Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy
by Matt Ruff
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Sewer, Gas & Electric is the exuberant follow-up to Matt Ruff's cult classic and critically acclaimed debut Fool on the Hill. High above Manhattan android and human steelworkers are constructing a new Tower of Babel for billionaire Harry Gant, as a monument to humanity's power to dream. In the festering sewers below a darker game is afoot: a Wall Street takeover artist has been murdered, and Gant's crusading ex-wife, Joan Fine, has been hired to find out why. The year is 2023, and Ayn Rand show more has been resurrected and bottled in a hurricane lamp to serve as Joan's assistant; an eco-terrorist named Philo Dufrense travels in a pink-and-green submarine designed by Howard Hughes; a Volkswagen Beetle is possessed by the spirit of Abbie Hoffman; Meisterbrau, a mutant great white shark, is running loose in the sewers beneath Times Square; and a one-armed 181-year-old Civil War veteran joins Joan and Ayn in their quest for the truth. All of whom, and many more besides, are caught up in a vast conspiracy involving Walt Disney, J. Edgar Hoover, and a mob of homicidal robots. show lessTags
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by Luisali
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Se Douglas Adams avesse voluto scrivere un romanzo Cyberpunk, sicuramente avrebbe scritto qualcosa di Molto simile ad Acqua, Luce e Gas.
Si perché, se guardiamo oltre i fuochi d'artificio, le trovate geniali e l'irresistibile ironia, ci troviamo di fronte ad un cupissimo romanzo cyberpunk con tutte le caratteristiche tipiche del genere: cospirazioni, multinazionali, intelligenza artificiale e protesi sintetiche. Un romanzo che fa solo finta di parlare con ironia del nostro futuro prossimo, insomma, ma che in realtà seziona con il bisturi del disincanto ciò che la nostra società sta velocemente diventando. Da leggere assolutamente.
Si perché, se guardiamo oltre i fuochi d'artificio, le trovate geniali e l'irresistibile ironia, ci troviamo di fronte ad un cupissimo romanzo cyberpunk con tutte le caratteristiche tipiche del genere: cospirazioni, multinazionali, intelligenza artificiale e protesi sintetiche. Un romanzo che fa solo finta di parlare con ironia del nostro futuro prossimo, insomma, ma che in realtà seziona con il bisturi del disincanto ciò che la nostra società sta velocemente diventando. Da leggere assolutamente.
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/a-final-book-set-in-2023-sewer-gas-electric-by-m...
Originally published in 1997, this is a satire channeling the sprits of Neal Stephenson’s early work and the Illuminatus! trilogy. It’s set in October and November 2023, focussed on New York. The Empire State Building was destroyed in 2006 when a Boeing 747 accidentally crashed into it, but the Twin Towers are still standing. Donald Trump died in 2013 when the spaceship in which he planned to travel to Mars blew up on the launchpad, but Queen Elizabeth II is still alive and well, and personally directing military strikes against her enemies. There’s a mutant great white shark in the sewers, Ayn Rand resurrected as an AI personality, a 181-year-old show more civil war veteran, Walt Disney’s chief engineer and a billionaire and his ex-wife at the heart of the story.
So far so good. But there is a massive problem with the set-up: a recent pandemic, which turns out to have been bio-engineered, has killed all the African and African-descended people in the world, leaving the rest of us to get on with it. This fails on biology – it would really be much much easier to design a plague that only kills us genetically homogenous white folks, rather than targetting the super-diverse population of Africa and its diaspora – and on good taste – this is really not a sensitive or sensible way to address the future of racism, especially since African-Americans are then economically replaced by robots called “Electric Negroes”. Ruff has paid his dues to an extent with Lovecraft Country, but I can’t quite believe that this was thought acceptable in 1997.
I greatly enjoyed Ruff’s later Set This House in Order, which I actually rated as my top sf book of 2021, but I only finished this so that I could complete my project of reading books set in 2023. Apart from the racist plague, which is a major negative, there is not enough structure or characterisation and there are too many straw man debates with the reincarnation of Ayn Rand. But you can get it here. show less
Originally published in 1997, this is a satire channeling the sprits of Neal Stephenson’s early work and the Illuminatus! trilogy. It’s set in October and November 2023, focussed on New York. The Empire State Building was destroyed in 2006 when a Boeing 747 accidentally crashed into it, but the Twin Towers are still standing. Donald Trump died in 2013 when the spaceship in which he planned to travel to Mars blew up on the launchpad, but Queen Elizabeth II is still alive and well, and personally directing military strikes against her enemies. There’s a mutant great white shark in the sewers, Ayn Rand resurrected as an AI personality, a 181-year-old show more civil war veteran, Walt Disney’s chief engineer and a billionaire and his ex-wife at the heart of the story.
So far so good. But there is a massive problem with the set-up: a recent pandemic, which turns out to have been bio-engineered, has killed all the African and African-descended people in the world, leaving the rest of us to get on with it. This fails on biology – it would really be much much easier to design a plague that only kills us genetically homogenous white folks, rather than targetting the super-diverse population of Africa and its diaspora – and on good taste – this is really not a sensitive or sensible way to address the future of racism, especially since African-Americans are then economically replaced by robots called “Electric Negroes”. Ruff has paid his dues to an extent with Lovecraft Country, but I can’t quite believe that this was thought acceptable in 1997.
I greatly enjoyed Ruff’s later Set This House in Order, which I actually rated as my top sf book of 2021, but I only finished this so that I could complete my project of reading books set in 2023. Apart from the racist plague, which is a major negative, there is not enough structure or characterisation and there are too many straw man debates with the reincarnation of Ayn Rand. But you can get it here. show less
Sheer gonzosity can make up for a lot of flaws. This book is exactly what it says on the back, strange characters and spiky technologies. Mostly, it reminds me of The Illuminatus Trilogy, but taking itself a little more seriously. Not great lit by any standard, but fairly fun.
