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Dr. Adder (1988)

Dr. Adder (1988)

Book Info

Author
Series
Rating
3.74 of 5 Votes: 1
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ISBN
0451151976 (ISBN13: 9780451151971)
Language
English
Publisher
roc

About book Dr. Adder (1988)

You are a fan of Philip Dick and you want to read an exceptional story similar to his paranoia and quality? If so, grab this novel, you'll find a treasure here. Few words can vividly describe the plot, the interesting ideas and the characters. Dr. Adder is a mixture of cyberpunk, dystopia and horror, with kinky sex and splatter scenes, doomed characters and dark atmosphere. Jeter's prose is tough and absolutely amazing. It's not a perfect 5-star book, but it's really good. Just read it and enjoy something different. Ελληνικά:Δεν ξέρω από που ν'αρχίσω και που να τελειώσω την κριτική μου. Πρώτα-πρώτα πρέπει να πω ότι το βιβλίο δεν είναι για όλα τα γούστα. Δεν είναι για ευαίσθητα στομάχια, δεν είναι για όσους θέλουν να διαβάσουν μια sci-fi περιπέτεια με αρχή, μέση και τέλος, δεν είναι καν εύκολο σαν ανάγνωσμα. Πάντως οι φαν του Φίλιπ Ντικ θα βρουν εδώ ένα βιβλίο αντάξιο της παράνοιας του.Σε πολύ γενικές γραμμές, η ιστορία έχει ως εξής:Βρισκόμαστε στο Λος Άντζελες των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών, κάπου στο κοντινό μέλλον. Ο Δρ. Άντερ είναι ένας αινιγματικός χειρούργος που έχει την δυνατότητα να εξερευνά στα βάθη της ψυχής των ανθρώπων και να υλοποιεί τα σκοτεινότερα σεξουαλικά τους όνειρα, πραγματοποιώντας τις κατάλληλες χειρουργικές επεμβάσεις. Πόρνες και προαγωγοί τον θεωρούν έναν ήρωα. Αντίπαλος του είναι ο τηλεοπτικός ιεροκήρυκας Μοξ, αρχηγός της φανατικής οργάνωσης Ηθικές Δυνάμεις, που σκοπός του είναι να δώσει ένα βίαιο τέλος στην κυριαρχία του παρανοϊκού Άντερ. Και στην μέση υπάρχει ένας νεαρός, ο Ε. Άλλεν Λίμμιτ, που θα παίξει σημαντικό ρόλο στην ιστορία.Έκανα ό,τι μπορούσα για να σας δώσω μια ιδέα για την ιστορία, αλλά από την παραπάνω περιγραφή δεν νομίζω ότι μπορεί να καταλάβει κανείς πόσο καμένη αλά Φίλιπ Ντικ ιστορία έγραψε ο Τζέτερ. Πρόκειται για ένα συναρπαστικό μείγμα κυβερνοπάνκ, δυστοπίας και τρόμου που σίγουρα δεν θ'αφήσει κανέναν αδιάφορο.Υπάρχουν διεστραμμένες σεξουαλικές καταστάσεις (ευτυχώς όχι πολλές) που περιγράφονται αρκετά γλαφυρά, σκληρές σπλάτερ σκηνές και η ατμόσφαιρα είναι αρκούντως σκοτεινή και παρακμιακή για να σου ρίξει το ηθικό. Οι χαρακτήρες στην πλειοψηφία του καμένοι, κάτι λογικό βέβαια στον κόσμο που ζουν. Οι ιδέες πολλές και ιδιαίτερα ενδιαφέρουσες και η πλοκή βοηθάει αρκετά στο ν'αναπτυχθούν με τον καλύτερο δυνατό τρόπο. Περιττό να πω ότι η γραφή μου φάνηκε εξαιρετική, σκληρή και ακριβώς του γούστου μου.Δεν είναι ένα τέλειο βιβλίο, έχει τα προβληματάκια του, όμως είναι ένα βιβλίο που δεν κωλώνει πουθενά, έχει κάτι πρωτότυπο να πει και το λέει έξω από τα δόντια και δύσκολα θ'αφήσει κάποιον αδιάφορο. Και είναι πραγματικά από τα διαμαντάκια της επιστημονικής φαντασίας που μπορεί να βρει κανείς φτηνά στην ελληνική γλώσσα. Εγώ το τσίμπησα από ένα παζάρι βιβλίου με 2,5€.

