Slashdot Mirror
Noir
Mixing metaphors like cheap liquors, K. W. Jeter manages to meld an unlikely combination of fiction elements with the surprisingly palatable success of a Long Island Iced Tea. Add to that an almost gleefully cynical look at the future of copyright law, unrestrained capitalism, and the rocky bottom of our credit-driven economy's slippery slope. With a sometimes disorienting stream-of-consciousness style, stringing together metaphors like a psychedelic chain of pearls, Jeter introduces his audience to one brilliantly disturbing and fascinating concept after another, and in the end Jeter uses every one of them to wrap up the conflict. It's a nonstop freak show, a simultaneous dirty joke, horror tale, and social commentary. It's especially rewarding, coming from the author of the bestselling sequels to Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human and Blade Runner: Replicant Night.
On one level, Noir feels like cyberpunk: it is set in a postmodern dystopia recovering from collapse, populated by cybernetically enhanced misanthropes, with a plot that skirts the edge of a metaphorical landscape. But in this novel, there's no Cyberspace; just "The Wedge," a sexually deviant skid row ruled by a mysterious goddesslike figure. Those who dare can visit The Wedge in the flesh, but most visitors to the Wedge employ replicant avatars, "prowlers," which download their Wedge experiences to their owners, delivering accumulated memories served straight.
This brings me to a warning; Noir is not for the weak of stomach. Jeter wantonly and graphically sodomizes, decapitates, disembowels, dissolves and immolates his characters with intentional disregard for good taste, exploiting the same psychological niche as rotten.com, alt.tasteless and Hannibal. It has the attraction of a car wreck -- at first tolerable only in short doses, but ultimately irresistible. Part of this irresistibility is the intelligence, wit, and cynicism of Jeter's future vision.
Predictably enough, the protagonists are anti-heroes. But to Jeter's credit, their predictability ends there. John McNihil is an asp-head - a licensed bounty hunter of copyright violators, and a man who sold his wife into purgatory in favor of buying a set of optical implants that give him a film noir view of the world. Forget rose-colored glasses, he has smoke- and whiskey-colored contact lenses.
Self-employed heroine November is more likable, but a ruthless character nonetheless, with fingertip EMP implants that allow her to induce orgasmic epileptic fits in her stalkers-slash-victims, then casually ventilate their craniums with their own guns.
The story opens with the death of a mid-level corporate exec, Travelt. McNihil and November are hired by the antagonist, Harrisch, to track down his intellectual property lost in the Edge, somehow uploaded into Travelt's prowler. In contrast to the merely dislikable McNihil and November, Harrisch is revolting. He is the devious, manipulating and ruthless chief executive of DynaZauber, a megacorporation with interests in every aspect of society. Harrisch habitually murders his freelance operatives rather than paying them, and prefers to do the wetwork himself, rendered immune to prosecution by pre-emptory payoffs to local authorities, who themselves have been reduced to agents of corporate interest.
The first third of the story revolves around Harrisch's increasingly sadistic attempts to coerce McNihil into taking the job. November is Harrisch's insurance, the second-string operative, whom he also uses as a means to coerce McNihil. Be patient; Jeter uses these events to introduce concepts that foreshadow the climactic scene. And even after McNihil and November being their hunt for Travelt's lost prowler, we continue to be exposed to essential concepts that at the time appear to be mere gratuitous depravity and cynicism.
These ideas are what make Noir worthy of a Slashdot review, and I shall attempt to relate some of them without spoiling the plot, but in doing so, I cannot reproduce their sledgehammer impact on the story:
- The elevation of intellectual property to the ultimate standard of value.
- Violation of copyright becomes punishable by death, and later by the imprisonment of the violator's seat of intellect within "trophies" - such as toasters and audio equipment - delivered to the copyright holder.
- The rights of debt holders become supreme, outlasting even the death of the debtor. Those who die in debt are reanimated until they work off their debt, if they can.
- Corporate management philosophy becomes modelled after that of the street pimp; psychological destitution of the employee is embraced as the optimal strategy for human resource management.
- In the ultimate victory of marketing over content, TIAC, or Turd In A Can, becomes the overt ideal of capitalism: use marketing and packaging to sell the customer as little value as possible, for the maximum price.
You can purhase this book at Fatbrain.
