One of the 08 Clarke nominees, this, and now that I've read the entire shortlist I feel in a position to say: by far the worst book nominated, and one of the worst novels I've read in a long time. It's a messily put together near-future sort-of thriller in which the two-dimensional Nelson Millar and his consistently grating and annoying friend Raymond Chase (hyperactive and self-consciously wacky poet) get tangled up with 'Monad', an organisation that provides 'consumer modelling in virtual environments' and 'artificial intelligence in marketing scenarios' [46]. There are explosions and fires, secret plots, robots called 'Dr Easy' that work as psychologists aiding the police (they have spherical suede faces and mournful eyes, which would surely spook the jism out of anybody with whom they tried to interact), and the titular 'red men', virtual simulations of people who as-it-were haunt reality. Apart from that, and other occasional gestures in the direction of imagined technology (celluloid screens, a man with surgically attached porcine testicles and so on) the novel is set in a recognisable now North London.
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The blurb promises a thriller salted with 'the imminent technologies of tomorrow', but the novel delivers a very yesterday set of sf tropes: a pinch of Dick, a scattering of Gibson. Most notably. the central topic of the novel, the establishment of an entire virtual town of Red Men upon which marketing and other ideas can be tested, is a tired and belated retread of Fred Pohl's 1955 story 'The Tunnel Under the World' (from the collection Alternating Currents). The rest of the book reads like a sub-par episode of Nathan Barley, which is very far from being a recommendation: the protagonist works on a magazine called Drug Porn and mixes with people called things like 'Alex Drown', 'Harry Bravado' and 'Mr Blasebalk'. Some characters chatter in poorly satirised marketing talk ('Me2. Me Too. Yeah. There you go...' 'I'm not sure about the logo' [83]). The women talk like this: 'I've got a fantastic pair of tits, and sometimes men take them the wrong way' [47]. There are too many adolescent and wincingly bad patches of writing. One character is lying on the beach 'naked ... mildly aroused, his cock acted as the gnomon of a sundial, its shadow marking time on his belly' [126]. (Um...) An opium plant is described as possessing 'the provocative bulbous tip of a Martian phallus' [68], but the provocation is all in the writer's mind, and not in the least on the page. The whole is often clumsy and lumbering stuff, trying for shock and falling short. Old. Here's an example of would-be-comic writing.
It all started when Florence the poet asked if I wanted to come over for cunnilingus and pasta. I said 'what type of pasta?' She said 'fusilli'. I said 'I don't mind if I do.' [25]
It's almost as if the writer is willing his readership to mutter 'ho ho' in a deadpan voice. There is also some superweak satire of the corporate world.
The leaflets in the front desk in plastic holders with their inspiring verbs -- devise, pitch, propose -- he satirised thus; 'Nelson, let us imaginate together. Shall we join our colleagues and visionise the future?' [176]
The semicolon there is the author's own solecism. And can a near-future thriller really manage no better satirical bite than Dead Ringers' George W. impersonator? When de Abaitu lights on a notion he thinks good (calling neural drugs 'cogniceuticals', say) he can't let it go, but must flog it until life leaves its eyes: one character takes 'cogniceuticals' on p.121; then we have 'an emoticeutical inhaler' on the same page; then 'neuroceuticals' on p.122.
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Incidentally -- my previous sentence? That's how colons and semi-colons are used.
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The science bits of the science fiction are poorly worked: a minor character undergoes 'a cortical hack', which is accomplished by pushing a flashing 'device' into his mouth, of all places: 'the trick was to call up a disused memory and in the moment of its summoning slip a long line of code directly underneath it' [253].
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Eh?
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There are moments here and there of more promising writing; and some interesting thematic stuff about fire, conflagration, flames, redness and the like. De Abaitua also synthesises a great chunk of Gnostic stuff, which might interest you, or then again, might not; and there's a quantity of running about, if you like that sort of thing in a novel. But it all comes over as flabby; the whelm here very much on the under side. When near the end one character declares 'what a long, strange trip this has been!' [323] it does not feel like a sentiment that has been earned. 'What's the Latin for "unreal man"?' one character asks at once point: 'homo non verus? Homo Falsus? Homo Fictus?' [87] That last should perhaps be homo ficticius, 'artificial, feigned, non-genuine man'; although since it appears in a liber ficticius perhaps I shouldn't pick nits. What's the Latin for swine's-snout?
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