I’m sitting in a bar in Koreatown and my friend asks, “You ever read Dr. Adder?”“No, why?“Well it starts on a chicken farm, where the main character, Limmit, works at the brothel,” he says.“I thought it was a chicken farm,” I say.“And a brothel,” he says. “The chickens are giant mutants whose genes have been spliced with human DNA. They’re gigantic – human size – and they lay enormous eggs that are processed and shipped out as vending machine food all over the country. Also, because they’re huge and partly human, they’re used as prostitutes for the human workers on the hen farm…”Christ, almighty, I said to myself, I have to read this. So I pick up where Limmit leaves the farm to go and deliver a Flashglove, a highly lethal weapon, to Dr. Adder, a cynical freak in Los Angeles who surgically alters street whores (by amputation and genital restructuring) to appeal to the specific fetishistic desires of repressed suburbanites travelling up from Orange County to the Interface (the Sodom and Gomorrah section of Los Angeles nearest the border of Orange County) in order to act out their most depraved and repressed fantasies. Dr. Adder soon discovers that Limmit has been unwittingly used as a stooge by Mox, a power-hungry televangelist and chief of the moral forces (the mo-fos, no joke) who also happens to be Adder’s bête noire. Mox needs a pretext to launch an all-out assault on the Interface, and before you can say “gesundtiedt,” the attack is underway. Adder is betrayed, and Limmit escapes into the sewer system to search for a giant insect alien known as “The Visitor,” only to be kipnapped by cannibalistic reactionaries from Orange County. They take him to an abandoned husk of the amusement park that used to be Disneyland and explain how they are going to refurbish it, turn it into Fuckland – a wholesome family getaway where dad can get his rocks off with flesh-covered robot amputee prostitutes created to fill the void left by the destruction of the Interface. Imagine a sort of new, Baudrillardian simulacrum of the demolished sin city…I should stop here, because it’s almost impossible to sum up the insanity of this immensely readable lunacy. There’s a lot going on in this novel, most obviously the central LA/Orange County dichotomy, which could signify any number of opposing forces: reactionary vs. progressive, sensual vs. repressed, etc. It is a scathing attack on suburban hypocrisy but not one that is recounted without a certain amount of unease: as troubling as Mox is, what he represents, the world that Adder rules over is just as foul. Limmit is drawn to the decadence and depravity of the Interface, but he still has real hang-ups about his own sexuality. In fact, there is an uneasy feeling of disgust in most of the descriptions of sexual encounters in the novel. Limit himself is the real Interface, the battleground in which this war of id and superego, puritan and libertine, is waged. And equally fascinating is the whole amusement park bit, reminding us that an ideological battle is always and everywhere a turf war. Who stands to profit? If you like really fucked-up science fiction, get this and read it. And if you don’t, get it and read it anyway…

Do You like book Dr. Adder (1988)?

This one pretty much defines 'cult novel.' Written in 1972 and unable to find a publisher until 1984, supposedly due to its nihilism and graphic sex and violence, it received accolades from none other than Philip K. Dick. There's an afterward published posthumously based on a draft he read. I stumbled onto this one via a PKD recommendations booklist and picked up a $3 copy. I'm not surprised the author had trouble finding someone to put it out; for 1972, this was pretty extreme and ahead of its time. The writing is choppy, but what it lacks in that department it more than makes up for in sci-fi psychedelics and gonzo craziness. It predates "City Come a-Walkin" (1980) in the cyberpunk field, but it can't really claim the crown from John Shirley due to its actual release year. The story looks dated and overshadowed by Gibson's "Neuromancer," also released in 1984. I didn't find it too far off of some of John Shirley's '80s and early '90s horror and sci-fi books, with its grimy urban locale and unlikeable anti-heroes. Dr. Adder, who is lionized as a revolutionary cult hero, is a misogynist and homophobe. Main character Limmit is a drug-addled nihilist, clearly based a bit on detectives from pulp novels. The society depicted is so debased and future-less (and shockingly close in certain ways to modern day) that I wasn't sure if the homophobia and misogyny were Jeter's own at the time, or if he was portraying a bleak future. I recommend the novel with caveats for anyone who likes dark, cult science fiction and wants to explore the earliest cyberpunk.I later found this review online, which nails the appeal of semi-forgotten pulp sci-fi like "Dr. Adder" - "The book is like a punk rock band's first record that's crammed to the brim with too much good stuff because the band isn't sure if they'll ever get another chance. By the way, I don't feel that the punk rock analogy is off the mark: Jeter's early novels have the same delightfully anarchic energy, borderline nihilism and spit-in-your-eye anger that permeates early punk rock."
—Ian

