man known only as Clay awakes in a future so distant that the world has changed beyond recognition. There is no longer a moon in the sky, the history of the time he came from is long forgotten, and humanity has fractured into several separate species, all so different from one another that communication between them is almost impossible. He is soon adopted by a band of Skimmers, wanderers who exist for pleasure and who seem to consider him a lost puppy, even as they include him in their sex games and their wild, world-shaking Five Rites. He appreciates their companionship but grows frustrated with their inability to relate to any of his references about the world he knew.
Wandering further afield, he encounters additional wonders, ranging from abandoned cities to exotic animals to places where normal-world physics seems to have taken a holiday. He journeys across a land called Heavy, which threatens to crush him with every step. He confronts two competing bands of Destroyers, who exist to bury the world beneath expanding zones of fire and ice. He even meets up with a being called Wrong, the leader of every destructive or evil force in this strange new world, though there won't be any great heroic battle between them.
The dazzled Clay remains lost throughout, bouncing from one dangerous situation to another, struggling to make sense of what he sees, enjoying all the pleasures the future world provides him, but suffering from the absence of any continuity with the world he knew. When he finds himself unable to return to the Skimmers, and learns that they're hiding from him, he is compelled to make peace with the unimaginable future.
Washed in the joy of the alien
A lone man from our time awakens in a future world where humanity has fractured into several different species, some of whom possess powers well beyond his own, and some of whom simply want to eat him. Others, he learns, are servants of a dark figure known only as Wrong.
We all know where this is going, don't we? Sooner or later the lone man will join a motley band of adventurers, comprising representatives of all the "good" species, on a heroic quest to find and defeat Wrong. He may even prove to be the pivotal figure in this endeavor, whose coming has been foretold in prophecy. We know this because that's where stories like this have always gone and will, presumably, continue to go.
But Son of Man turns out to be nothing like that. Wrong exists, and has some dangerous minions, but turns out to be just another wonder in a world overflowing with wonders. There is no real plot, per se. Our protagonist, Clay, is no larger-than-life hero, but a baffled and sometimes pigheaded wanderer bounced from one incomprehensible situation to another, whose understanding of the miracles that confront him never translates into the capacity to affect them except by accident. Many of the creatures he encounters are too alien for meaningful communication. His closest companions, the sex-changing Skimmers, are infuriating hedonists, who delight in calling down miracles in the form of their world-shaking Five Rites, but have little interest in anything beyond the strictly sensual, and consider Clay something between exotic pet and sex toy. More dangerous creatures, like the carnivorous Eater who chases Clay through the bowels of an abandoned City, want only to devour him, but not out of malice; it's just a lifestyle choice.
The rejection slip for one of the major SF magazines used to have a checklist explaining the various possible reasons to turn down a submission. One would describe the story as a "catalogue of wonders", in which the passive protagonist wanders through a miraculous landscape, gaping slack-jawed at every marvel that confronts him. Son of Man flirts with being that catalogue of wonders. Clay is chased by monsters. He is melted into particles by a phosphorescent river. He is transformed into a sentient carrot. He is subjected to rapid aging. He makes a friend at the bottom of a lake. He changes genders during sex. He finds himself trapped in a hellish region known as Slow, where it seems to take hundreds of years to take even a single step. He moves through one vivid alien landscape after another, in a world that has forgotten everything of the civilization he knew, among creatures whose concerns and passions are not his own. It is vivid, it is sensual, it is sexy, it is powerful and infuriating and pretentious and often very funny. Though only a little over 200 pages, it is still a great big hallucination of a book.