--NDW
Some examples of past winners:
- The corpse exuded the irresistible aroma of a piquant, ancho chili glaze enticingly enhanced with a hint of fresh cilantro as it lay before him, coyly garnished by a garland of variegated radicchio and caramelized onions, and impishly drizzled with glistening rivulets of vintage balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic oil; yes, as he surveyed the body of the slain food critic slumped on the floor of the cozy, but nearly empty, bistro, a quick inventory of his senses told corpulent Inspector Moreau that this was, in all likelihood, an inside job.
- The moment he laid eyes on the lifeless body of the nude socialite sprawled across the bathroom floor, Detective Leary knew she had committed suicide by grasping the cap on the tamper-proof bottle, pushing down and twisting while she kept her thumb firmly pressed against the spot the arrow pointed to, until she hit the exact spot where the tab clicks into place, allowing her to remove the cap and swallow the entire contents of the bottle, thus ending her life.
- As the fading light of a dying day filtered through the window blinds, Roger stood over his victim with a smoking
.45, surprised at the serenity that filled him after pumping six slugs into the bloodless tyrant that mocked him day after day, and then he shuffled out of the office with one last look back at the shattered computer terminal lying there like a silicon armadillo left to rot on the information superhighway.
It seems that "Noir" would be a shoo-in, if it weren't a real book!--Bob Perry, Milton, MA (1998 Winner)
-- Artie Kalemeris, Fairfax, VA (1997 Winner)
--Larry Brill, Austin, Texas (1994 Winner)
Alex Bischoff
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Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
This book is a Satire of the current day intellectual property trends. Violating copyright is a capital offence.
:-(
The main charactor McNihil, has an interesting name...Mc is a Gaelic construct that means "son of", and Nihil...nihilist, son of a nihilist...also, from Webster's Revised Unabridged
Dictionary:
-Nihil album (L., white nothing) (Chem.), oxide of zinc. See under (Zinc).
-Nihil debet (L., he owes nothing) (Law), the general issue in certain actions of debt.
-Nihil dicit (L., he says nothing) (Law), a declinature by the defendant to plead or answer.
Any of these can apply to our friend Mr. McNihil.
I am sure that if we took the time, we would find many other interesting things about all of the charactors names under similar analysis.
And I would disagree that there is no "cyberspace"...you see, the prowlers are essentially bio-robots that you can be linked
to, and vicariously do things, without catching a disease, or a tatoo. An interesting concept...tatoos that travel like a virus,
or chain letter. But the prowlers are the closest thing to cyberspace, since in this universe where copyright violation is a capital crime, what do you think they would do to hackers? You
can't have a consentual reality for VR, since you really can't share intellectual property. Thus you have ways to do it vicariosly...and since you own the prowler, what you do is your own IP.
Another name, "asp-head" comes from ASCAP, The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. These are the people that
collect royalties and pay them to the people who own the copyrights.
An error, he did not sell is wife to get his "Noir" eyes, he couldn't afford to pay off her debts to allow her to "die" peacefully, because he had his eyes modified (among other things, you laterfind out) You see, in this universe, if you die owning money, your creditors revive you, and sell off your body parts to pay off your debts. You can't escape debt by death.
There is also the reference to BDSM culture..."A bottom always want's to be topped", that is a submissive always find someone to dominate them. And that is how corperate people manage and
sell products. They call it "Pimp Style" management.
There is reference some of his other books, like Dr. Adder. Hence the Dr. Adder clomes (clome being another reference to an earlier work). I haven't read his other books in a long time, but this could be set in the same cyberpunk universe a few of his books are, which are excellent cyberpunk. I guess that is why he was chosen to do the "Bladerunner" books. I also like the fact that he used us Erisians as characators in some of his
early cyberpunk books.
I am a tad bit annoyed, since I was in the middle of re-reading the book to submit a Slashdot Review.
Hail Eris!
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I've read the first of Jeter's Blade Runner sequels and although it had some good ideas, it was rather poorly written. In fact, I've read fanfic which was better executed. Has he improved?
Hey, pick me up some Fastah's at the packy. I wanna get wicked buzzed on Sat!
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
What about "Crash?"
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I've tried 3 times, and couldn't get past the first 20 pages before I got tired of it. and I rarely put books down! I found it MORE interesting to re-read the lord of the rings triology. that's a bad sign when you'd rather re-read a book rather than read the brand new book you just got.