Dr. Adder is a brilliant surgeon in the horrible wreck of future Los Angeles, a messianic figure who earns his keep by re-sculpting the various teenage runaways of Orange County into the whores of Los Angeles - amputating and reconfiguring various body parts, wiping away their minds if necessary. This sickeningly sick character is an unrepentant woman-hater and homophobe; he is also the wildly popular and beloved symbol of freedom for both L.A. and the O.C. John Mox is a brillant corporate strategist and voice of moral authority in the drug-addled suburban sprawl of future Orange County, a messianic figure who keeps his power by out-maneuvering his fellow corporate shareholders and by addressing the denizens of Southern California during his daily televised hour of folksy, grandfatherly sermons. This sickeningly sick character is an unrepentant hater of all things associated with the body's desires; he is also the commander of a legion of bloodthirsty stormtroopers called The Moral Force. E Allen Limmit is a disaffected young man, fresh off the giant-mutated-chicken farm, once a soldier and later the manager of the farm's mutated-chicken-whore brothel. A somewhat bland and often irritable lad with vague ambitions to be somebody, do something, whatever, just getting the hell off of the farm. Limmit travels to The Interface - a terminally seedy street that functions as a meeting place for the degraded, drugged-up, fuck-happy denizens of L.A. & O.C. And he has brought a terrifyingly effective death-weapon with him - an instant-massacre machine. Woot! Guess who gets caught between a rock and a hard place.The novel "Dr. Adder" is perhaps the first cyberpunk novel, being completed in 1972 (although not published until 1984). It certainly has that grim, tarnished, dirty urban feeling that is key to the subgenre. It has the nonchalant violence and misanthropy, the cynicism, the snark; its narrative includes violent corporate interests, casual murder & slaughter, bad-trip imagery, and a strange kind of psychic pre-internet that exists somewhere in between the mind and the electromagnetic static of radio waves & television transmissions. It is certainly a distinctive book: angrily snappy, grimly jokey, gleefully vindictive. An adventure and an excoriation.I didn't particularly care for it. I do admire how forward-looking it turned out to be. As a person who lived for many years in So-Cal, I appreciated and shared the equal-opportunity contempt for both Los Angeles and Orange County. (Have there ever been such radically different neighbors?) The novel also has admirable chutzpah when it comes to the sheer imagintion on display - the seedy 'Rattown' of L.A., the sewers beneath it, the mind-numbing & hypocritical lifestyle of O.C., the casually bizarre chicken farm, various vividly characterized cast members, a tremendous dream-battle, gruesome & revolting sexuality, a bloodbath on the Interface, even an extraterrestrial Visitor... all quite strikingly stylized, all of these things practically popping off of the page. Jeter has a way with words. Although often lamentably sloppy (particularly in terms of plotline), the man is still a creative and often surprising wordsmith, with ideas that are well ahead of their time and are often fairly sophisticated. He knows how to write a great sentence and he knows how to create savage alternates to our reality. But the constant misanthropy - and, most obnoxiously, the constant misogyny - really began to annoy me. It seemed facile. Like an angry teenager from a cushy middle class background. All of the posturing felt shallow and unearned.I am not a moral relativist. Sorry. I don't care what the fookin' era is all about or if this is just how a particular culture operates... if a specific demographic is demeaned over and over again, in a work of fiction or elsewhere, I am not going to make excuses for it. I may not completely dismiss the piece in question, but I'm not going to overlook bullshit or come up with reasons why it's not so bad. And so it is with the novel Dr. Adder: fearless, clever, boldly imaginative; the first cyberpunk novel; a sardonic encapsulation of the moral battles & culture wars between counties Orange & Los Angeles; concepts from Burroughs moving about in a world of Sadean cruelty; a deranged & violent sci fi farce; a gushing blood-fountain of excessive, crypto-techno-organic deviance... all that, yes, great... but also constantly WOMAN-HATING. Ugh. You may be ingenious... but still: Fuck Off, novel! Your attitude sucks.
—mark monday

I bought this book because I read an interview with KW Jeter in old issue of the music magazine Forced Exposure. I enjoyed this book. It's pretty thrilling in it's dystopian weirdness and there are lots of interesting ideas in it, such as concubines made from genetically modified chickens. Definatly a good fun pulp-y read, but I gave it three stars cause I couldn't really reccomend it to everyone. It reads a bit like a much trashier Willam Gibson. Also, since it was actually written in 1972, it is the definatly the first cyberpunk novel.
—christopher

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