Book Review: Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch

 

Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch

184 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1967

“This is my journal. I can be candid here. Candidly, I could not be more miserable.”

As part of my prep for a future episode of the podcast meant to debate the best SF novels of 1968, I had to read this novel. I know that sounds like punishment the way I worded it. This novel and 334 by Disch have been on my list to read for a long time. Weird new wave SF from the 60s is pretty much my jam, so I expected to like it.

The concept is not totally original as Flowers for Algernon became a classic, and you would not be wrong to point out how similar the plots are. Disch spins this yarn with a similar concept but reflects the dark fears of the era.

It is considered a new-wave classic so it makes sense that we would read it and debate in the Patheon of 1968, a tough year on planet Earth, but a great year for the Science fiction made on said planet. This book should stand alone in this review. If you want to hear my thoughts on how it stacks up you’ll have to listen to the show. (I will link to this review  - When it is out)

Camp Concentration is one of those novels that doesn’t depend on a story, plot, or narrative drive. It is a vibe novel.  I am not against such literary endeavors but they are much less my jam, that a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Told through a series of journal entries, like all novels with this set-up the author is confined to staying in character, and writing with the limitation of a journal. I find it is hard for most authors not to cheat in the first-person narrative. Stephen King is a master at not cheating, his recent hard case crime novel Later, the prose “grew up” with the character.

Considering the concept of this novel I was looking for details to show that the main character was growing smarter in the narrative. This is the story of Louis Sacchetti,  a poet in prison for draft resistance who is sent to Camp Archimedes. He is unwilling part of an experiment to increase intelligence through a drug called Pallidine.

“Though opposition is a hopeless task, acquiescence would be worse.”

I don’t really understand why the military would take draft resistors and criminals for this task, except for general dehumanization, and even though the back cover refers to the book as chillingly plausible I don’t think it was. That’s Okay I think the surreal nature is a strength. It doesn’t have to be realistic to comment on the times. I am not sure Robert McNamara could ever in any reality become president it is an interesting fear projected by a late 60s progressive poet/new wave SF writer.

Disch seems to projecting the idea that McNamara was on the verge of taking our country from a conflict in Southeast Asia and a cold war to a global devastating conflict.

“We were sent out of the prison today on a detail to cut down and burn blighted trees. A new Virus, or one of our own, gone astray. The landscape outside the prison is, despite the season, nearly as desolate as that within. The War has devoured the reserves of our affluence and is damaging the fibers of every day.”

I want to say just because it didn’t happen doesn’t make this speculative commentary any less valid or important. The fears of a cold war going hot were a very important part of human survival. We might not be here with the post-nuclear novels and films.  Not just because Regan watch the Day After.
 

At the time it was written to think of Robert McNamara as bloodthirsty and it was a fair position to depict as a heartless American Stalin. I am not sure how hindsight affects this novel considering McNamara’s change of heart documented in the 2003 documentary The Fog of War. Certainly, it changes nothing for the dead on either side of the conflict. He did what he did, Disch’s speculative commentary can only exist on the level of 1967/68’s McNamara.  

Camp Concentration also feels like a literary take on the same ground that the Peter Watkins film Punishment Park attacked.  The clash of the late 60s progressives culture and pro-war erupted in Chicago at the Democratic national convention. The genre attacked the war in subtle metaphors on Star Trek and not so subtle in novels like Leguin's The Word for World is Forest and Hadleman’s  The Forever War.

The novel is not as intense as Punishment Park, a movie that is gut-wrenching for activists to watch.  Disch calmly gets into the character of a man writing a journal behind bars. As such the first half of the novel has only hints at Speculative elements and world-building.

“Knowledge is devalued when it becomes too generally known”

Louis Sacchetti is not a part of Robert McNamera’s America and I found myself wondering what that country was like. Disch wants the reader to understand that the characters in the camp have no connection to the outside world or the war. They can’t stop it or affect it. The walls of their mind-expanding doesn’t give them any power to stop the war machine -  a very on-the-nose analogy but that is the feeling that was the message Disch was laying down.

Most of the vibes and tones that make the second half of the novel feel Sci-fi are in the reaction to drugs. As Louis and his fellow prisoners become smarter they look for solutions.  Like the novel that beat it for the 1969 Hugo Stand on Zanzibar, this novel touches on overpopulation. The prisoners realize the problems are bigger.

I admit I was a little bored in the second half. Louis writes about the downfall of the country and the globalist American power. Making the population into geniuses won’t keep them from having casual sex and spreading, huh what? Wait, that came out of nowhere. I can’t make sense of one thing -  maybe it was this reader. Were these projections or were they actually happening in the story?

