The idea was promising--a comic claiming to be from earth's future comes back to tell us jokes about what complete and utter idiots we were to wreck the planet--but the execution did not live up to the premise.

The novel tries to make a serious point about the mess we're in and how the best way to get out of it isn't to scare our own pants off with tales of doom and destruction but to find something in the future to hope for. But the means by which the author chose to pursue this idea flogged the poor thing into the ground and beat it so hard that by the end it was a bloody, messy pulp. (Spoilers ahead.) Seriously, the last best hope/schtick of humanity is for a comic who might be from the future or might be a self-generated reincarnation of jesus/buddha/what have you to come back and generate a large sci-fi cult following who watch him on TV at conventions?

It seemed like the kind of novel where the author started with a great idea and had no idea what to do with it, so followed the novel around for a few hundred pages and didn't want to recognize that it just didn't work.

Also, while the first self-reference was cute, as a gimmick, it quickly got tiresome.

I wish he'd put this one away for two years and come back to it with a fresh perspective and did something with it that worked, because it could have been a lot better than it was. ( )

He Walked Among Us
Norman Spinrad
Tor Books
2010
Hardcover
540 pages
ISBN: 0765325845

“The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.”
-Robert A. Heinlein

Imagine for a moment that the future existence of the planet balanced on your ability to travel back in time and explain the costs and concepts of the depletion of the ozone layer to a subsistence farmer in rural Mesopotamia. Could you do it? Enter Ralf, stand-up comic from about as far up the time-line as you can get. And he comes bearing terrifying news. The future planet is in disarray, biodiversity is as extinct as the carrier pigeon, the air is thick and un-breathable, almost unusable without heavy filtration scrubbers and to make matters worse, the last generations of humankind have taken refuge in pressurized shopping mall domes. Humanity clings to the last remnants of life on a scourged planet that could not be saved.

Now take an aging Science Fiction writer named Dexter D. Lampkins who is a flawed but intelligent individual (and Spinrad’s pseudo- literary double) with designs of writing the next great social Science Fiction Transformation of mankind, mingle with Amanda Robins, a New Age Wunderkinds seeking total Zen spiritualism, and mix in a whole lot of Ralf “the comic from the future.” Blend them all together on the same late-night television show and what do you get? Well, Monkey-Men, let’s just say that you may want to read this one yourself to discover all the gory details.

Ralf’s message is simple and crude. Start cleaning up the environment right now or the future world is going to suffer. Quit mucking up Mother Habitat so the deprived people of the future can take a break from living in constant fear of complete extinction.

Whether by accident or design Spinrad does reveal a plethora of Science Fiction Convention lore, anecdotes, behavior, and attitudes. And surprise, the Sci-Fi geeks are no less real than you or I. For some reason the Cons were the most enjoyable scenes in the book for me. Though Spinrad served up many unflattering and sometimes harsh depictions of Science Fiction conventioneers his descriptions lent realism to the story that may have otherwise been lost. Perhaps I felt so close to those scenes because, like Lampkin, I too identify with the weird and geeky, slightly askew, adoring, star-struck fans. I’m one of them!

Spinrad’s prose and dialogue is superb, humorous, enticing, and real and scans with perfect pace. If there is any real flaw with the story it is with the character known as Loxy Foxy and her strange companion the “machine-rat- from-the-depths-of-the -subway. Not so much the content itself but how long and drawn out it became in the middle of the book. It seemed like we revisited the same scenes over and over again which cluttered up the story line and served no real purpose. I suspect the novel would have stood well on its own in the absence of those characters. [I’m still unsure of what the confrontation between Loxy, the rat, and Ralf meant! Perhaps someone would care to enlighten me?]

Much like James Cameron’s “Avatar” Spinrad’s “He Walked Among Us” is social commentary with a message concerning the current state of our eroding world and until we can, as Heinlein eschewed, figure out a way to distribute our eggs more evenly someone up the stream of time is going to suffer. We need to learn to sustain what we have and become more pro-environmental. Stories like “He Walked Among Us” and “Avatar” can only make us more socially aware of our actions and surroundings. If civilization collapses due to resource depletion we’ll have only ourselves to blame for it and our children’s children will be made to suffer. Can our collective conscience survive that burden?

3 ½ out of 5 Stars

The Alternative
Southeast Wisconsin ( )