Noir

Reader bughunter contributed the review below of K.W. Jeter's Noir, which sounds like a good book to not read aloud to your small children, but otherwise intriguing: Dark, twisty speculation in the same vein as William Gibson and other pioneers.

Noir author K. W. Jeter pages 496 publisher Bantam Spectra rating 8 reviewer bughunter ISBN 0553576380 summary A dark-as-its-name novel in the tradition of cyberpunk but with even more cynical twists.

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.

And with many brilliantly unpredictable plot twists, these devices and many, many more are used to escalate and then resolve the story's conflict in a feat of literary genius. Just admitting that much to a potential reader is a spoiler -- Jeter pulls off what seems to be impossible, but foreknowledge of this feat also allows one to appreciate Jeter's skill on the first read, rather than only in retrospect. Noir is perhaps the only novel that can be simultaneously compared with Brave New World , The Name of the Rose, The Diamond Age, and Hannibal. It shines darkly like polished obsidian, complete with a razor edge.

You can purhase this book at Fatbrain.

Comments

Re:What a hideously bad book

[abischof]

For similar such quotes, you may wish to check out the Bulwer Lytton contest. This contest -- to write the most hideous opening line to a hypothetical novel -- is named in honor of Lytton, as he was the fellow to write the legendarily bad opening "It was a dark and stormy night...".

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.
  --Bob Perry, Milton, MA (1998 Winner)
• 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.
  -- Artie Kalemeris, Fairfax, VA (1997 Winner)
• 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.
  --Larry Brill, Austin, Texas (1994 Winner)

It seems that "Noir" would be a shoo-in, if it weren't a real book!

Alex Bischoff
---

Re:Yes, but is it well written?

[banky]

It's not very well-written. The prose is dense, only not in a way that I would call compelling (like, say, Vinge or Wolfe). It meanders, it poorly visualizes many aspects of the world (crucial in sci-fi, since you're dealing with things that often are way outside the norm), its got long, boring gaps. Its just not... tight, I guess, for lack of a better word. Cohesive, maybe, is better. Like someone you know who's really smart and inventive, but can't explain how to make a baloney sandwitch without telling you what they did last night, that time they took a road trip to Ontairio...

one comment though...

[GoNINzo]

I'm a big fan of Cyberpunk and Blade Runner. I had read his previous book, Blade Runner 2, but I had trouble getting into it except for my great interest in the characters. by having a pre-defined interest in the characters themselves, I forced myself to keep going. However, when I picked up Noir like 6 months ago, I expected something I could get into.

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

What a hideously bad book

[Ledge Kindred]

I slogged through this piece of trash hoping it would get better, but it never did. The title Noir is particulary appropriate as, if any book could get the classification of "bad, barely b-grade film noir style" this would be the one. Stuff like (I'm making this up)

"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.

-=-=-=-=-

Dr. Adder

[toe jam football]

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

What's on topic here?

[Proud Geek]

Since this article is a book review, personally, I'd consider discussions of the novel in question to be on topic. Secondary topics that I'd also consider to be completely on topic are discussions of other similar books, or discussions of issues raised in the book.

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.