Винаги изпитвам перверзно удоволствие, когато се натъкна на някой умопомрачително добър хорър автор, за който само съм чувал (...и не знам защо винаги съм смятал, че пише книги във вселената на "Междузвездни войни"). В действителност Майкъл Маршал Смит не пише книги за джедаи и светлинни мечове, а за доста по-различни неща. Съвсем случайно се натъкнах на няколко негови разказа в различни британски антологии, които направо ме накараха да преосмисля литературните си предпочитания, защото ако има автор, който може с няколко страници да те накара да размишляваш дни (че и месеци) наред, то това е именно този англичанин...Та, да продължа откъдето започнах. Смит е англичанин, а много хора вече знаят за афинитета ми към тези творци. Не е един примерът с покъртителни автори от ранга на Клайв Баркър, Кристофър Прийст, Брайън Лъмли и кой ли още не. Смит съвсем не им отстъпва, но, разбира се, няма място за сравнения помежду им, всеки от гореизброените писатели твори в свои собствени насоки, различни от тези на останалите.Какво представлява "За подмяна". Романът всъщност е базиран на разказа от 1994 "To Receive Is Better" - един хорър шедьовър, който ме отнесе отвсякъде. Не мога обаче да кажа същото за "уголемяването" му. Дали заради текущите за него време моди или поради "акъла" на някой "умен" мениджър, Смит се е впуснал в едни води, които лично според мен не са неговите. Защото той може да е уникален хорър писател, който с нищо не отстъпва на Стивън Кинг и някак си в стила му се усеща повеят на Лъвкрафт с тези почти лишени от пряка реч негови шедьоври, но фантастиката малко му куца."За подмяна" започна по уникален начин и първата половина на книгата си беше изключителна заявка за един от най-значителните романи на столетието. Идеите струяха от всяка една дума в книгата, описанията бяха дълги, но на място и много увлекателни. Сюжетът постоянно прескачаше от една линия на друга и ни държеше в постоянно напрежение. В тази половина си имаше всичко:- чудесен увлекателен стил, подобен на този на Кинг;- изключително уместна идея - богаташите си плащат, за клонинги, които да се използват за "резервни части" (както е и оригиналното заглавие на романа "Spares"), когато нещо им се повреди; сега тази идея не е уникална, но да не забравяме, че романът е писан межде 1994-1996 г.;- много добра дистопична атмосфера;- хорър, трилър и крими елементите са вплетени по чудесен начин;- влиянието на Филип К. Дик струи от всяка една страница. Така, това беше за първата половина от книгата. Ето какво мога да кажа и за втората й половина:- губене на нишката на действието. Резервните остават на доста заден план, а уж романът е "кръстен" на тях;- авторът се впуска в излишни описания, които нямат нищо общо със сюжета;- от чудесен фантастичен роман с безброй елементи от други жанрове, ставаме свидетели на един киберпънк напън, който дори не е логически обяснен или издържан;- някак си рязката промяна на настроенията на героите.В обобщение мога да кажа, че книгата не е лоша и се приема изключително добре в световен мащаб. Тя определено има безброй добри качества, които любителите на жанра ще оценят, но просто не е това, което очаквах от този писател, защото той може адски много, но навярно подложен на маркетингов натиск, е бил принуден да напише "За подмяна".
A damaged cop (ho hum). Clones bred for replacement body parts (wait a minute). Flying malls that function as cities (what?). These are the main elements of Michael Marshall Smith’s dystopian noir thriller Spares. Rapt-addicted ex-cop, Jack Randall, has dropped off the grid following a great personal tragedy. He takes a job as caretaker of one of the farms that houses clones (the “spares” referred to in the title) who are bred by the rich as insurance against failing bodies. Following a Jack Daniel’s/Rapt-fueled delirium, which results in a crisis of conscience, Randall decides to liberate some of the spares (at least those who have the sufficient number of limbs and vital organs to allow survival away from the farm). Now on the run from SafetyNet (the company that creates and manages the clones), Jack Randall, with seven teenaged spares in tow, flees to New Richmond, a flying MegaMall that is permanently earthbound due to a software glitch. And this is where the trouble really starts. Upon arrival in New Richmond, all but one of the spares are abducted by a group of thugs (led by a bald man with blue lights embedded in his head). As Randall tries to find the missing teens, he comes face to face with the twin demons that shattered his life–the brutal unsolved murder of his wife and child, and his mind-searing tour of military duty in The Gap. After a convoluted journey, which includes a return visit to the The Gap (a Matrix-like realm born of discarded snippets of dead code extricated from an overcrowded internet), murder is avenged, an anti-hero is redeemed, and the software glitch that has grounded New Richmond for two decades is fixed, allowing the city to once again take to the skies. If this sounds like a wild story, it is, but the events unfold in a (mostly) linear fashion, making it (mostly) easy to follow. There are a few digressions by the first-person narrator that explain how this near-future dystopian society has come about, but they are interesting, unobtrusive, and the author slips us in and out without disrupting the forward momentum of the story.As a reader, I was drawn to the story by the premise of clones as body part reservoirs. This, however, turned out to be a minor element of the plot. What kept me reading was the voice of the protagonist: a beaten-down-by-tragedy, hardboiled-without-the-clichés, carrying-emotional-baggage-but-not-wallowing-in-self-pity kind of voice (he is a former detective, after all). Although this may not sound appealing, the depth of the narrator’s insight, and the deadpan delivery of his take on the distorted society he inhabits, its bizarre evolution, and the freaks that populate it are well drawn and artfully executed. And yes, he is a sympathetic character.As a writer, I was most in awe of Smith’s story world. Although some of the ideas were quite abstract (like The Gap), I was able to form a basic understanding, and the imagery created by the author was masterful. If you are an aspiring writer facing the daunting task of building a fantastical story world, I highly recommend studying Smith’s rendering of New Richmond and its environs.If you’ve read Spares, or you read it in the near future, please let me know what you think.
