Last week during Sci-Friday I recommended the book Veniss Underground and referred to it as a surreal sci-fi horror experience. Well, since then I cannot get it out of my head so for Macabre Monday, I’ve decided I want to share a single page from the second chapter that really freaked me out and set the tone of strangeness and terror for the remainder of the book. The combination of horror and biological manipulation fit so well together and unsettled me deeply throughout. Minor spoilers ahead, but given it’s in the first 20 pages, it isn’t that bad. I just want to show Vandermeer’s strange, alarmed, disoriented, and scary style of writing that invokes horror so well. Veniss was Vandermeer’s first published novel and it just absolutely captures the feeling of the rest of his career in such an interesting way. He has become a huge inspiration for me, and I hope I can share with others here who may not know much about his work or who quite like his work and would like to chat more about it! Anyway, on with the exert…
(Background: Nicholas, the bio artist - called a holo artist at points in the book - goes to Quinn, a successful creator to demand a meerkat from him. Nicholas thinks a modified meerkat will make everything wrong in his life better. He goes before the renowned creator, Quinn, and demands a meerkat.)
The MM crew…
, , , ,
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and
Anyway, I’m off to write some science, so catch you all next week! (The true horror is the fiction I write instead of the grant I’m supposed to be writing…)
