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TWO by JEFF VANDERMEER:
CITY OF SAINTS & MADMEN (May 2002)
VENISS UNDERGROUND (April 2003)
In Part Two, the narrator is Nicola who speaks in second person. Nicola is a programmer
who works "manipulating reality into new configurations" with 50 to 100 year-old technologies,
the remnants of a now reined-in AI system that once ruled the city. Barbarism is just
beyond the metaphorical gates and what order still exists is due to such programmers
who literally keep the trains running on time. The below ground levels are completely
lost, above ground level split into districts governed by numerous authorities.
But VENISS UNDERGROUND is, above all, about its characters, not the sociology
of a dying civilization or the hardware of its science. Above all, we learn more
about Nicholas, who has disappeared. More about Nicola, who seeks her brother,
and more of her past relationship with Shadrach, who loves her. We also realize
that humanity is threatened by bioengineering much closer to doom than we (or it) had assumed.
Shadrach's viewpoint, in third person, finishes out the story. Nicola has, like Persephone,
been taken to the underworld, but there is no Demeter to free her.
Instead, Shadrach must descend into that world -- like Orpheus after Eurydice --
in order to save her. The lower levels are indeed a hell. Visually (and it's a
very visual book, the fifth level should be portrayed by Alan M. Clark in Pain
Doctors of Suture Self General mode and only Hieronymus Bosch himself could
portray the lowest level of the underground. Dante couldn't handle it,
even with the parachutes used to efficiently descend through the levels.
Ultimately, VENISS UNDERGROUND is a love story that is more gruesome fairy
tale and fantastic allegory than it is science fiction. VanderMeer's vivid prose
flows with literary allusion: cyberpunk, the Wizard of Oz, Alice through the looking glass;
the use of James Thurber's Gollux is particularly clever and one can see Quin as parallel
to his Duke of Coffin Castle -- terrifying and powerful, but also pitiable and helpless.
But instead of a castle, there's rotting hulk of a leviathan full of chaos and traitors
to order. Are we walking into the jaws of a monster or are we to be reminded of Thomas Hobbes'
"Leviathan": Non est potestas Super Terram quae Compatetur ei? (Job 41:24)
Probably both, because there's an underlying metaphor of systems failing here as well.
Will amajor US publisher buy this book? If not, it's indicative of how the
main body of sf (and fantasy for that matter) has gone back to being just
another plastic-covered Sears sofa, much as it was in the seventies.
(Hope you know who I'm paraphrasing.) VENISS UNDERGROUND is highly accessible,
entertaining, yet thoughtful fiction that would appeal to a broad array of readers.
And there are no squid -- although you'll never again consider meerkats as cute little critters. -- Paula Guran (DarkEcho 03.20.03>
Copyright © 2003 Paula Guran. All Rights Reserved. |
Many of us feel that once VanderMeer gets over his squid fixation,
he'll amount to something as a writer, but if we go on too much about
how brilliant he is he'll never move on. Since this volume has already
appeared on a number of "best of 2002" lists and been hailed by others
you should already KNOW to read it. However, I did want to point out
that there are two editions. One is a Wildside trade paperback that
consists (I think, I haven't seen it) of the text of the four
infamously entertaining Ambergris novellas
("Dradin, In Love," "Hogbottom Guide to Ambergris,"
"The Transformation of Martin Lake," and "Strange Case of X")
and costs only $15 bucks American. The hardcover (the one I have)
costs $25 more but has another book's worth of wacked-out material
(including an encrypted story) and a lot of fancy-pants design and
illustration. (Due to this d & i, it's hard to say exactly how many
pages the book has unless you have at least fourth grade math skills
and time on your hands. I have neither, but it looks to be more than 400 pages.)
Thus it is a Real Value. It is also a Good Choice to take into your home bunker
as it will fill many hallucinatory hours with snorts and giggles,
hours that would have otherwise been spent untangling duct tape or
counting your canned goods. -- Paula Guran (DarkEcho 03.20.03>
VENISS UNDERGROUND starts in first person with Nicholas, an artist of the far-future
(somewhere beyond the 27th century) city of Veniss. In "slang jockey" jargon he sketches a
society -- ruined by pollution and disorder -- isolated into towering walled city-states
separated by chemical mutant-inhabited wastelands. There is still stability in Veniss, but
the gears and wheels, law and order of government are long gone. Nicholas, out of luck and
funds, goes to Shadrach -- his sister's former lover -- for help. Shadrach works for the
mysterious and powerful Quin, and Nicholas wants a piece of the action.