Customer Reviews

Dead Girls, Dead Boys, Dead Things

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have read only the first and last of Mr. Calder's magnum opus. I ache to possess the rest. I look up from his pages as though through a deep mist; my heart palpitates, my scalp twitches, & I wonder at this lackluster earth. Seriously, sometimes I need a nightcap of Rimbaud just so I can get grounded enough to sleep, to dream... His writing is the worst kind of drug, the best kind of drug: it is morbid addiction (unto death), flesh of the gods. To read him once is to read him always.

The title for this review is a four word summary provided by a classmate in a seminar this evening. It nicely encapsulates the problems many of us had with Calder's effort.

The first book is the strongest of the three, spending most of its time focussed on a rather twisted story of young lovers on the run. The second book is the weakest of the three, spending way too much time on the central theme of the eroticising of sexual torture and death and working through a mind-numbing series of permutations and combinations of same. The third book tries to tie together the various shreds and bits of plot scattered among the bits and pieces of dead girls and boys from the first two books and, ultimately, fails. The conclusion of the trilogy ends up being a series of explanations for the events in the books, some more or less absurd than others. The ending, after all of the suffering portrayed in the trilogy, is trite and unsatisfying.

Calder's plotting is a weak point, but his writing style is interesting. If the journey is the reward, the telling of the story in the Dead trilogy is at least a partial reward. He covers much trodden ground (Naked Lunch, Videodrome, Blade Runner, American Psycho) in some new and interesting ways. His vocabulary left me scrambling to look words up.

In the end, the absurd plotting and overly long presentation made "Dead Girls, Dead Boys, Dead Things" a disappointment.

Wipe the cyber-eroto-quantum gick from the face of this self-importantly bizarre trilogy of books and you're left with a story so contrived and goofy that even Alfred Bester would have turned up his eyes at it. Noisy nonsense about a plague of vampire girls who're infecting the world, told through the eyes of a British refugee who's grown enamored of one of these lethal ladies.

Eventually the plotting and the sub-fanfic ludicrousness of the whole affair gets the better of it and leaves it smouldering in a wreckheap of tarted-up wordplay. The plotting is bewildering enough and yet at the same time contrived enough to be sufficiently appealing to those who think William Gibson was a pansy -- this guy makes Gibson look downright tame, sure, but is that kind of goal really worth aiming for? Jive highbrow gibberings about idea-viruses and other such things don't make the story any more credible.

It's probably possible to contort yourself into a position where this sort of cold, unpleasant junk represents a major statement of some kind, but those whose hip credentials don't depend on it shouldn't bother.

"Dead Girls Dead Boys Dead Things" is a profound book for those with the patience, vocabulary and literary mastership to undertake it. It is not for the weak of heart; it has both graphic sexual and violent content, however they are presented in an artful (if not at all times tasteful) way. Although the plot may be difficult to follow if you're not devoted to the story, it is well worth it if you have the patience to overcome the somewhat obscure vocabulary used in the book; however, I feel that Calder's lyrical form of narration and description, founded upon his obscure but far-reaching vocabulary are one of the book's most endearing qualities. Anyone who wants a good challange, who enjoys sci-fi or who likes books which take unexpected twists and turns, finally concluding in an unforseen ending will enjoy this book immensly.

Richard Calder's DEAD GIRLS breaks new ground in a once-innovative literary movement that has unfortunately become stagnant in recent years. All of you cyberpunk fans are familiar with William Gibson's NEUROMANCER, and although we all owe the inventor of cyberspace a debt of gratitude, it is obvious that Gibson's brilliant novel spawned a slew of imitators seeking to capitalize on the popularity of hard-edged futuristic prose. Calder is different. This is not prose at all, this is high-voltage poetry; this is rampant, blood thumping word art. I couldn't stop reading. Don't bother trying to dissect the proposed technology in DEAD GIRLS, or waste energy researching the occasional windy vocabulary word, just absorb the ambience. Grant Calder his post/retro-apocalyptic-adolescent-vampire premise. Somehow he makes it work. Just be happy he let you tag along for the ride.

Richard Calder's DEAD GIRLS breaks new ground in a once-innovative literary movement that has unfortunately become stagnant in recent years. All of you cyberpunk fans are familiar with William Gibson's NEUROMANCER, and although we all owe the inventor of cyberspace a debt of gratitude, it is obvious that Gibson's brilliant novel spawned a slew of imitators seeking to capitalize on the popularity of hard-edged futuristic prose. Calder is different. This is not prose at all, this is high-voltage poetry; this is rampant, blood thumping word art. I couldn't stop reading. Don't bother trying to dissect the proposed technology in DEAD GIRLS, or waste energy researching the occasional windy vocabulary word, just absorb the ambience. Grant Calder his post/retro-apocalyptic-adolescent-vampire premise. Somehow he makes it work. Just be happy he let you tag along for the ride.

Gore Vidal said famously that long passages of *Gravity's Rainbow* require more effort to read than it apparently took Pynchon to compose - that verbal imagination had far overreached the restraining subtleties of craft and artifice, producing a congested, overwritten narrative whose exuberance is (simultaneously) its opacity. While Richard Calder's difficult tale does not always maintain the necessary balance between over-the-top yahoo invention and tight controlled craftsmanship (the elusive crux of postmodern artistry), his bold attempts to square the narrative circle (especially against the backdrop of mass-market SF) is often fascinating to watch, with important narratological lessons embedded therein. Ignatz's trespassing love for the wrathweary female assassin Primavera, coeval with the technocratic steppes of a Eurasian cyberiad, is told with genuine passion, yet throughout the reader can't escape the feeling that s/he's entered the realm of literary comic books, an introverted David Lynch fantasy-land where Calder is free to play out his fetishistic narrative constructs. I recommend the Dead Trilogy to younger writers as a moratorium against the Oxygen Debt of linguistic overindulgence, in contrast to the more tempered workmanship of, say, a Jack Womack, or a Neal Stephenson. As Vidal put it, "Energy and intelligence are not in balance, and the writer fails in his ambition to be a god of creation.... This is entropy with a vengeance."

Beautifully written poetic epic about true love in a world gone utterly mad. The narrative style reminded me of William Faulkner's "Sound and the Fury" while the plot is a crazy mix of classic cyberpunk and Anne Rice style sexy vampire lore. This book has everything -- from raw sex filled with Freudian imagery to unadulterated tales of conspiracy and murder. But when push comes to shove, it is a beautiful tale of true love. True love in a STRANGE, STRANGE world.

This trilogy is without a doubt the finest piece of writing I have read this year. This series is not for all but if you like Jeff Noon or Michael Moorcock you must pick up this book. Calder's way with words and his style draw you deep into this nightmare world which is a reflection of our own. Calder's points about life in the information age and the war of the sexes are rapier sharp and dead on. A beautiful and dark collection that engages the reader from beginning to end. A must read!

These books are a obssesive read, once in you have to finish. Calder's world sucks you in, just as the Meta girls, boys and things suck life out of each other. Don't try to conciously keep details in mind, rather let them swirl and mingle until you can smell a Doll or see a Elohim out of the corner of your eyes. Read best at night, not for the easily moralistic or the quickly offended. I like all three as they don't seem to try so hard to be sci-fi or cyber-sexy, they just are.