Book Review: Pax Americana by Kurt Baumeister

Pax Americana by Kurt Baumeister

Paperback, 380 pages

Published March 2017 by Stalking Horse Press

Stalking Horse press does it again. In many ways, this has become a year of discovery for me and the work of James Reich as a publisher. Pax Americana is a fantastic debut novel and it dropped with amazing timing early in the Trump era. I got the feeling this novel was kicking around in Baumeister's mind and word processor for years. Much like the notion of location, location in this sense it was timing, timing.

It has been crazy watching liberals in the wake of the disaster that is Donald Trump forget just how horrible the Bush/ Chaney years were. Enter Kurt Baumeister and his genius satire of that era of an alternate reality where the Bush years lasted 30 years. In this future we watch the adventure spring forth as a not so cold war of spies and intrigue is fought over the invention of software that gives you the ability to "talk to god." Thus we get elements that could be considered both bizarro or Science Fiction in the eye of the beholder or reader as it were. Religious secret agents, serving the evangelical government, Fast food kingpins, Lost planes in the Bermuda Triangle and the voice of a computerized god. The program works with various faiths.

One thing I really loved about this novel is there are a variety of tones, narrative styles woven into the narrative that shifts very subtly. Some chapters rely on dialogue-heavy narrative, some more action-oriented. The choices are all well made.

Baumeister is clearly influenced by another Kurt. The guy who wrote equally placed his tongue in cheek for speculative satire like Cat's Cradle. I know that is a very highly intense comparison but it is not made lightly. Fans of Vonnegut's humorous sci-fi, he may not have wanted to be called Sci-fi but let us not get snobby now.

This will be a Dick Like Suggestion on Dickheads. PKD was underrated for his humor, and one of the things that makes this book fun is the moments that make you chuckle. This is not a book filled with jokes just plenty of weird offbeat things that will give you laughs. I mean the program in the book called Symmetra is not that far removed from the infamous pink lazer beam. But the most PKD thing about this book is the America in this book is one just slightly different. This is a trick PKD used often although I doubt Baumeister claims to have actually spent time in this reality.

Chapter 7 Is where we get a history lesson of the world of this novel. One the mega-churches who dreamed of a third and fourth term for George W Bush would see as Utopia. The one difference that sent that world down a different path an easy victory in the Iraq war. Sure Baumeister is exaggerating to clarify but that folks is satire. And this is political satire and Sci-Fi in a beautiful relationship.

This book took on a whole different meaning in the world it was birthed into than the one it was written in, but this is super important political surreal Sci-fi that harkens back to the times when the line between Sci-fi and satire was a razor thin space between alternate realities.