The New New Post Post Cyberpunk Bonanza

Makers
by Cory Doctorow
New York : Tor, 2009.

I have been hearing Cory Doctorow's name in various contexts for a few years, now. As a fan of cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk, how could I not have? Yet I never read his work until now. With no clue what to look for, I was happily surprised by Makers.

The book, which was serialized by Tor before its actual publication, bears the cute tag-line, "a Novel of the Whirlwind Changes to Come", and so it seems to be. beginning in a future so near you actually don't know it's not right now, the story follows an economic, technological and social trajectory into a future which wouldn't make half as much sense if you weren't right there to see it. The genius of the story is that, if you have any working knowledge of recent history, that's exactly how the last hundred-and-change years have gone. In some ways, Doctorow's future is more believable because of its retrospective qualities. Another side effect of the story's modern origin is the giddy hilarity that accompanies its creations; good satire hurts so good because of its dreadful familiarity. Makers achieves this with the same flair and foresighted hilarity of Bruce Sterling's Distraction, or William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.

Reading this book caused a litany of vocabulary words to create themselves in my head, a cluster of blog tags waiting to be born. Postmodern came up a lot, but then post-postmodern could equally apply. Ana-Randian, anarcho-libertarian, post-post-postfeminist, neorealist, techno-comedy, none of them necessarily apply, but all of them came from my instinctive need to create some simple descriptors for this literary equivalent of the portmanteau. Try it - you'll find yourself bathing in the salty waters of Doctorow's compelling ambiguity.

That said, I couldn't help but wonder about the suspiciously familiar main characters, and (perhaps not so strangely) self-referential philosophies of the "makers" whose lives are the center of the book. Many of the themes in Makers, including the use of Disney as a foil and example of dizzyingly vast corporate monstrocity, are reminiscent of Doctorow's other projects. Not that I mind. Neal Stephenson is my favorite author, and he does it all the time.

Sci-fi Review - Pandemonium

Daryl Gregory's debut novel, Pandemonium, is a fantastic mash-up of classic high-concept science fiction and pop-culture satire. By turns comic and introspective (and often both at once), the story explores the collective unconscious and the nature of the relationship between archetypes and the cultures that create them. Gregory's writing style is refreshingly current, witty and self-aware. He not only acknowledges, but includes his influences in the text itself, folding pioneers of speculative fiction like Philip K. Dick and A. E. Van Vogt into the story itself. The result is as unique as it is well-crafted.

The story takes place in a world suspiciously similar to our own, with one glaring difference - since the 1940's, people across the world have become victims of demonic possession. Innocent men, women and children are taken seemingly at random by a series of entities known only by their implacable actions and obsessions; the Truth stalks and kills liars, the Little Angel (always a little girl) walks the halls of hospitals, dispensing death with a kiss. Theories abound about what the demons really are, what they represent, and how best to deal with them.

Del Pierce was a boy when he was taken by the Hellion, an entity with a lethal case of ADHD. With love and patience, his family drove the demon out. Now it's back, and as an adult Del must search for a way to stop the demon before it takes complete control. With the help of an angry Irish nun, a Creature from a Black Lagoon and a pair of aging Jungian psychotherapists, Del goes on a quest both literally and figuratively to find a cure. Along the way he will find the source of himself and his demon counterpart, and be surprised by both.

Pandemonium makes a lot of unspoken promises. By incurring the name of Philip K. Dick (indeed, by making him a character), it is expected that this novel will test our basic assumptions about life and identity. It is also expected that we will find something new in its pages, and be kept guessing until the very end. Finally, with all of the pop-culture references, there ought to be some fresh reflections about the world we live in. Daryl Gregory delivers on all of these points, and the result is a highly pleasurable experience.