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A review by hevs
Dr. Adder by K.W. Jeter
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.