The Smoke, by Simon IngsRead about another entry on the list.
Simon Ings’ novel walks a very odd, careful line between being an apocalyptic look at a post-cyberpunk future, and an examination of how love and obsession can turn someone toxic, as it charts the decline of human civilization in an alternate-history Great Britain through the numerous relationships of the Lanyon family. Through it all, Ings manages to put an impressively heartfelt spin on the strange proceedings, be it via the obsessive love the alien narrator exhibits by telepathically stalking protagonist Stuart Lanyon for a violent act he committed when he was younger, to the unusual lengths Stuart’s father and sister in law go in trying to keep Stuart’s mother alive after a terminal diagnosis, to the way the gap in ability between Stuart and his transhumanist girlfriend Fel eventually poisons and destroys his relationship. The personal and deeply human face The Smoke puts on the eventual obsolescence of the “regular” humans makes it all that more unsettling, even as the love stories at its core make it feel achingly real.
The Page 69 Test: The Smoke.
My Book, The Movie: The Smoke.
--Marshal Zeringue
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