Maybe ten years ago, I first picked this book up, and like most Pynchon books, if you aren’t in the mood to read something longer, difficult, and absurd, it’s not gonna work for you. For whatever reason, that’s where I was at the time, but it felt strange to consider Pynchon my favorite author without reading everything and digesting it properly. So, I came back to this book, and I’m so happy I did.
There are definitely people who consider Pynchon impenetrable, pretentious, or worse things, but in truth, if you approach his books for what they are, you can’t miss with them. What is that, exactly? Goofy stoner mysteries with plenty of asides for you to get lost in. I let myself get lost in the absurdity this time out, and it served as a reminder of what I really love about literature.
Vineland, a zone of blessed anarchy in northern California, is the last refuge of hippiedom, a culture devastated by the sobriety epidemic, Reaganomics, and the Tube. Here, in an Orwellian 1984, Zoyd Wheeler and his daughter Prairie search for Prairie's long-lost mother, a Sixties radical who ran off with a narc. Vineland is vintage Pynchon, full of quasi-allegorical characters, elaborate unresolved subplots, corny songs ("Floozy with an Uzi"), movie spoofs (Pee-wee Herman in The Robert Musil Story), and illicit sex (including a macho variation on the infamous sportscar scene in V.).
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the…
Throughout my publishing career, I’ve been immersed within the confines of science fiction and all its trappings. As a part of this, I read a lot of science fiction books to stay up on things. I’m not sure I’ve read a more breathless or interesting sci-fi book in a very long time. A lot of the promise of the genre feels like it’s been stuck in itself for a while now, but reading a book like this reminds me of just what genre can be capable of.
There’s so much to love in this book, from the language to the passion, and the ability to take genre convention and turn it on its head. Sometimes this book was brutal, other times it was beautiful, but no matter what, this book was necessary, and I can’t say that for everything I read.
In 1997, New York City, a petty criminal named Alex Voss is about to die via bullet shot right between the eyes by his criminal employer: Boris. But was he really a petty criminal, or something even stranger? As all roads lead to death, he recounts his tragic life one last time; murder, sex, drugs, rock and roll, losing his mind and failing at being a true hero. There's no escape from his tragic ending. At least, that's how it's meant to play out. As events fail to line up, is Alex's mind breaking the fourth wall, has he finally…
I’m really not sure how to talk about this book sometimes. There’s a kinetic energy to it that comes from the breathless literary allusions before descending into a labyrinth of the most surreal of the greats. I mean, the title itself is derived from a work by Italo Calvino, and Calvino is perhaps, at times, a character in this book, along with Jorge Luis Borges, Philip K. Dick, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, and others.
If you’re going to not just evoke a list of great authors, but integrate them into your work, you’ve got to wield them with a deft hand, which is exactly what happens here. There’s a certain level of unease this book left me in throughout, but kept me reading and laughing, even while the protagonist’s reality frayed into the surreal and odd. Perhaps exactly because it frayed so much, I’m not sure.
Clarence St. Claire is a programmer who cherishes an orderly life. His motto: ‘work is important; people, not so much’. His determination to be The Most Serious Person on the Planet is threatened when he becomes haunted by a mysterious manuscript from his past: 300 pages of possibly random bird tracks. Risking his career and self-possession, St. Claire dares to pursue the manuscript against the opposition of hackers, the NSA, the ghosts of famous writers and doubts of his own sanity.
Lost in a maze of bird-prints and their possible meanings, St. Claire determines to summon the late writer Jorge…
A found family space opera for a new generation of science fiction fans.
Deep into the future, in a far-off galaxy, humanity is recovering from a brutal war with an alien race. Drake Rose and the crew of the Trystero operate within the fringes of the DMZ between the two people, scraping to get by. Everything changes when they discover an abandoned Gra’al freighter where the crew has been slaughtered, all except for one.
Hidden away in a secret compartment is an alien baby, with the last living crew member begging his would-be enemies to protect it at all costs. They’re thrust into the fire, hunted by a crazed alien warlord attempting to rekindle the war and eliminate humans from their galaxy for good.
