REVIEW

San Francisco Bay Guardian

Demons was a cult classic two years before its release from bigwig SF publishing house Del Rey, and that's exactly the kind of prescient, time-trippy thing you'd expect to happen to a John Shirley novel. Released in limited edition in 2000, Shirley's weirdly spiritual tale of a contemporary ironic-metaphor apocalypse was an instant hit among underground fans of dark fantasy. This new edition also includes a sequel to Demons called Undercurrent.

Shirley is hardly a fantasy writer, despite having penned über-Goth flick The Crow; as Demons proves, he's a kind of pop magic realist, mingling religious themes with flotsam from contemporary mass culture to create a vertiginous world where reports of demonic invasion come to you via the Internet. In Demons a very old-school, medieval-style apocalypse has struck contemporary America, and characters hide out from hideous, devilish monsters in their well-appointed condos. As our hero, a San Francisco artist, learns more about how the apocalypse came about -- and discovers the true meaning of an ISZ (industrial sacrifice zone) -- it becomes clear that Shirley has written that most anachronistic of stories: an allegory. And although it's an allegory for our time, full of creepy splendor and excitement, Shirley also reminds us that the 21st century's corporate emperors and industrial laborers are not unlike the lords and serfs of the Middle Ages. That was another historical era when a confused and bitter populace took solace in potent mystical allegories.

Demons is a brave and smart book. Read it if you dare. -- Annalee Newitz

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