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rjbs's review against another edition
2.0
It transgresses against cultural norms, but without much accomplished by it. It's misogynistic without managing to make a statement *about* misogyny, although I think it wanted to. It's more out there than I'd have expected to see from a novel written in '72, but I can't say I really recommend it.
audiobook_addict's review against another edition
5.0
A nonstop rollercoaster ride from start to finish.
I've read a lot of scifi. Love the genre. But, I've got to say, even as disturbing as some of this book can be, it's so worth it, just for the fact that Jetter creates a world so chaotically weird, you can't wait, to explore deeper, even if it means getting a little dark and dirty to do it. I found about KW Jetter when he wrote the sequel to Bladerunner a few years ago. He creates adystopian world like no other in a future that is more grim than even our darkest imaginations can conjure up, but he does it in such a way as to make it slightly appealing. He gives his villains and heroes alike characteritics that make them personable in willyou that. i recommend from you’re not into some dark and disturbing scenes, and if you’re not. fan of the whole dystopian landscape that is Jetter’s lA, don’t dive in, but ifrom you re, I promise. you won’t soon forget this one. He's truly an author of phenomenal skill that can create a world within a world, that literally grabs you and takes you into the underbelly of life, ghthe interfacear and transports you deep into it so that you don't realize you've been sucked in, until it has you and doesn't let go until the last page. Give this read if you scifi, you won’t regret that.
I've read a lot of scifi. Love the genre. But, I've got to say, even as disturbing as some of this book can be, it's so worth it, just for the fact that Jetter creates a world so chaotically weird, you can't wait, to explore deeper, even if it means getting a little dark and dirty to do it. I found about KW Jetter when he wrote the sequel to Bladerunner a few years ago. He creates adystopian world like no other in a future that is more grim than even our darkest imaginations can conjure up, but he does it in such a way as to make it slightly appealing. He gives his villains and heroes alike characteritics that make them personable in willyou that. i recommend from you’re not into some dark and disturbing scenes, and if you’re not. fan of the whole dystopian landscape that is Jetter’s lA, don’t dive in, but ifrom you re, I promise. you won’t soon forget this one. He's truly an author of phenomenal skill that can create a world within a world, that literally grabs you and takes you into the underbelly of life, ghthe interfacear and transports you deep into it so that you don't realize you've been sucked in, until it has you and doesn't let go until the last page. Give this read if you scifi, you won’t regret that.
dzengota's review against another edition
4.0
Perverse and raw and edgy and honestly refreshing cyberpunk after getting used to so many books aping Gibson. It's a shame the book is so weird and tricky to get, outsider genre fiction like this is at risk of being lost media. Who knows what has gone unpublished.
hevs's review against another edition
5.0
My initial review:
I decided to read this novel for shits and giggles and now I stand corrected. There is indeed no limmit for sf and how sad it is that we needed a reminder of it both in early 70. and today?
The longer version of the same love poem:
There are people who don’t waste time for bad books. They read only the good stuff. Critically acclaimed masterpieces, literary gems, world-shattering nonfiction, life-changing philosophical dissertations. There are also people who by choice or trade read utter crap. I am not talking about people who just have poor taste, who lack education to properly assess things they read, who simply doesn’t know any better. I talk about people who know exactly what they’re doing, who look at the big stinking pile of excrement whether it is a worldwide bestseller or some self-published atrocity from the renown dino-erotica genre and scream GIVE IT TO ME. NOW.
You can call us adventurous. You can call us masochists. You can call us simply crazy and it is all true in one way or another. I love bad movies, horrible books and atrocious music. I watch Eurovision, I’ve seen “Daredevil” more than once and I’ve read “50 Shades”. I do that because I hate myself enough to try to commit suicide by unstoppable hysterical laughter.
So I came to the good doctor.
Goodreads itself recommended to me this strange book with campy cover. “Wow, that’s gonna be bad,” I thought adding it to to-read shelf. After reading one of the reviews stating:
what was I to do other than fall in love? I’ve created a bookshelf for this one title alone. DON’T JUDGE ME I HAVE A DEATH WISH. And so I started to read. There were, indeed, giant cocks. And I loved it.
I started reading bad book for shits and giggles and ended with a book I would’ve written my thesis about if I’ve read it earlier. And managed to convince my professor not to exorcise me.
