O-Zone

When this novel first appeared in 1987, many people in the science fiction community roundly ridiculed it. Here was an author believing that, as a respected Novelist, they had some sort of moral authority over mere peddlers of science fiction and could explore themes of dystopian futures, the perils of nuclear waste, deserted toxic Zones beyond the fortified cities where a privileged caste of Owners live and play whilst the badlands beyond are inhabited by mutant aliens, all served up with lashings of futurespeak and new names for familiar things.

Because this novel has all these things. A group of friends make an excursion by "rotor" into the "O-Zone", visiting deserted cities and thrilling to the threat caused by the "aliens" who are show more probably diseased, most likely mutant, and liable to eat the protagonists' brains (assuming they can find any). Theroux invented new slang for his future, and apparently rediscovered the exclamation mark! His characters all mouth platitudes, except for the sixteen year-old son of two of the friends, who appears to be some sort of genius but gives vent to his opinions about everyone and everything in a Tourette's-like stream of Theroux's invented slang, when he isn't pronouncing his superiority to everyone else. He is apparently some sort of advanced student, majoring in particle physics, though all his discoveries are in made-up words that don't even qualify as technobabble.

Theroux obviously thinks he's being very clever. But his theme is not original, and his vocabulary a source of ridicule. Even science fiction's worst offenders when it comes to future slang don't have their characters spout it in an unceasing stream of drivel. (Later, Theroux introduces a cadre of wannabe space settlers who look forward to colonising Mars or living in an orbital station, He ridicules these people, and has them carry round pulp science fiction novels of a sort that disappeared in the 1950s. This seems to be Theroux satirising science fiction, not realising that what he depicts only shows his ignorance.)

I suspect most of the readers in the science fiction community never made it past the first part of the book, because things get very much worse as the novel progresses. The cities are full of militias who revel in extra-judicial killings of "aliens" (which word apparently is used in the American political sense, as "anyone who is not like us"). Meanwhile, society shows all the signs of decadence in its fashions and mores. We are shown some of the lives of our characters; corporate mendacity is the order of the day, and a holiday in Africa gives an opportunity for characters to indulge in some racial stereotyping. On returning from holiday, one of the characters takes the sixteen year-old back into the O-Zone, ostensibly to carry out some sort of survey, but in truth because the character has become infatuated with a fifteen year-old girl he observed on a surveillance video on the first trip.

Things go awry when the boy is kidnapped by "aliens". He slowly discovers Real Life, though his invective slows to a mere stream and he continues to see himself as some sort of intellectual and moral superior to the "aliens", though he sometimes acknowledges that they do seem to have lives that are not as he expects. Meanwhile, the other character who ventured into the Zone with him has kidnapped the "alien" girl. He proceeds to do nothing other than to subject her to intense grooming, which she nonetheless welcomes. This grooming and the subsequent sex is portrayed as all part of the story; the man expects it as a right and the girl accepts it. Nowhere does Theroux suggest that this is further evidence of the decadence of the city dwellers. Surely this was as illegal in 1987 as it is now.

If this is satire, it doesn't work. All the things that might be considered mockery of the people or the stories of the future falls flat. The society is described in terms that Aldous Huxley used in the 1930s. The militias are shown in the full exercise of their ignorance and hatred, with the support of the legal authorities; perhaps America has moved on since the 1980s, because I feel that readers coming across this book now will just see this as foresight; there is nothing to suggest otherwise. And the grooming and sexual abuse render the book unacceptable now, as it should have been 35 years ago. I cannot recommend this novel to anyone. show less

Re-reading this - it gets four stars from me, though I'm not sure why. It's actually a better book than a lot of people give it credit for. Paul Theroux - I am pretty sure I would dislike him as a person if we ever me - but that doesn't stop him being a damned good writer a lot of the time (not all the time, it must be admitted) goes into the future with this book. There are little paradoxes and internal contradictions which verge on the cute some of the time, but work at others.

What's especially interesting about a book written in the mid-1980s is the prophetic nature of so much of it. The release of radioactive material creating a desert out of a previously inhabited area sounds horribly familiar to anyone living downwind of Fukushima show more or Chernobyl. But more than that - the polarization of American society into Owners and tax-payers (with ID) and "aliens", who are divided into groups, which are assigned demeaning names: Skells, Roaches, Worms, etc., has already started to come to pass. So has the immense fear that seems to grip developed nations (US, Europe, Japan) as we go through the endless security checks and rituals that are meant to make us safe against "Them".

Overall, the depiction of this nightmare world, which our world of 2011 is rapidly approaching, helps to make up for the deficiencies in characterization, and occasional lapses of style - but then, Theroux is one of those writers who is all the better for the human failings which show though in his work. show less

My favorite Theroux novel. A dark novel, it's fairly unpredictable unlike some of his others. Has an interesting undertone that makes you keep thinking that just about anything could happen on the next page...

Awesome story with a some of ingredients I love, I.e. post-apocalyptic and anti-elite.

Rich people take a trip to the Ozarks, where leaked nuclear waste has made a closed zone, thought to be uninhabited. It's inhabited, all right, with people that military groups of elite have dumped out of the armed cities. Contact with the"aliens" in the zone changes these freakish elite forever.