I was a little unclear towards the end. Thomas Disch is a great writer, and the prose is better than average Science Fiction. He has a  point of view and it is getting expressed, I am not sure that makes this a good,  or great novel.  I like stories. I felt this novel did lots of things well, but I didn’t really feel any story.   

Book Review: She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

 

She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

352 pages, hardcover

February 2023 Bloomsbury YA

Let’s hear it for modern marketing. This was an impulse hold at the library after seeing an ad on Goodreads. I saw the title and the cover. That’s it. Sold. My library had it so I went in knowing nothing but the title. So unlike many of my retro reviews, I can’t give you the history of the author. I know they live in Georgia and is part of a small but growing number of genre recently published from the Vietnamese Diaspora, much like two years ago when I accidentally read three Nigerian American SF novels in a row I have read a few of these by accident. The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo and In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu are the ones that come to mind.

This novel by Trang Thanh Tran is a pure horror novel and pretty damn solid for a debut novel. Part of the purity of this novel is that it is solidly in one sub-genre - the haunted house novel. I certainly wasn’t surprised even though I went in cold because haunting is in the title. I personally love when an author brings their unique personality to a tried-and-true genre trope. Yes, there are a Buzillion haunted house novels. There are a couple of ways to make the old new again. Multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author Lisa Morton set hers in an off-the-beat old theater in the Castle of  Los Angeles, but all the tropes were there spun differently. I tried my hand at it in my novel Punk Rock Ghost Story by having a haunted punk rock tour van. The most famous example is The Shining which put the haunted house in an enormous isolated hotel.

She is a Haunting draws on the author’s family experience (fictionalized of course) to put the haunting in a unique spot. A bed and breakfast in the Vietnamese countryside. According to the notes the author was dealing with the loss of a parent in 2020 when this was written. I dealt with the same around that time and the ups and downs of the feelings of family and grief are really strong in these pages.

From the opening pages Jade Nguyen our POV on the story has a complicated relationship with her family. The emotional depth carried in her interactions leaps off the page. She has just over a month to play happy family member with her father who left their family in Philadelphia to return to Vietnam and restore a French colonial house into that bed and Breakfast. Jade just wants to do enough for her father (through building a website for the house) to get his money for college. There is an interesting dynamic between her sister Lily and her mother who clearly still loves her father. 

The characters are one of the things that set this novel apart. It also playfully works the tropes. Once Jade experiences the haunting in the house, she has trouble being taken seriously.

“I do not use, “I think” or “probably’ or “Maybe.” Those words grow doubt. Her eyes don’t leave mine as she reads me. Maybe she perceives me as Ba does – paranoid, imaginative, a liar. I’m at least two of those things on most occasions, but this isn’t one of them. My jaw aches from the tension of grinding teeth.”

A haunted house novel is built not two important things the POV characters' inability to escape or process the supernatural events happening to them. Jade has to try and make it work, even when she feels the house is eating her alive. All excellently expressed in a dream sequence on page 183.

“You didn’t need a dad anymore,” says Ba. I mistake him for a crying man before he yanks at the end of a thin wiggling worm.
My breathing stills, but every cell in my screams to run away.

The moments of horror are well written, and there is plenty of build-up and dread before it all comes out.

“Haunted Ma Qui. Hungry ghost.
By then, maybe she and the house weren’t so different in Nature.”

I have said lots of positives. When reviewing books, I often talk myself into liking a book more than when I was reading it. There is a lot to like here. At the same time, I thought it was about 30 or 40 pages too long. I know I like bare-bones prose, I just found myself skipping paragraphs a bit here and there. I just feel this story could have come in around 270 pages. It is a debut novel. I am overall positive and Trang Thanh Tran is an author now on my radar.

Book Review: NOVA by Samuel R. Delany

 

NOVA by Samuel R. Delany

279 pages, hardcover

August 1968, Doubleday Science Fiction.

*Prep for a podcast episode debating the best SF novel of 1968, full review coming, when the podcast is available I will link it here. *

I mentioned this in a Facebook post as I finished reading this book. I made a strange connection to this 55-year-old book. As a writer, I am very aware of the mind meld between writer and reader. Considering that I read this author’s Facebook posts today, it was interesting connecting with Delany of 1966 and 67 (when he wrote it in Athens and New York City). I am reading this now in part because it was nominated in 1969 for the Hugo Award. The winner that year was Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner. Someone else posted the cover of that book and I said it was the best Science Fiction novel of the 20th century.