What is it about then? Well, our main character is this guy named Limmit. And this is the only limit you’ll encounter in this wild ride of what speculative fiction should be manifesto. It’s probably because of its campy entourage that dr. Adders venom caught me so off guard. Or maybe it was the illustrations because some sick bastard decided we also need pictures to spice it all. Or maybe it was this lingering displeasure with most of the speculative fiction, accumulating for years. It was all to schematic, to… normal. By definition you can do anything and you do the same thing over and over again, the same tropes, sub-genres binding imagination with steel of conventions…
One of the things I find so powerful in “Dr. Adder” is that Jetter for the most part uses the same tropes as everyone else, he even evokes some authors and “classic sf” as a whole literary. But he mixes it up throwing all of the rules away. There is no limit, you can do whatever you want and it being sick and fucked up and stupid just makes it better – go extreme, be simply SPECTACULAR. (This scene with headshot kiss? Oh my god how beautiful that is) (or that one with Adder and Mother Endure? When she just uses his nickname?) (and omg that one in the bathroom where Limmit just don’t give a damn). A lot of the things I’ve read in this novel are so wild I don’t even know how to describe them. What happens here simply beggars belief. IT’S AWESOME.
Are there drawbacks to all of that? Not for me. But this is and immanent speculative fiction theory and that means it is by design lacking if you try read it as a simple novel. The plot is a very, very hot mess of different tropes and stereotypes and it’s purpose is to show that everything (AND I MEAN EVERYTHING) is possible in sf, not to convey coherent story.
What shocked me the most? That it is a debut. Thing so powerful, so bold, so brilliant and so arrogant. This bitchslap to the all of the sf. And so relevant today as it was in the early 70. It is so sad that we still need a reminder that there is no limit in speculative fiction. There are no sacred cows (and if there are you can probably fuck them or do other funny things with them), there is no morality, no standards, nobody to forbade you anything. Boldly go where no man had gone before. And, honey, you can simply jump over that final frontier.
I decided to read this novel for shits and giggles and now I stand corrected. There is indeed no limmit for sf and how sad it is that we needed a reminder of it both in early 70. and today?
The longer version of the same love poem:
There are people who don’t waste time for bad books. They read only the good stuff. Critically acclaimed masterpieces, literary gems, world-shattering nonfiction, life-changing philosophical dissertations. There are also people who by choice or trade read utter crap. I am not talking about people who just have poor taste, who lack education to properly assess things they read, who simply doesn’t know any better. I talk about people who know exactly what they’re doing, who look at the big stinking pile of excrement whether it is a worldwide bestseller or some self-published atrocity from the renown dino-erotica genre and scream GIVE IT TO ME. NOW.
You can call us adventurous. You can call us masochists. You can call us simply crazy and it is all true in one way or another. I love bad movies, horrible books and atrocious music. I watch Eurovision, I’ve seen “Daredevil” more than once and I’ve read “50 Shades”. I do that because I hate myself enough to try to commit suicide by unstoppable hysterical laughter.
So I came to the good doctor.
Goodreads itself recommended to me this strange book with campy cover. “Wow, that’s gonna be bad,” I thought adding it to to-read shelf. After reading one of the reviews stating:
The book starts off in a giant chicken farm. Where people raise, eat, and have sex with, giant chickens… Even the girls… Cuz as we all know…
***Chicks Love Giant Cocks***
what was I to do other than fall in love? I’ve created a bookshelf for this one title alone. DON’T JUDGE ME I HAVE A DEATH WISH. And so I started to read. There were, indeed, giant cocks. And I loved it.
I started reading bad book for shits and giggles and ended with a book I would’ve written my thesis about if I’ve read it earlier. And managed to convince my professor not to exorcise me.
What is it about then? Well, our main character is this guy named Limmit. And this is the only limit you’ll encounter in this wild ride of what speculative fiction should be manifesto. It’s probably because of its campy entourage that dr. Adders venom caught me so off guard. Or maybe it was the illustrations because some sick bastard decided we also need pictures to spice it all. Or maybe it was this lingering displeasure with most of the speculative fiction, accumulating for years. It was all to schematic, to… normal. By definition you can do anything and you do the same thing over and over again, the same tropes, sub-genres binding imagination with steel of conventions…
One of the things I find so powerful in “Dr. Adder” is that Jetter for the most part uses the same tropes as everyone else, he even evokes some authors and “classic sf” as a whole literary. But he mixes it up throwing all of the rules away. There is no limit, you can do whatever you want and it being sick and fucked up and stupid just makes it better – go extreme, be simply SPECTACULAR. (This scene with headshot kiss? Oh my god how beautiful that is) (or that one with Adder and Mother Endure? When she just uses his nickname?) (and omg that one in the bathroom where Limmit just don’t give a damn). A lot of the things I’ve read in this novel are so wild I don’t even know how to describe them. What happens here simply beggars belief. IT’S AWESOME.
Are there drawbacks to all of that? Not for me. But this is and immanent speculative fiction theory and that means it is by design lacking if you try read it as a simple novel. The plot is a very, very hot mess of different tropes and stereotypes and it’s purpose is to show that everything (AND I MEAN EVERYTHING) is possible in sf, not to convey coherent story.
