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A review by ajam
An Unusual Angle by Greg Egan
4.0
4.5★
"For the benefit of those readers who have no idea what the book is about - most of them, I hope - An Unusual Angle is a kind of eccentric teenage loner story with surreal elements. The narrator literally has a movie camera inside his skull. I wrote it when I was sixteen, although I revised it slightly just before it was published, six years later.
It was very big-hearted of Norstrilia Press to publish it, but it didn't do them, or me, much good. They blew their money. I laboured under the mistaken impression that I could now write publishable fiction; it took me a while to realise that that simply wasn't true. [b:Quarantine|156775|Quarantine (Subjective Cosmology, #1)|Greg Egan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1308958448l/156775._SY75_.jpg|1270545] is the eighth novel I've written, and the first publishable one. That An Unusual Angle was published at all was really just a glitch."(An excerpt from the 1993 Eidolon-Interview)
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If that doesn't convince you to drop everything and pick this up, nothing will. Here are my two cents anyway:
This is a very self-conscious satire disguised and misrepresented(by its plot synopsis) as Sci-Fi. Anyone remotely familiar with Egan is bound to be disappointed if they are looking for a hard-science fiction story rich with mind-boggling ideas that the author has become so synonymous with. There's none here.
However, if that's not an issue, then you are in for a treat as this book very accurately and very cynically describes the subjective observations of the narrator as he tries to survive four years(5?) of high school and all the absurdities that come along with it. (It's so much better than my yawn-inducing review makes it sound. It's Egan FFS)
⩨NFO
⩐ Read Via Moon+ReaderPro Android-AsusXOOTD
⩨FootNotes/Remarks:
-I am not surprised by the number of reviews and ratings this has(even by the Obscure-Egan Standards) given that this has been out of print for so long and even the e-book is hard to find without sailing the high-seas.(Ahem!) It deserves better than this.
-I initially had this mental image of Egan where he is a sherlock-ish savant based on some short stories of his I had previously read. However, in hindsight, I couldn't have been so wrong. I mean who knew Egan was such a savagely sarcastic cinephile with very very very dark humor.
"For the benefit of those readers who have no idea what the book is about - most of them, I hope - An Unusual Angle is a kind of eccentric teenage loner story with surreal elements. The narrator literally has a movie camera inside his skull. I wrote it when I was sixteen, although I revised it slightly just before it was published, six years later.
It was very big-hearted of Norstrilia Press to publish it, but it didn't do them, or me, much good. They blew their money. I laboured under the mistaken impression that I could now write publishable fiction; it took me a while to realise that that simply wasn't true. [b:Quarantine|156775|Quarantine (Subjective Cosmology, #1)|Greg Egan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1308958448l/156775._SY75_.jpg|1270545] is the eighth novel I've written, and the first publishable one. That An Unusual Angle was published at all was really just a glitch."(An excerpt from the 1993 Eidolon-Interview)
--------------------------------------------------
If that doesn't convince you to drop everything and pick this up, nothing will. Here are my two cents anyway:
This is a very self-conscious satire disguised and misrepresented(by its plot synopsis) as Sci-Fi. Anyone remotely familiar with Egan is bound to be disappointed if they are looking for a hard-science fiction story rich with mind-boggling ideas that the author has become so synonymous with. There's none here.
However, if that's not an issue, then you are in for a treat as this book very accurately and very cynically describes the subjective observations of the narrator as he tries to survive four years(5?) of high school and all the absurdities that come along with it. (It's so much better than my yawn-inducing review makes it sound. It's Egan FFS)
⩨NFO
⩐ Read Via Moon+ReaderPro Android-AsusXOOTD
⩨FootNotes/Remarks:
-I am not surprised by the number of reviews and ratings this has(even by the Obscure-Egan Standards) given that this has been out of print for so long and even the e-book is hard to find without sailing the high-seas.(Ahem!) It deserves better than this.
-I initially had this mental image of Egan where he is a sherlock-ish savant based on some short stories of his I had previously read. However, in hindsight, I couldn't have been so wrong. I mean who knew Egan was such a savagely sarcastic cinephile with very very very dark humor.