simply the most brilliant book ever written, however it requires a special relationship with the readerthe reader must be willing to not read it..but experience it with a free and open mind a mind that can drift in and out of reality that can experience a deep meaning hidden behind a seemingly random nearly catastrophic collision of words.you cannot read this book like a book not like any other book at least you have to let it drift through youits very much like those 3d art paintings that on the surface just look like visual noise but when you unfocus a picture emergesthats how your mind must be you look at the words barely registering them in the consouse mind as the subcounouse turns them into a amazing story.if you go back and try to understand what you just experience from the words alone you will not be able to find a hint of the experience you just had because its not inthe words themselves.. admitely the words are 'a hard read" but if you dont let it be hard if you dont try to understand the words themselves the story springs forth in near perfect clarity from the subconscious mind.. the story mentions a concept i think its 'fuzzy logic" or something (have not read it in years but this is 1 book that when you read it it stays with you its 1 that you will always consider the greatest book you ever read) you have to alow fuzzy thought to create clarityin short thye title teaches you how to read this bhookyou must be willing to take off your shoes and go running through your mind barefoot feel your grey matter squishing between your toes feel each step sinking deeper and deeper into your mind untill you are fully inside your head barefoot naked unatached to the world outside to readthis book you must be in this book one with it one with yourself completely free to alow the mind to create a reality out of calamity..no other book has ever spoken directly to the mind like this before or since
This wildly experimental novel by Brian Aldiss takes place in a Britain devastated by "Acid Warfare" - in which the main weapons are undetectable drugs which force their victims into absolute joy or extreme terror. Into the chaos of a society desperately attempting to recover from the conflict comes Colin Charteris, a Serbian who has named himself after his favorite writer (Yes, the Leslie Charteris who wrote "The Saint") - and Charteris soon finds himself becoming the Messiah to a population barely maintaining their grip on reality. Told in a disjointed, staccato style, interspersed with poems and the lyrics of imaginary rock songs (only a few of which seem to bear any relation to the plot), full of allusions, puns and stream-of-consciousness dissertations, this story out Moorcocks Moorcock, out Joyces Joyce, and takes any reader willing to stick with it on a wild, if slightly obscure ride. Some (myself included) might have preferred a less obscure method of telling the story, but there's no doubt that Aldiss' willingness to experiment did much to push the envelope of the Science Fiction medium. As an adolescent, I loved it, but on second reading in middle age, I couldn't help but feel it was a tad too "consciously clever" for my liking. Still, a solid three stars for an intriguing read.
I tried. I really really tried, but I ended up getting about halfway through this book. Ive only read one other Aldiss, and I understand this one to be the only "incomprehensible" one, so I have faith in his other work regardless of how trying this piece was.This is literally as if someone frying balls on acid were to try and write prose. In a weird sorta way "I get it"...cant really explain it, but mostly I dont get it at all. When it was focusing on the main character, even when he was frying, it sorta made sense in a lucid dream sorta way; it definitely flowed. But then there was this huge lag where it switched to focusing on another character and I lost interest in what I only had a fingernail hold on in the first place. Good luck to those who try to read it!
—Ubik
Europe is bombed with a psychotropic weapon that puts the entire population in a permanent hallucinogenic state -- except for Charteris, who is strangely unaffected. He embarks on a somewhat Ballardian quest to the epicenter in Eastern Europe, only to find his narrative start to splinter as he travels into more severely affected areas of the continent. To make matters stranger, the tripped-out locals begin to treat him as some sort of messiah. Barefoot in the Head is an interesting experiment with prose that fragments more and more as the reader approaches the final page.
—Dan
I read this "back in the day" - the 1960s, when this book's themes and cultural backdrop were brand new stuff. It is not easy reading, as one has to sort out the "hallucinated language" from the substance of "actuality" but the going gets smoother as you roll along on the trip. Like so many artistic avenues, science fiction was caught up in the experimentalism and cultural challenges of the time, and some of the finest work in the field either happened then or grew out of its ideals and - yes - pretensions and outright errors. Aldiss, always a writer involved with his time, really steps up to the bat here, giving us the aftermath of a "Psycho-Chemical War" through the eyes of one of its victims, living in a world seen through a shattered mirror. I've read a lot Aldiss, and probably others are better written, but this remains a favorite because its landscape is one I was quite familiar with - and at ease in.
—Dale Houstman