Anyway, I'll most likely give it another shot, but only when all the other books in my house are on holiday or something. Just hope it gets better than the first 20 pages.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
A Harlan Ellison (sp?) classic, actually. An excellent read, IMO, though it only takes a little while to get through (few hours if you are a normal reader)...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I for one am glad about Jeter's comeback. This guy wrote some of the most brilliant and offbeat SF ever before he did those awful bladerunner and star wars books (for monetary reasons I suppose. How much do you get paid for one of these anyway?).
Do yourself a favor and read "Farewell Horizontal" from '89. There might be books out there that are better constructed (Vernor Vinge, Gibson), but this novel has the most cool scenes and ideas I've ever seen in a scifi. Unfortunately it's out of print.
It's almost impossible to have a baseless snobbish opinion of the General Theory of Relativity.
--
That's what I would have though, too. But how about taking a look at the links section on his website and then taking a guess at which side of the issue he comes down on?
It leaves you with a weird impression; on the one hand, you can't believe he's really serious about the scene in which a script-kiddie type is vivisected for providing the hero (acting as an undercover cop) with a key which he claims will provide access to an off-shore internet archive of copyrighted material. On the other hand, given the author's apparent views, you can't help but imagine that you're supposed to take a certain sadistic pleasure in the scene, even if it's just a joke. Since the author doesn't (as far as I can tell) ever present any middle ground, you're left with nothing to go on.
I read the book hoping I'd find some interesting thoughts on copyright issues, and was disappointed. (I was also disappointed by the prose which, as the original poster pointed out, can be tiresome.)
The copy I read actually had a URL in the back that claimed to point to an essay on his views on copryight, but the URL was bad; has anyone actually read that essay?
--Bruce Fields
I'm not familiar with Mickey Spillane. The author that came to my mind was Raymond Chandler, who also does this sort of thing. Compare an excerpt from Noir:
...with an excerpt from Chandler's "The Long Goodbye":
Both of them have digressions, but some side trips are worth more than others....
--Bruce Fields
Some people will regard some of the following as spoilers for those who have not read the book. Be advised. By the time I got through the book I was basically just disappointed. There were at least a couple of bits with potential, but so little seemed to be done with them. As if I have any right to complain; being a good story-teller is hard, and I can't do it. Two specifics:
Is there a requirement that entries cannot be real books? If not, I would seriously consider nominating this one.
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
"She slouched slowly through the smoky door, her feet making short little scraping sounds that reminded me of cats fighting on a hot sultry summer evening when you sit outside with the girl you met after class but never got to know her name because you just wanted to get in her pants...."
etc etc etc... The sheer amount of overly descriptive turn of phrase completely overwhelms the actual point the author is trying to get across, until you're just reading strings upon strings of adjectives and descriptives with the narration completely lost in the noise.
To mis-quote a quote I can't remember the source, "Reading this book is like having your head pushed through a big bowl of slightly warm oatmeal."
Nonetheless, I kept trying to slog through, hoping I could get some hang of the story. Fortunately, the very very overdone prosaic style cleared up, slightly, but then it got much, much worse:
This huge book (it's many many pages long) is nothing more than a thinly veiled rant against copyright infringement!!!
Yep, instead of putting up a website ranting about people stealing copywritten work, like any normally insane ranting raving lunatic would do, this ranting raving lunatic wrote and got published a whole damn nearly 500 page long book!
I was offended, to say the least, that I paid money for this.
The only effect on me of having read this book is that I had the overwhelming urge to scan it in and (violating copyrights left and right) post it somewhere on the internet.
But I held back because I couldn't bear the thought of intentially subjecting anyone else to the horror that was this book.
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
I have an intuition that bughunter's prosaic style mimics Jeter's. Given that, I had more than enough difficulty stomaching the review, let alone trying to dig through the novel in question!
'Dark speculation' is one thing, but from the sounds of it, and from the comments already posted, this book sounds like:
a) A load of tripe
b) A really poor attempt at winning the Bulwer-Lytton competition.
c) A late and poorly executed April Fool's joke.
d) A waste of good reading time.
e) All of the above.
I think I'll spend my book $$$ and reading time on something a little more interesting and culturally and historically significant.
-drin
Read it. Or at least about 10 pages of it :/ Hated it. Glad i only paid half-price for it in a secondhand bookstore (And not at all surprised to see it there, in hindsight.
My god.. i honestly can't remember a worse read than this.
C
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C
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Democracy would work just fine if people weren't so goddamned stupid.