What do You think about Spares (1998)?
During freshers week, when I first went to University, back in 1999, the freebies they were handing out on my campus were pretty damn good. Today, you're lucky if you get two pens and a slice of pizza. Back then, Waterstones was at Freshers Fair, and they were handing out BOOKS!Well, a book, to be precise. A sampler, with chapters from a variety of books that Waterstones thought were up-and-coming and cool. And, from that sampler, I ended up outright buying half a dozen novels. One of them was Michael Marshall Smith's "One of Us", and I became an instant fan. I devoured all his other books in a row. Then, of course, he started writing serial killer thrillers as Michael Marshall, and, though he might bring an uncanny, surreal element to that genre, he basically lost his way.Spares was one of the novels that had bits in it that stuck in my mind for more than a decade. It's science fiction, it's Noir, and it's written with energy aplomb, and wit, too. You can almost imagine Ridley Scott turning some of this into a classic movie.The basic premise of the book has been done a few times by now. "Grow clones for rich people in case they need spare parts" has been Hollywoodised as The Island (apparently by the same studio that bought an option on this novel, but then "changed its mind"), and lit-fic-ed as "Never Let Me Go". Spares, I think, preceded both. But the thing is, this is not a single-premise book. It is a novel brimming with ideas. Too many ideas, probably. There is the flying city that turned into a static city after a break down. There is the hierarchy of wealth within the city based on the floor people live on. There are the Spares and the Farms. And then there is The Gap, and the war there...Organised crime. Dirty and clean cops / ex-cops. A lone wolf type stirring things up and prodding rich, powerful, evil people in between being chased, shot at, abducted. Vendetta / revenge quests. Veterans from a surreal jungle war. Crimes against humanity / the soul of mankind. If you mixed up Apocalypse Now and Blade Runner and The Island and added wit and anger, then maybe something like Spares might come out. The book has many ideas and scenes that stuck with me, but it is also a bit incoherent and surreal and a mess. A glorious, imaginative mess, and I still like it today.
—Robert
This is a well-plotted novel, where the back story continues to be revealed even as the book is drawing to a close. The main character is exceedingly well-drawn, and many of the lesser characters are well fleshed out. However, there are two issues. First, the evil driver of nefarious activities is barely described at all (perhaps the least of any character). Also, the main character is so messed up and downright stupid that he is hard to sympathize with, which makes it much more difficult to finish the book. Nonetheless, this is a quality piece of writing.
—Steven Bragg
Jack Randall is a mess, and so he is perfect as a hard boiled loner of the Sam Spade variety – wise-cracking, flawed and damaged war veteran all out to do the right thing, and what’s more it is set against a dystopian high tech future. Dashiell Hammett it ain’t. I found the book really hard to get hold of; the first third, where we’re still not really sure what’s going on, reads like an anti- police procedural in a drug infested, impoverished city, with some bad-ass medical procedures thrown in – here our 3rd rate Dash blends with Michael Crichton in a story that could be Detroit; the fictional city seems so cynical about the poor that it morally if not actually bankrupt. For the second third, where the story-line comes clearer we finish up leaving the city for some cyber-world, that could just as easily be a bad acid trip – Dash 3rd now channels Bruce Stirling with a little Timothy Leary, badly. Finally, as the story reaches its conclusion it comes over all Andy McNabb – lots of shooting, running, exploding – with an unhealthy dose of deus ex machina to solve the problem. (God, I dislike the deus ex machina solution.)But my real problem is that the central element of the book – the moral alarm at the clones created for medical spare parts – seem almost tangential to most of the story. I really wanted to like this; the idea seemed so sharp and a friend encouraged me to read it (I don’t like telling book-chums that their recommendation didn’t work for me) but alas I can’t much more excited than, it was OK…….
—Malcolm
