Gaudeamus [Hardcover]

Gaudeamus begins with an excellent premise... well, several. It's first person enough that you realize from his standpoint the events in the book are quite possibly entirely true. The Gaudeamus movement/device/drug/concept, as well, is quite novel. Barnes then throws in enough hand-waving to justify the occasional lack of details, mixes it equally with his usual wackily referenced but precisely placed oddball gems of knowledge, and presents it in a manner such that anyone who grew up with the internet (that is to say, all of us who are indeed still growing up) will be at once enthralled and amused by the results. If you've made it through Orbital Resonance, been shocked by parts of Kaleidescope Century, identified with the characters in The Sky So Big and Black, and enjoyed the romp (with sweet conclusion) that was Mother of Storms, you will go nuts over this weekend's worth of light reading. Barnes pokes fun at anything and everything, most of all himself, in this excellent take on what could be happening right under (and over, and folded 90 degrees outside of normal space from) our noses. Sure, the book's not perfect, but the imperfections haven't made themselves apparent in my first reading. I'm promptly going to mail it to the guy who's stolen my copy of Candle. And since he outright says as much in the book: Mr. Barnes, thanks for reading, and bravo.

The cover blurb for this book says "shatter the line between fiction and fantasy..." Well not quite, but this is a very funny and entertaining slab of experimental sci-fi. The fact that John Barnes inserted himself and his real-life friends into the story as characters is not really so innovative, but here he makes great use of irony and alternative storytelling techniques to poke fun at sci-fi stereotypes, and to make the reader wonder if the story should even be taken seriously. In short, Barnes' friend Travis appears and tells a wild story of an industrial espionage assignment, in which he uncovered a bodaciously wacky conspiracy of corporate goons, rednecks, hippies, drug pushers, an underground internet cartoon, and aliens who are trying to buy the world and liquidate the assets. All of this is built around a futuristic technology called Gaudeamus, which effortlessly powers all the advanced cultures of the galaxy, and which humanity is accidentally stumbling into as part of cultural evolution. A large cast of human and alien weirdos hold the fate of the Earth in their hands as they connive for control of the technology.

But since this is a second-hand story from Travis, the whole thing could be a whole lotta hooey, and everyone else in the book barely notices the doom-bringing drama. Barnes does a great job with this storytelling device, making fun of stock plot devices (such as the bad guy explaining his entire villainous scheme voluntary) while ironically using the same corny devices himself. Barnes also does a great job poking at the absurdity of trends in fandom and geekworld. At some points the plots and subplots in this book get a little too ambitious for their own good, and there are a few gaps and loose ends here and there. But this is a very funny novel built on upon a pretty offbeat premise, and it's one of the most creative uses of science fiction that you're likely to see for a while. [~doomsdayer520~]

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What this is, is a long shaggy-bar story, with a fictional version of the author as narrator. The protag is one Travis Bismarck, who appears to be a real-life friend of Barnes. The book opens with (literally) loopy scene-setting that circles around the actual start in amusingly recursive spirals, as Barnes old pal ficto-Travis, who is some sort of technical PI, relates his current case, and how it went weird.

Now, I'm assuming that Barnes's Real Life isn't too different (in its non-fantastic day-to-day details) than the fictional JB -- the broad outlines match, it isn't a very flattering portrait, and it's just easier to write what you know. I was pretty consistently entertained by Barnes "what is reality?" mind-games, but you might not be:

"I found that every now and then I'd be pulled out of the book by the character of John Barnes talking about being a science fiction writer. I couldn't help but wonder if he really thinks about SF conventions like that, or the fans, or the genre. Every time I came upon some Barnes POV stuff I'd get jerked out of the story. At times, reading the book was like peeking into someone's diary and wondering, would I get caught." -- Gayle Surrette, Google sfrevu.com

"Barnes has done a bang-up job creating a rich air of verisimilitude and a thickness of believable details. His self-portrait is unsparing and modest, even self-abasing, and the humility and skepticism of the narrator allow us easy entrance into the wacky doings described by Travis. Generous dollops of humor and satire-Barnes and Travis have a lot of wry opinions about academia, entertainment and other demented aspects of our culture-grease the telling as well." -- Paul Di Filippo at scifi.com, the best review I saw online.

Anyway, if you're in the mood for a cozy, clever, twisty, sexy, crackpot, meandering, recursive, wonderfully implausible piece of metafiction that's full of wisecracks and is just a whole lot of fun to read (plus, it's short!), go for GAUDEAMUS. A fine, semi-mindless read for a mental winter vacation. Caveat: if plot holes and logic-lapses offend you, Gaudeamus might not be for you. Then again, it moves so fast, you might not notice...

-- though few will miss the one where the Bad Guy is required [minor *SPOILER* WARNING] to overlook the *enormous* Rhodesian Ridgeback lurking inside the Good Guys' Range Rover...

Review copyright 2005 by Peter D. Tillman