- Paperback: 366 pages
- Publisher: Flamingo; New edition edition (May 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0552148970
- ISBN-13: 978-0552148979
- Product Dimensions: 3.2 x 10.8 x 17.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 159 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #591,673 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Another deranged performance from Robert Rankin: The Fandom of the Operator mixes surreal silliness, ghastly old jokes and a vein of apocalyptic bleakness, as in his previous novel Web Site Story.
Young hero or anti-hero Gary Cheese grows up in a warped 1950s Brentford with two main interests: death, and the Lazlo Woodbine private-eye novels (see Waiting for Godalming) by PP Penrose. When this revered author dies, it's only logical that Gary and his bestest friend Dave should plan to crash the wake and reanimate him with voodoo. Black comedy follows, with highly uncomic results.
Years later, Gary at 22 has a dead-end telecomms job of stupefying tedium. He waits for a light to come on, and turns it off. That's all. This work is implausibly connected to the FLATLINE project--phone contact with the afterlife. The dead can reveal bizarre and terrible secrets, but meanwhile there's a lot Gary hasn't been telling us about his own history. Just how many people has he killed? Or was it actually him?
The mixture includes a barman who senses customers' True Names ("If it isn't the Honourable Valdec Firesword, Archduke of Alpha Centuri"),unlikely celebrity parties, car chases, copious and disgusting zombie sex, alien mind control, yet another secret base under Mornington Crescent tubestation, an ever-growing body count, and so many onion-layers of conspiracy and secret masters as to produce an effect of cosmic, transcendent pointlessness. Eat your heart out, Philip K Dick.
Robert Rankin is uniquely off-the-wall, unparalleled in his eccentricity: there's no other comic fantasy author like him. Thank heavens for that. --David Langford --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Upon "the tragic early death" of British spoofmaster Rankin, his latest novel was dictated from the beyond to medium Lorretta Rune or so claims the book's back-flap author description. Longtime fans know better, of course: Rankin is a master of sophisticated (and sophomoric) practical jokes. His novels are cult classics in England and are attracting a growing following in the U.S. In this installment, Gary Charlton Cheese, abused child, serial killer, amateur necromancer, rabid fan of deceased writer P.P. "Charles" Penrose and bulb boy at the local telephone exchange, decides to "change things" in his boring life. Then he discovers, with the assistance of another employee, that the telephone exchange harbors a secret: FLATLINE, a phone line to the dead. "You dial in the full name of the deceased and the date of their departure. Then times the figure that comes up on the screen by the age of the person when they died and take away the year they were born and, wallah, you have your dialing code," explains a developmental services employee to Cheese. And voil , Cheese finds himself in communication with the dead. Subsequently, a whole new world opens up for the put-upon hero, whose wife, Sandra, has been shagging other guys, including his "bestest friend" in the whole world, Dave. Now he can talk to his dead dad or, say, Elvis but more importantly, he can dial up Penrose. The convoluted plot invariably leads to the question all fans must ask their favorite author "Where do you get your ideas from?" and the answer is revealed in the inimitable, roundabout Rankin way. Happily ridiculous and relentlessly funny, this is just the ticket for those who like dark British farce.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sorta funny,
By Dr. Christopher Coleman (HONG KONG) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Fandom of the Operator (Hardcover)
I read Fandom of the Operator because of ONE blurb on the back: Terry Prachett, author of the Discworld series, wrote "One of the rare guys who can always make me laugh." Well, that, and the fact that I picked it up cheap at a used booksale for charity. I won't go into the plot too much--suffice it to say that the ludicrous plot is the source of most of the humor, and alien mind control and raising the dead play a big part. It's a very silly book with more twists than an anaconda committing suicide, and nobody can rightly say they figured it out in advance. But for me it wasn't terribly satisfying. It's basically light entertainment, with a tiny touch of sex and a bit of disgusting stuff for fun. Discworld's much richer textured and funnier. I can't see it being worth the price asked here at Amazon--I think that's cause it's a UK book, and I'll bet you can get it in paperback from amazon.uk much cheaper. If you're someone who roars at the humor of the title, you'll go for it big. But the cover blurb, from the Daily Express, says it all for me, "Everybody should read at least one Robert Rankin book in their life." Well, now I have.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.2 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews) 9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Try the Audiobook!,
By JustSomeReader - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Fandom of the Operator (Paperback)
I borrowed this from the library as an audiobook before a roadtrip and loved it. I think though, being an American and prone to reading things with an American's timing, rather than a Brit's, that I would have missed the humor had I not heard it read by the author. This book is funny, but exponentially more funny read aloud by Rankin. Reading it to myself, I would have likely rated it much lower, as I think I'd have mistimed the delivery.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
audio version is a must have,
By Xava - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Fandom of the Operator (Paperback)
I agree with another reviewer... I listened to the audio version, his dry wit and sarcasm came across in a way that I'm not sure would have by reading it in print, especially since Rankin is the speaker as well. I highly recommend the audio version over print. I wish more of his books were available in audio, in fact!
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not awesome, not bad either. You got a couple of hours?,
By Sarah Straight "Riot Grrl Literatus" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Fandom of the Operator (Paperback)
Robert Rankin's books are kind of like a really good BBC television show. Superficially, they don't take a lot of brainpower to comprehend, they're hysterically funny, and there are really only like, six characters in the whole series.Conversely, the real reason they're so funny is because there's a core of intelligence and education to them that one rarely sees in American media. I've actually learned quite a few interesting things in researching offhand jokes about obscure historical characters, for instance. All in all, I'd never call any of his novels life-changing gems of intellectualism, but I'm always pretty glad that I've read them. |
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