Etienne Krüger

Etienne Kruger is a niche writer who has dared to be different: Like so many of our authors – Athol Fugard, Guy Butler, Andre Brink etc – Kruger hails from the Eastern Cape originally and, like theirs, his prose is universal not provincial.

Traditionally, white South Africans seeking international respectability have espoused the literary genre of the protest novel which included but was not limited to illegal sex and graphic descriptions of torture.

It is only in the second Millennium that local novelists with literally pretentions have dared to venture beyond race, sex, humour and politics, and write stories not bogged down by past baggage.

Earth™ is Kruger’s second novel, and thoroughly ‘alternative’: computer games – cyber entertainment, viruses, intellectual copyright, virtual reality and a universe of game players tuning into the ‘Earth Server’.

Then there are the Systems Administrators, Chief Technical Officers, designers, artists, researchers, programmers and the multitude of nerds, geeks and brains who are responsible for designing and running any popular high tech game.

Xanadu is a planetopolis, and Earth™ is just one of many games played by the sensation starved inhabitants except – BIG except – Earth™ owns the copyright on a certain unique feature called ‘sex’.

The game Earth™, featuring virtual reality countries South Africa and Zimbabwe, with cyber rulers ‘Robert Mugabe’ and ‘Thabo Mbeki’, is not particularly special would not be particularly special or popular were it not for the [literally] sensational ‘sex’ function.

The irony about this book is that it would appeal best and make the most sense to computer game players, those to whom terms like ‘avatar’ are as mother’s milk. Readers tend to hail from a less technically savvy generation, so those reading Earth™ are probably least likely to be playing it.

Play the game: go back to 2007 when Mbeki is still the Main Man, when Scorpions Rule and Police Drool, and when Uncle Bob from Zim defies the odds by becoming ever more mad and ever more powerful, always supported by BFF Thabs.

Amusing and intriguing rather than funny, Earth™ displays all the trademarks of the Cape Town literati – from excellent English to a once removed pomposity – and I must observe Kruger would have written a better book by clinging closer to his East Cape origins.

Cape Town – with the Bokaap, Table Bay, Wine lands and Table Mountain – is actually the ideal setting for a virtual reality game, encompassing as it does beautiful scenery so lovingly and carefully described as to become automatic clichés.

Imagine product placement in games, just as we have in film today but referring to virtual goods: people may not have boozed, bonked or smoked in Xanadu but they indulged excessively in the game Earth™.

Marketers were able to sell all the prophylactic properties of condoms to a race without genitalia, to market cloud soft moisturised tissues and gentle, ultra-absorbent lavatory paper to a species who did not excrete through any orifice.

Symphony concert tickets were snapped up by players who had no understanding of music and rich gamers competed ruthlessly for multi-million rand apartments in Camps Bay just for the advantages and prestige of the cyber address.

Day tripping aliens in search of sex, South African political intrigue, Zimbabwean presidential corruption and the international blind eye, cold-hearted corporate executives after profit regardless of the human price, Earth™ has it all.

Something different, something fresh, something alternate – board your spaceship to the as-yet unfounded metropolis of Xanadu, hand over your money, then dare to dream and to play the great game…… (more)