FACT SF Reading Group

December 1999

December 7: Noir by K. W. Jeter

Seven people attended this discussion, and another person submitted comments by e-mail. The book under consideration, Noir, is Jeter's return to writing "serious SF" after several years writing books in Gene Roddenberry's and Philip K. Dick's universes. Noir is a hardboiled cyberpunk detective novel that recalls the edgier material Jeter wrote earlier in his career, including Dr. Adder and The Glass Hammer. Since Jeter will be one of the Guests of Honor at the upcoming World Fantasy Convention in Corpus Christi, we felt it was time we read one of his books.

We all found Jeter's prose style to be strongly stylish. The first chapter is written in an elaborate stream-of-consciousness style that two of us liked and the rest barely muddled through. The rest of the book is written in a hardboiled Chandleresque style, which most of us found more accessible.

Reactions to the book were polarized by the readers' gender. All of the men in our group finished the book and had generally good things to say about it. No woman had been able to reach page 50, and few of them saw any reason to read more.

Those who enjoyed the novel liked the hardboiled approach. We appreciated Jeter's sincere attempt to create a black-and-white noir film within the medium of a novel. We liked several throwaway ideas in the book: hitmen "precertifying" a murder with the police, homeless people encased in turtle-like armored shells, and a Disney animated musical about Jack the Ripper. At the heart of the book is a long rant against intellectual property thieves, which we felt must be a personal issue for Jeter.

The people in our group who didn't finish the book had a variety of things to dislike. They hated the treatment of women as sex objects. They found the main character (a detective named McNihil) unsympathetic. The villains were stereotypical "bad, puppy-kicking Nazis". One person was particularly upset that all the villains were people who work in management, since her job is in management and she sympathizes with managers.

While our opinions of this book differed, we all agreed that Jeter created some memorable situations and images and that this story might make a decent film.

December 21: Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

This discussion drew a small crowd, apparently due to the holidays. Five people attended in person, and another submitted e-mail comments. Hogfather is the latest volume in the large (over 20 volumes) Discworld saga. In this book, Discworld's equivalent of Santa Claus mysteriously disappears, and Death fills in for him.

All of us enjoyed the book. We considered it to be excellent light humorous reading, and the topic was appropriate for the holiday season. We liked Pratchett's take on "Mary Poppins"-esque nannies. The insights into the cultural origins of the Hogfather and other similar entities such as the Tooth Fairy were interesting and entertaining.

Much of the discussion consisted of recounting our favorite bits from the book. These included a very strange bathroom designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson, the strange thinking machine named Hex, and Death's stint as a department-store Hogfather.

This book did have drawbacks. The book involves characters and plot elements from prior books in the series, and those of us who'd read few or none of the earlier books felt that we were missing out on some of the story. And while the social satire was fun, a lot of it was fairly obvious cheap shots.

Overall we found Hogfather to be a throughly enjoyable book. It was a perfect literary diversion for the busy holiday season.

-- A. T. Campbell, III