t’s difficult to describe Steve Aylett’s surreal novel (well, novelette)
Atom. Let’s see: smooth-talking, slick-dressing, cool-gadget-toting gumshoe
Taffy Atom is hunting for the preserved brain of the author Franz Kafka, an item
sorely coveted by crooks the Candyman and Thermidor, who are pursuing Atom with
various lethal intentions.
Of course, Kitty, a slinky heartbreaker of a gun moll,
figures in the story, too. (“Standard-issue blonde. All distinguishing marks
removed.”) Some hired thugs add character, and don’t forget Taffy Atom’s
sidekicks: Maddy, a hot babe-cum-hardware whiz who’s a Heinlein wet dream,
and Jed, the belligerent talking piranha.
Why does everyone want Kafka’s brain enough to kill for it? And can we talk
about the guy who’s obsessed with transplanting a bug’s brain into a man’s body,
or vice versa? Between psychoactive weapons, surreal special effects and characters
who deliver hardboiled dialogue with their irony firmly clenched between their
teeth, the story reads like William Burroughs on acid rewriting Dick Tracy. To
say that Atom is a madcap romp doesn’t begin to describe it. The finale delivers
a scene of vividly drawn, farcical terror that might well be the climax of the
unholy union between Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Howard the Duck.
A stylistic triumph of the surreal
Steve Aylett has a delightfully acerbic, stylish way with language. His meaning is
not always clear, but the book is worth reading just for the logophilic glee of phrases
such as:
Maddy built a frieze to the sacred dimensions. Sometimes Atom wished he could
kiss her brain directly. Her eyes, in defiance of the prevailing trend, were open.
She was an angel as real as the bones in her body.
Welcome to the futuristic Beerlight, where psychobabble has become a science
and a gun can just as easily trap you in a looped sequence of time as put a bullet
through you. The quirky logic of the novelette must be read with care to catch all
the flips and turns of meaning. Readers who enjoyed the glossy, high style and the
pseudoscientific Jetsons world of the New Wave era of science fiction should find
much to savor in this short work.
There are some drawbacks. The stylistic complexity risks making the plot so murky
as to be near-incomprehensible. And as to character development, there is none.
Taffy Atom is the science fictional competent man to beat all competent men.
Everything goes right for him. Nothing fazes him. Men admire him and women
twitch their hips at him. Even his coat loves him. There’s never a glimpse
into his thoughts, his fears or his doubts. Maddy is the reincarnation of
Myrna Loy’s character Nora, the beautiful, smart-mouthed sidekick from the
Thin Man movies of the 1930s. There is a sexual tension between
Atom and Maddy, but drawn with so light a pencil as to be almost negligible.
And the ragbag cast of bumbling cops and goofy crooks is a riot to watch in
action, but none of them ever convinces as a fully-drawn person. The characters
are all types, but, though interesting to watch, they
are paper thin. It’s sometimes difficult
to feel engaged with or relate to them.
But man, this stuff is fun to read!
“Wha’ kinda goldfish is that--it’s a goddamn monster!”
With a thrash the fish stuck its expression out of the water and snarled through
the clenched grid of its mouth. “Define your terms, meathead.”
Joanna’s bulk wired with shock. “It’s talkin’ semantics!”
Aylett has delivered a psychic mindblow that is stronger for
being shorter. If Atom
were novel-length, likely both the writer and the reader would tire as the book limped
to an exhausted end. As it is though, Atom careens along gleefully, and it’s
a breathless and bumpy ride.