Do yourself a favor and don't read Dr. Adder. It's an extraordinarily poor novel which wasn't even fresh back in the 70's.
The most embarassing thing about the book is the author's deliberately daring effort to include a character who is *gasp* a homosexual. The revelation of the character's sexual preference is presented in a manner that suggests that the author found this shocking, even repulsive. A contemporary reader will be left wondering what the point was.Honesty. Loyalty. Kindness. Laughter. Generosity. Magic!
Good cyberpunk isn't really about what's going to happen in ten years or twenty or fifty or whatever. It's about technological and social trends that are barely visible today, and how they impact human beings. By extrapolating these trends, good authors can make us think about what makes us human, what kind of society we live in, what kind of society we want to create for the future.
Exaggeration is certainly a part of cyberpunk's core sensibility. But exaggeration can be very helpful in illuminating things. Remember Swift's "A Modest Proposal"? It's pure satire, grossly exaggerating the situation in Ireland at the time it was written, but it was very effective in pointing out the disparities between English landowners and Irish poor.
The violence that you see in so many cyberpunk stories is an extrapolation of the violence that's endemic to American society. It's everywhere around us - on TV, in music, in films, in our schools, on our streets, in our prisons.
As for technology, the merging of man and machine isn't currently as radical as you'd see in most cyberpunk stories, but think about this: prosthetic devices are gettting better and better every year, "bionic eyes" are moving closer to reality, genetic manipulation of human DNA is no longer fiction.
By exaggerating current trends, good authors can cause us to look at our current situation and say, "well, it ain't that bad now, but let's look at where we really are headed." Unlike "hard" science fiction of the Asimov school, cyberpunk is less concerned with the "how" of technology than with the "why" of it.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Ha Ha Ha. Good one. ". I have read every classic SW book (none of this new Ep 1 shite)..." Like some SW books are classics and others are crap. Dude... Movie tie-in novels are the lowest form of literature. Lower than Bazooka Joe comix. As low as fanfic. See the setting and the characters are already there . And, of course, you can't just kill off Darth Vader or reveal that Luke and Princess Leia (I would check the spelling but who cares?) actually did the incestuous deed, so artistic freedom isn't even an option. Writers who "create" this crap are whores... Marketing flaks, not anyone to be taken seriously.
"I like to play with things a while... before annihilation!" Ming the Merciless
This isn't even a sentence:
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
Thank you for your polite and well reasoned reply. I appreciate the charm and tact with which you choose to disagree with me. Pleasant interactions like these make me proud to be a member of the Slashdot community. I look forward to enjoying more of your posts.
Sincerely,
Steve O.
Steve O.
I am really, really exhausted.
Fair enough, and I agree that the Chandler excerpt is much better than the Jeter one. Chandler was a magnificent writer. I certainly wouldn't put Jeter in his class.
I do think "Noir" is closer to the Spillane novels, though. Spillane was a rough and tumble writer whose books had lots of flaws, but were still admirable.
I'll stand my statement that Jeter's choice was a style choice, and though the style he chose is not for everyone, it still has merit.
Steve O.
Steve O.
I am really, really exhausted.
I have to disagree with those comments calling "Noir" poorly written. The "detective noir" style that Jeter incorporates into "Noir" is traditionally laden with violent similes and metaphors - often mixed. This, combined with terse, first person narrative and a bleak physical setting creates an unsettling environment in which the confused and desolate inner landscape of the narrator can be seen reflected in the dark and dangerous world he inhabits. This is a style choice, not bad writing. Check out any Mickey Spillane novel and compare it to "Noir".
I enjoyed "Noir" immensely, because it was a skilled mix of two of my favorite genres. It's fine if you don't enjoy the noir style, but don't mistake that dislike for poor writing by the author.
Steve O.
Steve O.
I am really, really exhausted.
