Farewell Horizontal (Worlds of Imagination)

Rating:
Summary: If you only read one...
Review: If you only read one K.W. Jeter book then you are missing out on some of the most significant science fiction of the last twenty five years. Still, this is the one to read if one is your ambition. Astounding ideas, breathless surgical execution and the very best gusto an amateur can bring to the field, here wrapped in one pocket-sized package by a true professional. How many authors could pull off a motorcycle chase up the side of a building and still make you want to read more? Simply marvellous.

Rating:
Summary: Not Jeter's Best, but Surely Worth Reading
Review: It deserves to be read. It is an ambitious experiment: can a novel reproduce a videogame? Jeter succeeded in doing that. The novel is a videogame. But it is a videogame on paper, peopled by characters with a soul and a (sometime) questioning mind (one of these is Sai). The apparent plot is a frantic adventure in a surrealistic virtual world whose shape is a scandal for reason. But here and there Jeter suggested that things aren't exactly what they seem (he was a friend of Philip K. Dick, after all), and there's more in this novel than the breathless quest of Ny Axxter in a grotesque cyberworld (maybe the ultimate cyberworld). Basically it is a satire of many aspects of the videogame imagery/subculture, and a discussion of its covert ideology. Not as food as other novels by the same author, Dr. Adder and The Glass Hammer, but a novel worth reading. And subtly funny most of the time. 'Tis a pity it's out of print!

Rating:
Summary: A gripping hard SF thriller
Review: Jeter invented a truely wonderful world for this novel. The setting is a huge, cylindrical building that towers above the earth. Most of society exists inside the building but those who are outside society, on the edge, live on the outside of the building, on the "Vertical".

The novel's protagonist, Ny Axxter lives on this wall and tries to make a living as a freelance artist working with video and graffex. One day, he has what appears to be a stroke of good fortune and he thinks that he is on the verge of making it into the big time as a major artist.

At this point, his world starts to fall to pieces and he discovers that reality is not what he, and everyone else thought and that the major players in his world now want him out of the way.

While many parts of the world are unexplained, Jeter throws in enough in the way of technical details to make this hard SF and not fantasy. The writing style is very sharp.

Jeter is regarded by many as an heir to the mantle of the great P.K.Dick and this book is worthy of that regard. I always think that a sign of good writing is the quality of the pictures inside my head as I read and, on the measure, this was very good indeed.

Farewell Horizontal is a gripping read and I highly recommended it.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutley brilliant sci fi romp.
Review: See the other description for what this is about. This is one of my favourite books. The idea is totally origional and all my friends say the same. Gives a breath of fresh air to sci-fi.