A typographical mess of a book that tries hard to capture (and capitalize on) a fringe cultural phenomena—the lively underground anarchy of the Internet. Former Mondo 2000 editors and writers Sirius (a.k.a. Ken Goffman) and Jude (a.k.a. Judith Milhon), now contributors to Wired, smartly complain about their co-option by the mainstream, but their self-conscious posing ``on the edge'' just doesn't cut it in such a lame combination of tired wordplay, on-line lingo, and subcult ranting. Set in future, the assemblage of ephemeral computer high jinks here posits a crackdown on user freedom, an assault by the politically correct left and Christian right on the present-day wildness tolerated on the Net. Jude and Sirius become leaders in the ``virtual revolution,'' dedicated to protecting the right to encryption (disguising one's message in code) and thereby protecting free speech among hackers. Both authors supply their diary notes in support of ``the flatout spectacle of human perversity.'' But it's nothing more than the usual Acker-Burroughs nonsense about sex and drugs, fancying itself an ``anarcho Dada scrapbook.'' In fact, it's a collection of e-mail, TV transcripts, magazine clippings, wacky manifestos, and a lengthy correspondence with their editor—an oblivious dupe in the containment of the revolution. Using his rock-bank performance group, Mondo Vanilli, as a vanguard in the movement, Sirius confronts the forces of HADL, who promote the ``New Civility'' and refuse to tolerate on-line pedophiles. Sirius gleefully describes and endorses pirate media pranks and revolution by WEB. The various anarcho-punk-libertarian rants reprinted here are boilerplate in 'zine culture, and would benefit from editing, which seems to be a heresy if this sloppy compilation is any evidence—the tyranny of concision! Beware any cultural artifact that describes itself as ``post- ,'' though this certainly does seem the messy result of some sort of explosion.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-345-39216-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
A terrifying new storytelling experience that affirms, even in our darkest moments, that love conquers all.
A female big-rig driver crisscrosses America searching for signs of the wife everyone else thinks is dead.
This spooky third novel by Welcome to Night Vale creator Fink (It Devours!, 2017, etc.) is similarly based on an original podcast and offers a more threatening but equally personal take on the horror genre. Switching from the podcast’s intimate first-person narration, delivered with powerful emotion by actress Jasika Nicole, allows Fink to stretch out into the more remote corners of his mythos while delivering the same scary beats. The main character is Keisha Taylor, whose wife, Alice, disappeared while working for the mysterious Bay and Creek trucking company: “No cause of death. No body. No certainty. There was a disappearance, and after a long and increasingly hopeless search, the presumption of death.” Now Keisha has taken a job with the company as a long-haul driver, which thrusts her firmly into the eerie mythology at work here. Keisha is a fascinating character partially because one of her defining characteristics is chronic anxiety, and it’s a potent imperfection for a character who battles literal monsters on a regular basis. Along the way, Fink unveils the strange universe that swallowed Alice whole, revealing an underground war between two secret societies, time-bending oracles, and other Lovecraft-ian horrors. He also gives Keisha a charismatic ally in Sylvia Parker, a teen on the run who becomes her “anxiety bro,” and a bloodcurdling enemy in the macabre, twisted police officer who stalks her across the span of the country. But the book also tempers its terrors with everyday humanity, portraying the mundane joys of love, the rich fabric of the American countryside, and surreal “Why did the chicken cross the road?” jokes that are a hallmark of the podcast. By the time Keisha learns Alice's fate, readers will realize that this marvelous character is more than the sum of her faceless anxiety or her very real fears.
A terrifying new storytelling experience that affirms, even in our darkest moments, that love conquers all.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-284413-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It's a few thousand years from now, a time of widened horizons but all too familiar contours. The nine known worlds have joined in a sort of interstellar U.N.; the government of Urras has peacefully diverted its anarchists to a world of their own, Anarres, the moon; and now an Annaresti physicist named Shevek (cast in the mold of the ancient Terran Ainsetein) has formulated a theory that will dissolve the barrier of time, only to confront the confounding limitations of humanoid politics. This could so easily have been so bad — the Cold War opposition of Anarres and Urras, grimly heroic collectivity versus brilliant, corrupt high civilization, and these as seen by a character of such unmitigated nobility, who would be disruptive in any society in any case — it is amazing how Le Guin has lightened it up, made it all plausible, and not only that, restored the impact of her point, which is made late and glancingly. The novel flashes back and forth, before and after Shevek's historic trip to Urras, which ends centuries of segregation, and delicately develops both the strengths and weaknesses of the two social systems, the contrasting textures of two kinds of social experience. On Anarres Shevek was a frustrated "egoist"; on Urras he is an exploitable novelty. But in both worlds, there are relationships, and things done in certain ways, and objects firmly there to be seen; and Shevek, in the usual slot of naive-genius plot convenience and destined Charlton Heston vehicle, is a complete, fully active mentality. All through, this impresses with small but incalculably right choices which add up solidly and confirm Mrs. Le Guin as one of our finest projectionists of brave old and other worlds.
Pub Date: May 8, 1974
ISBN: 006051275X
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1974
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