I was beyond excited when he became one of our guests of honor for the PKD fest, and even more pleasantly surprised when he agreed to write a novella for release at the fest through Pink Beam Press. It might not seem like a surprise now that several big names in genre fiction have added their work to the upcoming Pink Beam slate, but at the time, Pink Beam Press hadn't even started, and Keith Giles and I were still talking about releasing our novellas for the 4th Philip K. Dick Festival.
Any new book by Brian Evenson is a celebration, but a PKD-influenced novella that pushes the boundaries of reality even more so. My favorite Tor novella, The Warren (the subject of one of the earliest Dickheads interviews), and if you want to get under the hood, I just recorded an interview about Glitch.
I am going to explain why it rules. I think you should trust me and read it, maybe come back so we can all learn from it. Written using first, second, and third person at different times, Evenson never cheats; each tense is used for calculated reasons within the narrative. (This is the point where we are under the hood and yes…spoilers)
Part of the story takes place in a digital cosmos, what we in PKD circles call a “Finite Subjective Reality.” Some of the creepiest moments are when our point-of-view character, who is a digital backup, meets another person who has no face.
“ You're up now,” The absent face said, or something said anyway. I lashed out and struck the absent face and my hand slid right in, as if there was nothing there. Even though my arm was sunk to the elbow, my hand did not appear out of the back of his head.”
The scene when his hand disappears into the absent face freaked me out. This kind of surreal moment sets the tone for the spongy reality I expect out of the new genre we are trying to push here. Pink Beam fiction, where the author and reader are invited to meet outside reality.
Evenson is a master of finding details that he can go back to more than once to make the reader uncomfortable. The absent face is one thing, but our digital character is constantly washing his
“He was, in a very obstinately human way, still trying to continue washing his hands even as I spun him around. From the back he had seemed normal, human. But from the front it was another story altogether. Where his face should have been, there was nothing but a shimmering hole.”
The idea that time doesn’t mean anything to these alien minds is one of the smartest ways that Evenson finds the creep factor in the AI universe. Glitch as a novella creates discomfort by exploring how a mind created in a body but exiting in a digital realm is a nightmare.
“This lasted forever. For what, anyway, felt to me like forever. It was excruciating and while it was happening I went more than a little insane. For the extent of that eternity, I was paralyzed and not altogether myself—another experience that you have never had and that will forever separate us.”
At this point in the story, regardless of the point of view of the character being digital, I was invested in his feelings. When the narrative briefly enters the “REAL” world, the idea that this memory backup would be started from scratch was a stunner. I didn’t expect to feel dread on behalf of this digital being, but I did.
Digital beings don’t exist in time as we know it. Mere seconds to us could be centuries to these beings who remember every moment they are computing. Digital Anders is supposed to be nothing more than backed-up memories, but he lives much longer from his point of view; he is as real, more real. He is the Anders that should exist in his mind.
“The first time he grabbed me, back when he hadn’t had a face, I could not break free. Now I was centuries older now, more experienced. I now understood the way this world was constituted to a degree I had not before. And so, I simply tore the man’s arms.”
I think the absent face represents the non-beings that populate this false reality. The symbolism and ideas per page are off the charts; there are more ideas per page in Glitch than in some SF novels three times the length. It builds perfectly to the reversal. I was thinking it was a possibility.
“You have just been uploaded, that much is true. But while you were being uploaded here, to this impoverished excuse of a world, I was downloading myself along the same route, systematically replacing each sector of your brain as soon as it was uploaded with an equivalent part of my own brain. I have overwritten myself onto your actual brain. In brief, I will be the one occupying the Anders body moving forward. Having been through all I’ve been through, I am certain I will appreciate it more than you ever did. I deserve it more than you. And so I am going to take it. And you will be stuck here.
Forever.”
A powerful ending, similar to the ending of Evenson’s new novel, Phantom Limb it hits with a punch in the last moment.
I believe in all the Pink Beam novellas, but this is one of the most amazing things I have read this year so far. I personally think you should collect all the Pink Beam novellas but this is one not to miss.