Several of my online SF reader Twitter friends disagreed, including several that suggested that it was not the best of 1968. One suggested this novel, and another suggested Camp Concentration by Thomas Disch. Not to forget to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and as Professor Lisa Yazek pointed out Joanna Russ also had a novel that year Picnic on Paradise. So I decided we needed to have this debate on the podcast. (recording May 2023 – links here when available.)

That is the context I read this in. As for this review, I will not compare it to the other books. That is for the podcast.

Also if you are not following SRD on Facebook I recommend it, Delany often does long posts about the history of Sci-fi from his point of view. He also has posts about Supernatural a TV show he apparently really digs.

NOVA is not my first Delany, I read Dhalgren, Babel-17 (my favorite so far), and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. Due mostly to timing and the radical nature of Delany (the first openly gay Black SF author) SRD is considered New Wave. I am personally sure how he fits into this part of the genre. This novel has a midevil far future that reminds me of DUNE in world-building tones.

Humanity has spread to the stars but culture spread out. This culture feels more like one you would find in a fantasy novel. Set in the year 3172 society should feel different.  The thing is Delany writes challenging prose, it can be hard to explain but he doesn’t worry about clarity, he writes with a flow that can be like taking a boat into the rapids. Dhalgren is downright hard to read at times. Setting a story a thousand years in the future gives Delany a built-in excuse “Eating, sleeping current wages: How do I explain the present concept of these three to somebody from, say, the twenty-third century?” Let alone you 20th or 21st century reader.

 It is OK you are important in this future you can’t totally understand.“…it was basically what we are now: an informatively unified society that lived on several worlds. Since then, the number of worlds has increased; our informative unity has changed its nature several times, and suffered a few catastrophic eruptions, but essentially has remained. Until humanity becomes something much, much different, the time must be the focus of scholarly interest: that was the century we became.”

On the surface, NOVA is a more commercial Science Fiction novel but the character in the book who is writing a novel explains this to the reader…

“But the point is, when the writer turns to address the reader, he or she must not only speak to me—naively dazzled and wholly enchanted by the complexities of the trickery, and thus all but incapable of any criticism, so that, indeed, he can claim, if he likes, priestly contact with the greater powers that, hurled at him by the muse, travel the parsecs from the Universe’s furthest shoals, cleaving stars on the way, to shatter the specific moment and sizzle his brains in their pan, rattle his teeth in their sockets, make his muscles howl against his bones, and to galvanize his pen so the ink bubbles and blisters on the nib (nor would I hear her claim to such as other than a metaphor for the most profound truths of skill, craft, or mathematical and historical conjuration)—but she or he must also speak to my student, for whom it was an okay story, with just so much description.”

Will your brain sizzle during this book?  Set in a pulp SF-feeling future where the Earth is like a hipster planet, we are introduced to the solar system through the idea of a Commercial shipping line called the Shifting Triangle Run: Earth to Mars, Mars to Ganymede, Ganymede to Earth. Much of humanity lives on Draco and the outer colonies of The Pleiades Foundation.

The world-building is something I connected a lot to but I think many readers of this novel will find focus in the characters. Lorq Von Ray is a starship captain who is obsessed with collecting Illyrion an energy source that spits out of dying stars. The science doesn’t make a ton of sense, and you might say well it was the 60s, but still it is a little even so. Delany tries, and there is nothing so silly I couldn’t push through. “After a thousand years of study, from close up and far away, it’s a bit unnerving how much we don’t know about happens in the center of the most calamitous of stellar catastrophes.”   

There are shipping families. Space races, plenty of commentary on the human condition. I don’t mean to reduce the overall effect this novel has. It is a great and deep space opera. I love the balance between the pulpy settings and characters with the deeper themes. This aside from late in the book addresses how technology has destroyed the connection to what we do.

“If the situation of a technological society was such that there could be no direct relation between a man's work and his modus vivendi, other than money, at least he must feel that he is directly changing things by his work, shaping things, making things that weren't there before, moving things from one place to another. He must exert energy in his work and see these changes occur with his own eyes. Otherwise, he would feel his life was futile.”

Do I think this is a masterpiece? It has all the ingredients. World-building, fascinating characters, fun SF concepts including a supernova in the third act. The technology of Cyborg studs and their operation on the ships borders on Cyberpunk a decade before such a literary movement was birthed. The titans of capitalism that pull these characters into their orbit, is interesting enough. The motivations of Obsession, greed, and revenge is powerful in the story.  The meta-commentary on the genre through the writer in a narrative gives Delany the chance to comment openly on what he is doing.