What shocked me the most? That it is a debut. Thing so powerful, so bold, so brilliant and so arrogant. This bitchslap to the all of the sf. And so relevant today as it was in the early 70. It is so sad that we still need a reminder that there is no limit in speculative fiction. There are no sacred cows (and if there are you can probably fuck them or do other funny things with them), there is no morality, no standards, nobody to forbade you anything. Boldly go where no man had gone before. And, honey, you can simply jump over that final frontier.
kgm's review against another edition
4.0
Having read this book decades ago I was surprised how well it held up.
smcleish's review against another edition
4.0
Originally published on my blog here in February 2001.
K.W. Jeter was unable to find a publisher for this, his first novel, for many years. This is not because of low quality, but because it was perceived to be obscene. Like J.G. Ballard's [b:Crash|70241|Crash|J.G. Ballard|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1281416649s/70241.jpg|68058], it portrays an extreme sexual perversion in order to make points about Western culture.
The setting is the Los Angeles of the fairly near future, a [a:Philip K. Dick|4764|Philip K. Dick|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1264613853p2/4764.jpg] style background. There, on the Interface between LA and Oakland, surgeon Dr Adder pursues his vocation, creating amputee whores to cater for the innermost secret desires of men. He faces opposition from TV evangelist John Mox and his MFOErs (short for Moral Forces, but obviously having other connotations).
Jeter's message about society is bleak, essentially amounting to an accusation that America is crippled and that the "moral majority" is full of hypocrisy. The main point, made by the way in which almost the whole of society is reduced to the Interface, is reinforced by little allusive references - the Mickey Mouse tattoos on amputee androids intended to replace the victims of Adder's surgery, for example. (This particular reference, which is thinly veiled in the novel, may have been another reason for the reluctance of publishers.)
Jeter's writing is very powerful and provocative. This is at least in part due to the subject matter, which many will find obscene (which is, at least to some extent, the point - Jeter wants to make us realise that some aspects of our lives are obscene). The obvious question, then, is whether the results justify the strength of the content, for in this case only the end can justify the means. (If the purpose is either missing or remains unrealised, then the novel is just unpleasant pornography.) Since its publication, Dr Adder has perhaps lost some of its impact, since both its cyberpunk style background and the unpleasant sexuality have become reasonably common in novels. The true measure of the significance of Dr Adder also lies in this fact, if looked at from the other side - it is one of the forerunners of what is a major force in modern literature.
K.W. Jeter was unable to find a publisher for this, his first novel, for many years. This is not because of low quality, but because it was perceived to be obscene. Like J.G. Ballard's [b:Crash|70241|Crash|J.G. Ballard|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1281416649s/70241.jpg|68058], it portrays an extreme sexual perversion in order to make points about Western culture.
The setting is the Los Angeles of the fairly near future, a [a:Philip K. Dick|4764|Philip K. Dick|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1264613853p2/4764.jpg] style background. There, on the Interface between LA and Oakland, surgeon Dr Adder pursues his vocation, creating amputee whores to cater for the innermost secret desires of men. He faces opposition from TV evangelist John Mox and his MFOErs (short for Moral Forces, but obviously having other connotations).
Jeter's message about society is bleak, essentially amounting to an accusation that America is crippled and that the "moral majority" is full of hypocrisy. The main point, made by the way in which almost the whole of society is reduced to the Interface, is reinforced by little allusive references - the Mickey Mouse tattoos on amputee androids intended to replace the victims of Adder's surgery, for example. (This particular reference, which is thinly veiled in the novel, may have been another reason for the reluctance of publishers.)
Jeter's writing is very powerful and provocative. This is at least in part due to the subject matter, which many will find obscene (which is, at least to some extent, the point - Jeter wants to make us realise that some aspects of our lives are obscene). The obvious question, then, is whether the results justify the strength of the content, for in this case only the end can justify the means. (If the purpose is either missing or remains unrealised, then the novel is just unpleasant pornography.) Since its publication, Dr Adder has perhaps lost some of its impact, since both its cyberpunk style background and the unpleasant sexuality have become reasonably common in novels. The true measure of the significance of Dr Adder also lies in this fact, if looked at from the other side - it is one of the forerunners of what is a major force in modern literature.
rickklaw's review against another edition
5.0
You don't get much weirder than this long out of print classic. A richly disturbing novel, Dr. Adder is cyberpunk dystopianism at its finest.
hammard's review against another edition
1.0
Unfortunately I found the entire story very juvenile. Perhaps if had read when I was younger or when it was published I would have been impressed but nothing really held my interest.
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