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 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. ( )

Probably my second favorite book ever. Why? I am not sure. Perhaps the absurdity. Perhaps the fun. It's just a great book. ( )

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. ( )

This is the only Matt Ruff book I couldn't love, and I've read them all. It's his second book, written in Pynchon-style rather than in his own wonderful, distinctive voice. I'm glad he went back to it for all of his other books. I bet this is a great read if you're a Pynchon fan, which I used to be, but seem to have grown out of it. If I grow into it again I will definitely go back to this book. Fortunately for me he has a new book coming out in 2015, 'Lovecraft Country'. Can't wait.

I like Matt's stuff, and this book is indeed full of truly odd and whimsical situations and whatnot, but it felt more like a miss than a hit for me. Too much jumping all over the place every few pages, combined with a cast of characters that might fit with a Russian novelist, made it feel a bit like a slog.

That said, I did enjoy the story, but the structure, as mentioned above, was a turn-off for me. Still, if you like his quirky tales, I'd still recommend giving it a go. He's creative as hell, that's for certain. ( )