The problem I had was the asides like the Tarot Cards chapter and the moments when Delany’s prose thickened up. This is considered to be the last of Delany’s pulp novels transitioning his work to his most respected period of high-class Science Fiction. I think his best novel is from this pulp period with Babel-17, so what the hell do I know? I really enjoyed this one, but do not consider it a masterpiece. Was it worthy of the Hugo nomination? Sure, but I still think the right book won.

Book Review: Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay

 

The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay

278 pages, Hardcover

William Morrow, July 2022

If you follow either my blog or the podcast you may already know I am a huge fan of Paul Tremblay as an author. It is of course a super solid year for the man, as his work entered a new stratosphere with the film based on the novel The Cabin at the End of the World ( M.Night's Knock at the Cabin – see it if you haven’t it is great) but the novel he released this last year hasn't gotten the level of conversation I think it deserves. I mean I have heard plenty of great things before reading and blurbs from all the heavy hitters pointing to its tone and audacious experimentation should have folks excited. It is nearly impossible for a novel to equal the hype of a major studio film by the same author.

It is hard to match the hype of the movie, unlike other Tremblay novels in the last couple of releases this one doesn't have a horror concept upfront. That is mostly because it is one of those the less you know the better novels and it might have something to do with the way it is being marketed as a “psychological thriller.”  It is a horror for sure but the nature of it was more subtle and the promo stuff I saw focused on the coming-of-age nature of it.

That is one of the things I love about it by the way. There is an entire sub-genre of horror coming-of-age novels most playing with The Body (Stand by Me) and Boy’s Life vibes. There are fantastic novels with that vibe examples include Brian Keene's Ghoul, Douglas Clegg’s Neverland, and James Newman’s Midnight Rain. Those stories often include groups of boys, bikes, and a mystery that involves a group of friends. We all know those special childhood friends. I can't tell you how much I appreciate how Tremblay came to this subgenre and gave it a unique feel for our generation.

 I assumed that is what Tremblay was doing here. With these coming-of-age novels, there is a tendency to believe the story is autobiographical, and Tremblay warned readers not to think that way. He also admitted that there is some of him in there. The thing is it is impossible to tell a coming-of-age story without drawing on our personal stories.  

One thing that makes this novel a singular work of this subgenre is the feeling of teenage isolation and angst.  Pallbearer's Club is a punk horror novel, something I of course love. Filled with Husker Du easter eggs and commentary “I could be the Grant Hart to your Bob Mould,” and chapter titles from Husker Du albums, that match the tone of the albums.

 This novel is about the generation that discovered the weird stuff before MTV did with Smells like Teen Spirit. The discovery of punk rock before that point was like a one-to-one virus transmission and on page 48 Tremblay captures it. After a list of awesome bands, “I liked some bands better than others, but every band was daring, challenging, and unlike anything played on local radio or MTV. This music was a new prism through which I viewed the world; a thrilling secret, and for the first time in my life I was in the know. Chords vibrated on a wavelength that fused me to the music and together we were bigger than a shouted chorus and together we were as small as a promise and for those two to three glorious minutes of song duration, we were the same.”

When I tell young people about being punk rock pre-nirvana I have to remind them that mainstream jocks and rednecks hated us. I love that this novel nails what it felt like to connect to the power of punk. To a young isolated teen, that connection is like a superpower. I think readers who didn’t experience this feeling, may view this as just character-building details, and not part of the mission statement. Art Barbara as a character, as a narrator of this story needs to be the outcast, the misunderstood. That feeling of isolation is a huge part of the story.

Art Barbara is more than just an isolated punk rock teenager, he forms the Pallbearers Club, a group of teens who hang out at the funerals of people who have no one and serve as Pallbearers. This super goth activity gives him and his new friends a strange and personal relationship with death. Enter Mercy Brown who responds to a flyer and shows up to carry the dead with a Polaroid camera that may or may not have the ability to catch film of the dead.  Maybe?  Art and Mercy have one of those fleeting youthful friendships that are quick, powerful, and unforgettable. This is the heart of the novel.

Written with an experimental, and super smart tactic, Tremblay has the reader taking in the novel with Mercy Brown as she, partially the subject reads it and comments. These appear in the margins as “handwritten” red pen commentary. This means that the reader starts to read the book through her eyes, creating a specific reading experience for this book. A neat narrative trick.

In every coming-of-age novel, you have to wonder what is the storyteller remembering wrong through the haze of idealism and memory. Here we have Mercy underlining and disagreeing at times, backing up Art at other times. This was pure genius and took the whole experience to another level. At first, it might appear as a total gimmick. It is not at all a gimmick.

