Lincoln Michel

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A wildly inventive and entertaining novel about a sci-fi writing group whose fictional universe and personal dramas begin to collide and collapse from the critically acclaimed author of the “timeless and original” (The New York Times) The Body Scout.

Perennially single, socially awkward, and drowning in debt, Michael Lincoln’s life has turned out nothing like the intergalactic pulp heroes of his youth. But these are pedestrian concerns—he has a show more greater calling, and that is to preserve for all posterity the greatest series in the history of the written The Star Rot Chronicles. Written collectively by Michael’s best (and perhaps only) friend Taras K. Castle and his misfit sci-fi writing group, the Orb 4, the stories follow Captain Baldwin and his fearless crew on their mind-bending adventures across the Metallic Realms, from solar whales swallowing suns at the edge of spacetime to interstellar love triangles. These masterpieces have gone tragically unpublished—until now.

But the most urgent story Michael must tell takes place in the more intimate (if no less dramatic) confines of literary Brooklyn. Behind the greatest multiverse ever created, there are the all-too-mortal people who wrote it. As Michael chronicles the personal melodramas of the Orb 4 as well as the funhouse reflections in their fiction, the line between real and unreal becomes dangerously thin, and the true reasons for the group’s fallout begin to emerge. As he labors away in hiding, Michael has just one to bring the Metallic Realms to the world. No matter the cost.

Metallic Realms is a genre-breaking ode to golden-age science fiction, friendship, creativity, and the power and perils of storytelling.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Michael Lincoln is NOT Lincoln Michel. He tells you so. Orb 4, to a writer, agrees. It's about all they agree on.

Are you at all involved in geekdom, fandom, nerdery online? Are you vaguely aware of the idea roman à clef? Do you need something to make you laugh before it makes your ego say, "hey! wait a minute!", and rub its thumped nose?

Here's you a book.

Since reading Upright Beasts some years ago, then falling under the sway of what I called "{w}hat would happen if Gattaca and Moneyball had a bastard love-child" aka The Body Scout a while back, I've quite fancied my trips into Author Michel's head. He's facetious, rowdy, and disrespectful. I'd spank him if I met him in person, or maybe not since I think he'd like it, but on the page this is really fun stuff.

I'll assume you've read the synopsis. It's accurate as far as it goes. Lincoln Michel's a caustic and sarcastic soul, so it's not one bit of a surprise that Michael Lincoln is, as well. You think *I* say hurtful things? I'm the Canadian Ambassador to the Court of St. James's by comparison to this guy! No quarter is offered, no opportunity for a well-phrased dig is passed up. Think Dorothy Parker without the waspish edge, replaced by a cruel condescension.

Why, given all that, did I rate this 4.5 stars? Because he's unkind but he's not wrong. The beady eye in the scope is gonna shoot a vital part but he won't miss because he's seen the anatomy too close-up to mistake his aim by so much as a millimeter. And by Grabthar's Hammer, he really is funny.

Will you like it? Are you a Trekkie? A Tolkien/"high fantasy" fan? Then no. Are you exasperated by clever-clever satirical stuff? Avoid like it gots the cooties. A deeply-dyed AO3 lover? This way plagueships lie.

I had moments of stiffened-spine outrage (Ca'Raan? Really? That's where you're expending firepower?), but all's fair etc etc and being a whiny li'l bitch would only make the Big Bad Bully glow with satisfaction. So not gonna make some PC case with less than half my heart. Laugh at yourself, look at how your detractors portray you, because it's how they see you. No one knows they need a comb until they're told. He's telling us.

But get it from the library, no sense handing him your money to get insulted. show less

This is ostensibly an annotated edition of sci-fi short stories about space-faring adventurers. Actually, the annotations are the vast majority of the book, and the stories are only a short part of it. The annotations are written by a roommate of the authors of the sci-fi stories, and are actually a memoir of his life and relationships with the collective who wrote the stories.