I have noticed alot of people have tried but couldn't get into Noir. This does not surpirse me as Jeter is one of the worst authors I have read. A while back he wrote three Star Wars books. Most Star Wars books (even if they suck, like KJA's) I could at leist sit through and read. I have read every classic SW book (none of this new Ep 1 shite) except those 3. I couldn't get past the first 50 pages of Slave Ship and haven't even bothered to buy the other two because I know I can't read them either. I wouldn't trust anythng he writes if he can't even keep a big Star Wars nut into a Star Wars book. His writing style was interesting but the book as so dry I couldn't pay attention. I was able to struggle through Krysten Kathryn Rusche's The New Rebellion which was pretty bad, but at leist had a pace that was readable. Now on the other hand, the writers who wrote the origional SW books, Kathy Tyres and Timothy Zahn, and Mike Stackpole who wrote a mess of the newer ones, are very entertaining reads, and most of their non SW stuff is pretty good too, especially Zahn. This post is somewhat off topic, but it is on topic as it is a criticism of the author who wrote the book.
well-written review- if you're trying to impress your English teacher! Moderately useful, though I'm not likely to read something like this, especially as it sounds too ambitious to pull everything off in one book.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
i would posit that violence is not endemic to our society, but rather that it is endemic to our culture -- books, movies, tv programming, music.
modern sensational journalism has ruinously distorted our picture of the world, making us afraid of our own neighbors.
this in turn stimulates the deterioration of community behaviors, which does promote people to feel helpless and lawless.
i would like to rest the blame for this cycle of fear, uncertainty, and doubt squarely on the media that depend upon it for their job security.
of course, we all eagerly consume those media...
---
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
> I can do anything I set my mind to!
OK, I wanna see you set your mind to skiing
through a revolving door.
Chris Mattern
I read the entire review, it wasn't poorly written, but it fell into the same old 31337 trap. "If I like this book / person / thing that I anticipate will be cool, people will think I'm cool too!"
!-- wit --!
I may take a break and pick up one of Jeter's works, maybe even this one.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If you like Noir, you might also try Dr. Adder. Jeter wrote it in 1972 and it has a lot of the elements of cyberpunk but in a wierd twisted way. The story revolves around a guy named, you guessed it, Dr. Adder who gives his clients drugs to get at their deepest sub-concious fantasies. Then he modifies prostitutes (physically and genetically) to meet those clients desires. There are also wierd sub-plots that take place in the post-apocalyptic (now cliche, but at the time it wasn't) Los Angeles. There are roving groups of people who have random assasination parties, religious conservatives who control the media, wierd underground societies. Very strange but cool book that wouldn't have been published without the help of Philip K. Dick, who convinced the publisher to put it out despite the content. -toe jam
- toe jam football
The parent post to this one was a question on the cyberpunk genre, that this book is supposedly a close relation of. That seems on topic to me.
Continuing the previous poster's point, I too find many such novels to be excessively violent, and to describe scenarios that are very far fetched, both technologically and socially. This is especially poignant since they are usually set in the near future, when it should be reasonable to expect a lot of continuity from today.
If these books have made an accurate (I think it's more appealing than accurate; they seem more like macho fantasies to me) portrayal of hackers, they have also given up all semblance of accuracy on other characters. Unless the Internet is truly the next big revolutionary thing, and hackers really do assume god-like powers, the portrayals are more comic than relevant.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
No, I do understand the words, but he could have said it with much less fluff. When it contains fluff, it usually means it's a truckload full of shit.
I have begun to worry that intellectual property, corporations, and trade groups are stifling innovation, which has taken me full circle from being a big fan of Microsoft to a reluctant user looking for a way out. With the RIAA killing Napster or at least disemboweling it, AFTRA killing many radio recasts, and MS screwing MP3 formats on XP, the government increasingly siding with business and having an insane level of power for invading our privacy, it reallys makes me a little paranoid. But, even if you aren't paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't after you.
First day of CallieGirl's Dystopia online today at unholyrouter.com
Disclaimer: There is no guarantee that the content has been read or understood
Anybody intrigued by this book will also want to
chase down a copy of one of Jeter's earlier
books, Doctor Adder. It's a good read.
You're right. It's over-the-top.
Just like 'Hiro Protagonist' was.
Jetah is bettah than Nomah!!
No, Nomah is bettah than Jetah!
I'm sorry, thats all I could think of when I saw the authors name.
btw, you probably won't get this unless you live between boston and new york.
is "John McNihil". Is Jeter serious? Are there characters named Senator William O'Politician and Joe Garbageman too? Does Skeletor make a guest appearance? If you are going to make ridiculous character names, then it has to fit the literature and be so overt that it doesn't make any attempt to be plausible. Or you can use names that have just a tinge of meaning to them, without bonking you over the head.
"John McNihil" is neither. So it comes off like some contrived cartoonish b-movie name like "Jack Fist" or "Tina Love"
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Stay in school, kids! Peace out, Dubya