artha Nova, a young singer and songwriter, is discovered by Abe Levett, a young man with no prospects except for his abilities as a promoter of musical talents. In the oppressive, economically strained and war-torn world of the early 21st century, Martha soon becomes the voice of the legions of aimless young people who call themselves the Children and who hear prophecies in the lyrics of Martha's songs.
Getting Near the End begins on New Year's Eve as Martha, after a long silence and an exile partly encouraged by the Mental Health Administration that dominates the United States, is about to release her first new album in five years. With her in her hotel suite is her lover, Robert Duke, a musician whose fame has long since faded, and her child, Daniel, whose father is unknown. As they prepare to go to a party to celebrate Martha's new release, Daniel and Robert watch the return of a manned spaceship from Mars, while Martha, who has believed since childhood that she can see into the future, sees her own life, and perhaps everything else, soon coming to an end. Martha's rise to stardom; her relationships with Levett, Duke and her eerily precocious son; and her connection to the one surviving astronaut from NASA's first mission to Mars are gradually revealed as the novel moves backward and forward in time, opening up this story with each successive revelation.
Getting Near the End is the second novel by Andrew Weiner, author of the novel Station Gehenna (1988) and two short-story collections, Distant Signals and Other Stories (1990) and This Is the Year Zero (1998). His other writing includes six volumes of nonfiction as well as articles for a number of publications, and his work as a rock journalist and a business writer brings a high level of realistic detail to this novel.
Suspenseful and sharply drawn
The influence of other well-known science-fiction writers is apparent in Getting Near the End. Robert J. Sawyer, in his introduction to this novel, cites J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick and Barry N. Malzberg as inspirations for Andrew Weiner's work. The mysterious apparition that appears to Martha as a child and that pulls together the threads of the story also evokes memories of Alfred Bester's classic The Stars My Destination, while the rock-star milieu and insights into pop culture are reminiscent of some of Norman Spinrad's work.
But Weiner also brings his own distinctive gifts to this novel, among them a quiet, understated and yet compelling voice, an economical style that hints at much more than is apparent onstage, and the ability to construct a complex story and to populate it with a variety of thoroughly believable characters. Martha Nova, seen during much of the novel through the eyes of her manager, Abe Levett, her lover, Robert Duke, her devoted fan Kevin and the tormented astronaut Jake Denning, remains as fascinating and enigmatic as her real-life counterparts in pop culture often are, right up until the author reveals her memories and inner thoughts before sweeping to a conclusion that seems both startling and inevitable.
The sense of cool detachment and world-weariness Weiner conveys, appropriate for this tale of a worn-out civilization, is enlivened by his wit and his insights into both the art and the business of rock music and pop culture. Getting Near the End is a novel that amply rewards thoughtful readers while beautifully evoking the spirit of our own dark and troubled times.