I'm honestly not quite sure how self-aware this book is. I know that some readers are going to take the narrator show more very seriously and identify with him, and think the book is pretty brilliant (and a lot of the reviews I have read seem to take it this way). Some readers (like me) are going to see right through the narrator's BS and see how pathetic and self-justifying and narcissistic he is, and might still think the book is pretty brilliant. I really really hope that the author intended the latter reading. You know how the Colbert Show makes fun of conservatives by pretending to be a conservative, to the point that a lot of conservatives think it's genuine and don't see the satire? This book is like that, but for Sad Puppies. I see a lot of reviews saying this is a paean to sci-fi, but honestly, it could just as easily be read as a scathing condemnation of geek culture and the shallowness of sci-fi.

The Metallic Realms stories, the sci-fi stories that inspire the narrative, are fairly unoriginal and uninteresting - they're basic B space opera Star Trek-knockoff stories. The narrator's unshakeable belief that these are some of the greatest works of fiction ever created is hard to swallow. The narrator himself is pretty pathetic: he deeply admires his roommates, and it is not obvious to him but it is obvious to the reader that they do not like him because he is self-centered and annoying. He is a pretty awful person who does some truly egregious things, but he manages to justify them all to himself. Even though he is the narrator, it is clear to the reader that his version of events is not what really happened.

The book is written in a very pretentious style, and the narrator who reads the audiobook mispronounces a lot of words in exactly the way that a pompous idiot would, which is absolutely hilarious and again I'm not sure if that's intentional or not but I hope it is.

So this book is either terrible, or accidentally brilliant, or intentionally brilliant in such a subtle way that it seems accidental, and I'm really not sure which. show less

I RECEIVED MY DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:
"We build better livers, and someone concocts stronger booze. We get sun treatments, then our chemicals burn up the ozone even more. Cure one disease, and another pops up. The pitcher juices up his throw, and the batter juices up his swing. On and on it goes."
–and–
“We’re all trapped in these forms, aren’t we? Our minds get poured into them without anyone even asking us. We grow and live in show more them, and yet in many ways they are as incomprehensible to us as the cosmos.”
–and–
"We've got 'em all. Mammoth burgers, teriyaki tyrannosaurs wings, saber-toothed gyro platters. Those cocksuckers thought they could avoid being eaten by going extinct. Bunch of buffoons. Didn't count on human ingenuity. We can eat anything these days. Eat the past, present or future."

The flavor of the writing is right there...wry, world-weary, ever so slightly facetious...and if that ain't your jam, baby, move along. Author Michel, whose story collection Upright Beasts earned praise from me, fails to shock me with his writing and planning chops. It's very clear why he offers writing advice for a living.

What would happen if Gattaca and Moneyball had a bastard love-child? This book. From the off, I loved the choices Author Michel made. Baseball is my only organized sport love. Having the Mets (my team since the 1969 Miracle Mets defeated the BodyMore Inc....I mean Baltimore!...Orioles in the seventh game of the World Series) owned by Monsanto was, while revolting, not entirely unthinkable. Choosing baseball for the body-modding corporate shills to play made perfect sense because there's so much more to work with in the prowess-enhancement department. Baseball players are required to specialize in this day and age...don't get me started about the designated-hitter rule!...and yet by the very nature of the game there is a constellation of skills they still need to possess to some degree, like running and fielding the ball. The development of modifying tech, driven by the need/want of the Big Pharma owners, gets laid right at present-day capitalism's (and its political stooge class's) door, as the present-day pandemic accelerated the mad dash for corporate ownership of everything into sports. It's not at all unlikely, given that corporations own teams in Japan....

