the clarity of a Godel Proof.”
– Thomas Hubbard, NevYork Science Fiction Reports

“Burroughs on Bukowski. Double dip in Strugatsky, top with McLuhan.”
– Seth Morely, Delmak Herald Book Review – reviewed by William Burroughs

Vineland

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:19:17 +0000

This is an excellent book by Pynchon, in the true Steinbeck vein. Nobody has been able to put on paper a truer manifestation of life in California from the 60s to the 80s. Its the best of fictional politics insofar as politics are a fiction designed by people pretending to be non fiction. The writing is the most normal ive read of Pynchon, which is normally a drawback, but in this case the reversal makes it seem so much more true. The characters and the military industrial politico complex is described truthfully and factually. You may notice the preponderance of the word Truth here, and unlike Truthiness, it is used truely. True dat. Excellent. – reviewed by nsa cia fbi