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| Perfect for a world after the rapture. |
Since Neill Blomkamp managed to make totally
weird look commonplace in District 9, South Africans expect a lot from local
sci-fi writers. Andrew Miller delivers with Dub Steps, mixing a world bereft of people after
what looks like the rapture, a few survivors with issues, a city covered in
holographic brown paint, and intelligent pigs.
After roaming the empty South
Africa in a armoured cash delivery van, the narrator tells how he
returned to
Johannesburg with the one person he found in PE, to be met by a small group.
There is a lot to delight the techno geeks in Miller’s
empty world – from a flat screen TV kept as a family heirloom; to nano drugs
that create a virtual interface in the mind.
There are, however, also several anomalies
in his future – people have hallucinogenic implants and have virtual sex orgies
in VR clubs via genital nappies, but banks still have to deliver cash to ATMs?
And people still make and drink red wine? After a slow start, the pace picks up
enough to allow one to gloss over the anomalies, but I did want more from the
pigs. Having been raised on the piggy that went to market, the bricklaying piggy
that beat the wolf and finally rooting for the gangsta pigs in AlastairReynolds’ space operas, Miller’s merely staring pigs deserved the end he wrote
for them.
The best part of this Dinaane Debut Fiction Award-winning book is the
vivid imagery and broken rhythms Miller strings into his sentences - like a good dub step DJ. Syntax nerds will indeed enjoy
rereading entire paragraphs aloud, for Miller is both a public speaker and a performance
poet and these talents show.