After an eight-year hiatus (his 1988 novel, Fool on the Hill, became an underground hit), Ruff proves himself still capable of wild-eyed flights of fancy as he pits altruists against antihuman robots in an updated version of Atlas Shrugged above and below the streets of Manhattan. In the year 2023, visionary zillionaire industrialist Harry Gant is building a new Tower of Babel, uptown; his crusading ex-wife Joan is on a search-and-destroy effort in the city sewers, seeking a mutant Jaws-like shark named Meisterbrau; eco-terrorist Philo Dufresne, one of the few blacks remaining after the race-specific pandemic of '04, leads the brilliant, eccentric crew of the submarine Yabba-Dabba-Doo on a nonviolent attack against a Gant-owned ship to show more save Antarctica; Anderson Teaneck, Wall Street takeover specialist, also with a bead on Gant Industries, is murdered, perhaps by one of his servant robots--who are all carefully programmed, supposedly, to be harmless. Joan has a close encounter with Meisterbrau that leaves them intact but the East River in flames, then is enlisted to solve the Teaneck mystery, a mission that takes her into the heart of a plot hatched by a psychopath and his creation, an artificial brain sheltered in a bunker under Disneyland. Joan also ends up with the querulous companionship of Ayn Rand, reduced to a holograph on a hurricane lamp. Philo and crew, meanwhile, are threatened by the vengeful scheme of a Gant subordinate, as they willingly enter a trap to save what may be the world's last lemurs. Several torpedoes, robot assaults, philosophical debates, and an earthquake later, all is again reasonably right with the world. A careening riot to read, even with all of its zestful improbabilities: Ruffs second novel can only enhance his reputation as a fantasy writer with imagination to burn.
(Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 1996) show less
(Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 1996) show less
Picked this one up because I love, love, love his first book, Fool on a Hill. Sewer, Gas, & Electric and Fool on the Hill are very, very similar; an motley assemblage of Good Guys fighting an army of fantastic and vaguely supernatural Bad Guys. FotH is set at modern-day Cornell, SG&E is set in 2030's Manhattan. Did that make me like it less? A little, yes. In any case, the writing is strong, and funny in a Christopher Moore kind of way, although I wasn't laughing out loud *quite* as often. There's so much going on, however, with the four or more main plotlines and with such short-attention-span cuts in the narrative flow, that it's kind of difficult to follow, even with frequent reference to the Dramatis Personae included in the show more beginning. So, I enjoyed it, and might get more out of it on a second read, but it's no Fool on the Hill. show less
I love all of Matt Ruff's books, and this is my favorite. The problem is, you just can't explain the plot of one of his novels without sounding slightly insane and this one is the worst. (There's an extremely disturbing subplot about a pandemic that I'm sure some people think is racist because they miss that it's a satire on the attitudes of some white Americans. J. Edgar Hoover and a psychotic robot are involved in the plot. Enough said?)
Just the title of this book is enough to make people wonder about you, and honestly, the title still doesn't really work for me. But the book itself is laugh out loud funny, and despite the fact that none of the characters are that deep, they're funny, and the plot is so wacky it keeps you guessing all show more the way through. Plus there are all of these strange insights on random subjects, like abortion laws and Ayn Rand. (No really, I'm not crazy.) show less
Just the title of this book is enough to make people wonder about you, and honestly, the title still doesn't really work for me. But the book itself is laugh out loud funny, and despite the fact that none of the characters are that deep, they're funny, and the plot is so wacky it keeps you guessing all show more the way through. Plus there are all of these strange insights on random subjects, like abortion laws and Ayn Rand. (No really, I'm not crazy.) show less
I waited the whole length of this book to explain why all the Black people in the world were plagued out of existence and replaced with Black robots. No amount of satirical writing can make that not just a wholly disgusting plot point. By the end no justifiable answer was given besides well, thanks for being obvious in your intent to take 99% of black people out of your world.
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy
- Original title
- Sewer, Gas and Electric. The Public Works Trilogy
- Original publication date
- 1997
- People/Characters
- Ayn Rand; Harry Gant
- Important places
- New York, New York, USA
- Epigraph
- It's very strange for me to look at your generation. You see, we always had this idea that each generation was going to be brighter, cheer more for justice and more for peace. But my youngest son, who's 16, says to me, "Dad... (show all), you're so quaint and romantic. You think things are going to get better, that there's hope." he says, "but none of us believe this." And then he tells me how half the world is going to be wiped out by AIDS, how the polar icecap is going to melt, that the tropical rainforest will be gone in 30 years and we won't have any oxygen, which doesn't matter anyway since the nuclear holocaust is going to happen within 7 years, and if I'm a little doubtful about the dates, he says he can prove it to me on his computer...In my view, if the next generation is going to make some contribution it'll be the discovery of how you struggle for social change without having any hope. In the 60's, you see, when you jumped on the earth, the earth jumped back just like Einstein said it would. We knew we'd win every battle because every day we grew up. Every day was a new day and being on the brink of the Apocalpyse was romantic. But maybe this vision that you have is the more realistic of the two..."
Abbie Hoffman at the University of South Carolina, 1987 - Dedication
- For Ayn Rand
- First words
- No one could say he hadn't been warned.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)It really was turning out to be a wonderful day, Gant reflected; and he could hardly wait to see what he would think of next.
- Blurbers
- Stephenson, Neal
- Original language
- English
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- ISBNs
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