Be Specific About Books Toward Gun, With Occasional Music
Original Title: | Gun, with Occasional Music |
ISBN: | 0156028972 (ISBN13: 9780156028974) |
Edition Language: | English |
Setting: | Oakland, California(United States) |
Literary Awards: | Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novel (1994), Locus Award for Best First Novel (1995), IAFA William L. Crawford Fantasy Award (1995), SF Chronicle Award Nominee for Best Novel (1995), Tähtivaeltaja Award (2002) |
Jonathan Lethem
Paperback | Pages: 271 pages Rating: 3.78 | 9503 Users | 961 Reviews
Ilustration As Books Gun, With Occasional Music
Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf has problems—there's a rabbit in his waiting room and a trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. Near-future Oakland is a brave new world where evolved animals are members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage.Metcalf has been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent doctor. Perhaps he's falling a little in love with her at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor's Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of a bar called the Fickle Muse.
Mixing elements of sci-fi, noir, and mystery, this clever first novel from the author of Motherless Brooklyn is a wry, funny, and satiric look at all that the future may hold.
Declare Epithetical Books Gun, With Occasional Music
Title | : | Gun, With Occasional Music |
Author | : | Jonathan Lethem |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | First Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 271 pages |
Published | : | September 1st 2003 by Mariner Books (first published March 1994) |
Categories | : | Fiction. Science Fiction. Mystery. Noir. Crime |
Rating Epithetical Books Gun, With Occasional Music
Ratings: 3.78 From 9503 Users | 961 ReviewsJudge Epithetical Books Gun, With Occasional Music
For the truly sick individuals that pay attention to my meanderings on Goodreads, you'll note that I frequently take notes as I'm reading. Except when I don't. And I didn't, much, while reading this. Why? Because 1) I was too engrossed in the story, 2) things happened so fast that I didn't have time to process them, and 3) I have no good way of actually conveying what I thought as I read. So, "why", you ask "are you even writing this review, Forrest?" - because: Duty. You see, back in 2017, ISci fi, maybe? Definitely noir. This is one of the most unusual and interesting books I've read . . . maybe ever. The only thing that comes close are the bizarro titles I've read this year, but this has the extra bonus of being three times the length of most of those books.Conrad Metcalf, PI (Private Inquisitor), lives in a world where conversation is frowned upon, and asking questions is permitted only by professional Inquisitors. Everyone functions by using drugs (Forgettol, Acceptol, etc),
Like Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs, this is detective story set in scifi setting with some dystopian flavor (all descendent of Asimov's Baley-Olivaw)--that makes it part of the nerd-boiled sub-genre.I suppose nerd-boiled fiction isn't really for me. It's got some cool ideas (articulate animals & infants, lotsa creative narcotics, Hindu ideas for law enforcement), but generally it appears that it solves dystopian fiction's universal problem of slick setting/stupid story by superimposing the
Video reviewManages to offer some of the most unforgettable world-building I've ever read without pausing the action for more than a few words at a time. Offers an absurd dystopian future that's just absurd enough to be convincing. Fuses hardboiled with scifi as seamlessly as to be unfair. Rocks.
The style and voice and plot are pure Raymond Chandler, set in a weird future of talking kangaroos and mind-altering drugs. It's a wild ride that's largely successful, though not as ambitious as other futuristic genre mash-ups (for example, China Mieville's The City and The City), in part because it hews pretty closely to a standard Chandler-esque plot and in part because the futuristic elements aren't quite as developed. Still, there are moments of sheer brilliance here.
Jonathan Lethem, an obsessive reader of the sloppy but exhilaratingly inventive Phillip K. Dick, began his writing career with a period of somewhat less sloppy but still exhilaratingly inventive science fiction of his own. Not to say that Lethem's sci-fi is better than Dick's but that at his best, his prose is a little more even, his concepts a little more tightly executed. Gun, a wildly entertaining noir set in a future where developmental biology is in boom and drugs aren't just legalized but
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