'This is the real thing,' said Caroline. 'It's the deepest, the profoundist. It's the big bazonga, it's really existential.'
"OK," I said, watching a distant sweeper with a faulty program banging again and again into the information kiosk, 'just don't tell me it's a metaphor, OK?"
A beautiful short science fiction novel, from a Master of the art of the difficult, the arcane, the mythic, the timeless ... and the metaphor. In 180-odd pages (some of them, be warned, very odd pages), Hoban weaves the story of Fremder Gorn, sole survivor of a "flicker drive" accident that resulted in the disappearance of the deep space transport Clever Daughter and its seven crewmembers. Except for Fremder, who is left tumbling in the vacuum of space, with no space suit, no oxygen -- and survives. This alone would be enough to pique the interest of Sheela-na-Gig, the Corporation responsible for flicker drive, which has opened up deep space for human colonists, entrepreneurs, and a lot of profit. When we learn that Fremder is the son of Helen Gorn, the troubled young woman who (long story short) invented flicker drive -- well, let's just say, the plot thickens.
"Fremder" means "stranger" in German. And "Gorn" is an abbreviation of grandfather Elias' original name, adopted to disguise the family's Jewish heritage when he escaped to London from Nazi Germany. "'Gorn today, here tomorrow,' he's quoted as saying ..."
The novel is dense with word play, allusions to Jewish mythology, Biblical references and a stream of musical and poetical hooks. (A mix tape of the music Hoban refers to, both in-text, as as chapter headings, would have been very interesting.)
Beautifully written. Just a random example: "Lots of noise but behind the hiss of purple rain the silence is cruising like a shark." Now, that's a sentence.
The dystopian world of the 2020-2050s that Hoban uses as the background to Fremder's search for answers feels frighteningly plausible, and darkly funny.
Short as it is, it's not an easy read -- I am looking forward to reading it again, one day, after giving it time to mature in my mind. How many SF novels can you say that about? (There are a few. This is one of them.) Perhaps on a future reading, I'll understand some of the physics. Perhaps I'll make that mix tape, and listen as I read.
"OK," I said, watching a distant sweeper with a faulty program banging again and again into the information kiosk, 'just don't tell me it's a metaphor, OK?"
A beautiful short science fiction novel, from a Master of the art of the difficult, the arcane, the mythic, the timeless ... and the metaphor. In 180-odd pages (some of them, be warned, very odd pages), Hoban weaves the story of Fremder Gorn, sole survivor of a "flicker drive" accident that resulted in the disappearance of the deep space transport Clever Daughter and its seven crewmembers. Except for Fremder, who is left tumbling in the vacuum of space, with no space suit, no oxygen -- and survives. This alone would be enough to pique the interest of Sheela-na-Gig, the Corporation responsible for flicker drive, which has opened up deep space for human colonists, entrepreneurs, and a lot of profit. When we learn that Fremder is the son of Helen Gorn, the troubled young woman who (long story short) invented flicker drive -- well, let's just say, the plot thickens.
"Fremder" means "stranger" in German. And "Gorn" is an abbreviation of grandfather Elias' original name, adopted to disguise the family's Jewish heritage when he escaped to London from Nazi Germany. "'Gorn today, here tomorrow,' he's quoted as saying ..."
The novel is dense with word play, allusions to Jewish mythology, Biblical references and a stream of musical and poetical hooks. (A mix tape of the music Hoban refers to, both in-text, as as chapter headings, would have been very interesting.)
Beautifully written. Just a random example: "Lots of noise but behind the hiss of purple rain the silence is cruising like a shark." Now, that's a sentence.
The dystopian world of the 2020-2050s that Hoban uses as the background to Fremder's search for answers feels frighteningly plausible, and darkly funny.
Short as it is, it's not an easy read -- I am looking forward to reading it again, one day, after giving it time to mature in my mind. How many SF novels can you say that about? (There are a few. This is one of them.) Perhaps on a future reading, I'll understand some of the physics. Perhaps I'll make that mix tape, and listen as I read.