It makes this novel a unique fictional memoir that despite first person has two points of view. It is not just a coming-of-age novel but a conversation. The subject is memory, and legend and the subtext is dripping through every page. That said the horror elements are there.

Based on a legendary case of New England occultism that I never heard of inspired the backbone of the horror elements. I admit it was a case I had no context for and I am sure for folks who do the novel works on another level entirely. That case and what the novel really is, in the end, becomes very interesting.  I don't want to spoil it but there is more than one subgenre of horror Tremblay is making his own here.

Tremblay is operating on several levels here, and I think this is a writer's novel in all the best ways. Maybe it is not as shocking as Cabin at the End of the World, and it is not as nail-biting as Survivor Song, but I think it has more in common with A Head Full of Ghosts.  In my opinion, Pallbearers Club is not my favorite Tremblay but it is easily his best. He is in command of his powers in a really impressive way. It is a must-read for Horror fans.   

Book Review: The Search For Philip K. Dick by Anne R. Dick

The Search For Philip K. Dick by Anne R.  Dick

279 pages, Paperback

October 2010 by Tachyon Publications

I have many thoughts on this book and the first one I have to get out of the way is the fact that I can't read this book like a civilian. What I mean is that through the course of doing 6 year now of Philip K. Dick research, including a hundred or so podcast episodes, and many articles and currently writing my own book, this book is an incredible resource. I avoided this book for a while. Then I was In Indiana at the famous Vons bookstore off the Purdue Campus and impressed by their PKD, and decided I would pick up a book I needed for the podcast.

Introduced by my homey David Gill, I thought this was the time. I hesitated because I wasn't sure it would be a fair book. Written by Anne Rubenstein Dick - this biography was written by Phil's third wife. For years Phil and Anne's relationship was brutal. He claimed to be afraid of her reminding anyone who would listen that her first died, and he thought she was going to kill him. In a haze, he also chased her away from his home in Oakland with a pistol. Yeah, some not-pretty moments.  I really don't like to dwell on the negative.

That said with the latest project I am researching the minute to minute stuff is the details I need and in this book Anne provides crazy amounts of detail.  The other reason why is this...despite the roller coaster that the Point Reyes/ Anne marriage years were I consider it to be the best period of Phil's writing career. I also know some avoided this book assuming that Anne would just beat up Phil. I personally she was fair. It is clear she wanted to set the record straight and defend herself. Which is fair as there are multiple biographies, movies etc out there.

Anne clearly still loved and respected Phil. This memoir starts with the relationship they had and then through detailed research, Anne tried to understand Phil. She is trying to understand what happened to her marriage and in the process we are trying to understand the writer.    She has her reason to research and write it and we have our reason to read it. They are totally different but the finished book is an important document.

Keep in mind Anne is not a writer, and as such there are some clumsy details. At times there are more details than the average reader needs. THAT SAID. that is stuff that Dickheads like myself are totally digging into. Does the average reader need to know that was Anne who picked the Ludwig Binswanger book at the library? No, but this researcher certainly noted it. David Gill in the introduction pointed out that Anne told us which piece (the old shoe) Phil choose for family monopoly. Does the average reader need a chart of the real-life friends on whom Phil based the characters in Dr.  Bloodmoney after? Dickheads will eat it up.

Anne could've hated Phil, he certainly crushed her publically, it seemed clear friends that knew her saw through Phil's stories. Either way, it seems clear to me that Anne without coming out and saying as much blamed the drugs for what happened to Phil, her marriage, and the relationships that came later. Phil said as much in A Scanner Darkly and The Divine Madness of PKD by Kyle Arnold makes a great case for this.  

I gained lots of respect for  Anne,  not that I didn't have it before. She could've been more bitter but the way she approached this project. This book is important to the scholarship of Philip K. Dick. A must read for anyone trying to understand one of the most important voices of the

Book Review The Divine Invasion by Philip K. Dick (Podcast prep)

 

The Divine Invasion by Philip K. Dick

Paperback, 260 Pages

Mariner, 2011 first edition 1981

This novel is the second in the official VALIS trilogy, the third in the unofficial VALIS trilogy, and the last science fiction novel Phil wrote before his death in 1982. Written quickly during overnight sessions it could’ve been written in 1963 or 64 with the out-of-date SF-isms like Sythnwombs and dome colonies. At the time the themes of god, good, and evil are a little more standard than the other VALIS books and has a bit more of the PKD humor and paranoia stuff.

Full thoughts coming in May 2023 when we record Dickheads podcast episode. I will link here when available.