But the fact that the world Kobo Zunz lives in, the one that allows him to modify his body to an absurd degree despite having become a talent scout thus no longer playing baseball, is chock-a-block with delightfully pointed choices embodied in other characters: Dolores ("sorrows" or "pains") is Kobo's friend/kinda-ex, a Deaf person who elected not to restore her hearing but to enhance her sight (GoogleGlasses-esque modifications to one eye that present speech translated into ASL); Natasha the Neanderthal, the Big Pharma enforcing muscle and that's not a nickname but a descriptive label as she's of the genetically engineered re-introduced Neanderthals; Lila, the Angry Young Girl who, like Greta Thunberg, is outraged into incandescence at the gigantic mess her elders are leaving for her to clean up. I love that, when Kobo the expert at foreseeing trends in body modification (always ask an addict to get an accurate vision of the addiction's course) is summoned to solve the gruesome and very public murder of his adopted brother, Monsanto Mets batting (aka "slugging") star JJ Zunz, it's by a manager whose only name is "the Mouth." Ha! Kobo's debts incurred in body modding will be paid in full...if he pins the very public, obviously message-sending murder on a particular rival team. That will get the scary, violent loansharks who have been funding his biomechanical enhancement addiction, Brenda and Wanda, off his terrifying-nightmares list.

So what am I saying about this read? Much delighted me, mentioned above. There are things that didn't delight me near so much. The length of the story, for example, would support more exploration of side characters who got little (JJ's mother, who adopted Kobo). But in all honesty I'd've been much happier if some of the amazing ideas and snarky asides had been held in RAM for a sequel, leaving a fizzier and more propulsive through-line. It's not like it's a slow read, or wasn't for me; it's just densely packed with irresistible shiny baubles and it could've been told in less time and at a more spanking pace. I presume this is not the start of a series because the publishers would've trumpeted that fact if it had been. If Author Michel chooses to make it into a series, which I really hope he will, quite a lot of the underexplored material will be very expandable.

What isn't expandable is the ending. A very weird change of tone takes place as we're coming in for our landing. It becomes...sweet. Kind of sentimental. This felt so very wrong to me, like Philip Marlowe got a hit of some opiods and turned into Ted Lasso.

What I will say is that you're going to love The Body Scout if you loved George Alec Effinger's Marîd Audran books, or the early William Gibson. I did; I do; and all cavils aside, I'd encourage any baseball fans, bleak/noir fiction lovers, and anti-capitalists to hop on board. A few bumps on the journey shouldn't detract from the way-cool scenery. show less

Boy howdy, was I immediately intrigued when I heard about this novel. First, I am trying to not give it points for including SO MANY of my favorite things within its pages. I don't think it hurts my love for this book to be on the same pop cultural wavelength of its author.... I think I am exactly the reader for this book. Sometimes I think it really helps to be close in age to the author of a book to understand it best, and I think that is the case with this book. First and foremost, I show more think the purpose of this book is to shout its love of sci-fi from the rooftops, and try to remind the reader of all that great sci-fi stuff through the years. I think it succeeds. Here we have Michael Lincoln, mid-30s, among a group of roommates that are also part of a writing collective. Michael Lincoln is a bit of a fifth wheel, as he tries to be a scholar for the group, unbeknownst to them, as he gets a lot of his information through a listening device hidden in a fern. Michael is their biggest fan, even if one of his roommates has been his lifelong best friend. Included in the narrative are the (short) sci-fi stories from that writing group, Michael's notes, etc. It's an interesting, unique setup. Meta, if you like that sort of thing. (I very much do.) I can see many readers having a problem with Michael. He isn't very likeable, which is exactly the sort of character Michel prefers (see: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/why-your-narrator-should-be-a-weird). I am usually a fan of the unlikeable characters, so this was not an issue for me. Many of the issues I THOUGHT I would have with this book were actually addressed by Michel within the text... again, same wavelength. I hate to make comparisons on such a unique book, but this is like if 'Oscar Wao' was thrown into being the landlord of the friends in Gabrielle Zevin's 'Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow' if they were sci-fi writers instead of video game designers while Oscar was channeling the narrator of 'Pale Fire' in trying to chronicle what was going on within the group while also mostly talking about himself. I would also set this on the shelf beside 'Rusty Brown' by Chris Ware for odd some reason.
*Book #166/394 I have read of the shortlisted Morning News Tournament of Books show less