Sewer, Gas and Electric
From the back cover of Warner Books paperback September 1998: AMERICA: 2023 AT THE HELM: THE TALKING, HOLOGRAPHIC HEAD OF AYN RAND IN A HURRICANE LAMP.... Harry Gant is building a new Tower of Babel five hundred stories above the polluted streets of Manhattan. In the festering sewers, his crusading ex-wife, Joan, hunts a mutant great white shark named Meisterbrau, while in the waters of the Atlantic, eco-pirate Philo Dufrense leads his crew on a desperate quest to make the world safe for ring-tailed lemurs. A wild ride between the good, the evil, and the indifferent, SEWER, GAS & ELECTRIC, destined to become a classic, is a young writer's no-holds-barred journey into the raging America of the near future...
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- A fun rebuttal to her work (I've read Atkas Shrigged twice and find her deeply flawed but still interesting in some ways) is Sewer Gas and Electric by Matt Ruff. It's very fun silly sci fi.
- Another lovely counterpoint to Ayn Rand is "Sewer Gas and Electric" by Matt Ruff. It is absurdist science fiction that is hilarious and full of fascinating characters.
I really enjoy Atlas Shrugged as well, I've read the whole book twice, actually. But I don't believe it is a good code to live by. My favorite quite about her books comes from The Daily Show. On the back of America The Book there is a fake blurb from Rand: "just like one of my books, reading this book will make you an asshole for two weeks."
Her books are seductive because they intentionally oversimplify life. Her characters are not realistic and are completely binary. Everyone is either a superhero or a weasel. This makes for entertaining reading, but not much else.
Read "Crossing to Safety" by Wallace Stegner. It is a brautiful book about an intense relationship forged between two couples. It's my favorite thing I've read recently.
- This post reminded me of the upcoming book by Matt Ruff ("Sewer, Gas & Electric", "Set This House in Order", "Fool on the Hill") titled "Lovecraft Country".
From the description on the author's website:
"Chicago, 1954. When his father goes missing, twenty-two-year-old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Samuel Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned one of Atticus’s ancestors—they encounter both the mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours."
