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Electric Forest
The world called Indigo turned upside down for Magdala Cled one unexpected morning. From being that world's only genetic misfit, the shunned outcast of an otherwise ideal society, she became the focus of attention for mighty forces.
Once they had installed her in the midst of the Electric Forest, with its weird trees and its super-luxurious private home, Magdala awoke to the potentials which were opening up all about her. And to realize also the peril that now seemed poised above Indigo ... which only she, the hated one, could possibly circumvent.
An extraordinary incursion into hard-core science fiction by the same brilliant and colorful talent that produced THE BIRTHGRAVE and DEATH'S MASTER.
Once they had installed her in the midst of the Electric Forest, with its weird trees and its super-luxurious private home, Magdala awoke to the potentials which were opening up all about her. And to realize also the peril that now seemed poised above Indigo ... which only she, the hated one, could possibly circumvent.
An extraordinary incursion into hard-core science fiction by the same brilliant and colorful talent that produced THE BIRTHGRAVE and DEATH'S MASTER.
159 pages, paperback
First published January 1, 1979
28 people are currently reading
1863 people want to read
About the author
Tanith Lee
617 books1,988 followersTanith Lee was a British writer of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. She was the author of 77 novels, 14 collections, and almost 300 short stories. She also wrote four radio plays broadcast by the BBC and two scripts for the UK, science fiction, cult television series "Blake's 7."
Before becoming a full time writer, Lee worked as a file clerk, an assistant librarian, a shop assistant, and a waitress.
Her first short story, "Eustace," was published in 1968, and her first novel (for children) The Dragon Hoard was published in 1971.
Her career took off in 1975 with the acceptance by Daw Books USA of her adult fantasy epic The Birthgrave for publication as a mass-market paperback, and Lee has since maintained a prolific output in popular genre writing.
Lee twice won the World Fantasy Award: once in 1983 for best short fiction for “The Gorgon” and again in 1984 for best short fiction for “Elle Est Trois (La Mort).” She has been a Guest of Honour at numerous science fiction and fantasy conventions including the Boskone XVIII in Boston, USA in 1981, the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada, and Orbital 2008 the British National Science Fiction convention (Eastercon) held in London, England in March 2008. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious title of Grand Master of Horror.
Lee was the daughter of two ballroom dancers, Bernard and Hylda Lee. Despite a persistent rumour, she was not the daughter of the actor Bernard Lee who played "M" in the James Bond series of films of the 1960s.
Tanith Lee married author and artist John Kaiine in 1992.
Before becoming a full time writer, Lee worked as a file clerk, an assistant librarian, a shop assistant, and a waitress.
Her first short story, "Eustace," was published in 1968, and her first novel (for children) The Dragon Hoard was published in 1971.
Her career took off in 1975 with the acceptance by Daw Books USA of her adult fantasy epic The Birthgrave for publication as a mass-market paperback, and Lee has since maintained a prolific output in popular genre writing.
Lee twice won the World Fantasy Award: once in 1983 for best short fiction for “The Gorgon” and again in 1984 for best short fiction for “Elle Est Trois (La Mort).” She has been a Guest of Honour at numerous science fiction and fantasy conventions including the Boskone XVIII in Boston, USA in 1981, the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada, and Orbital 2008 the British National Science Fiction convention (Eastercon) held in London, England in March 2008. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious title of Grand Master of Horror.
Lee was the daughter of two ballroom dancers, Bernard and Hylda Lee. Despite a persistent rumour, she was not the daughter of the actor Bernard Lee who played "M" in the James Bond series of films of the 1960s.
Tanith Lee married author and artist John Kaiine in 1992.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 137 reviews
January 15, 2016
poor Ugly! her misshapen appearance really sticks out on the planet Indigo, where everyone is practically perfect in every way. Ugly needs to trade up! time to move into a new body, freshly made and certainly more pleasing to the eye.
this is a futuristic morality tale in which Pygmalion is a beautiful, psychopathic young genius and Galatea his equally beautiful handmade toy. it is also a chilly deconstruction of independence and class with a sad-at-heart, sadistic Henry Higgins transforming, degrading, and abusing his elevated Eliza Doolittle. all in all, quite an unpleasant tale. our heroine is an intriguing cipher capable of who knows what but she's also an irritatingly unformed pawn. I was happy to cheer her on when she demonstrated small moments of defiance and independent thought, but those moments could have come more frequently.
but it's absorbing too, in its own odd way. the prose is hypnotic, which is par for the course for Lee. in Electric Forest the author had yet to reach her zenith and her lush prose is heavily reliant on the naming of various colors - but she still demonstrates how strong of a stylist she can be in her striking descriptive passages, the ambiguous and sinister characterization, and offhand moments of mannered conversation.
the dreamlike narrative increasingly centralizes a corporate espionage plot. the espionage is interesting enough but seems to be working at cross-purposes with the main goals of the novel - which at first appeared to be the examining of various forms of control and various uses of beauty. the author also does the novel no favors by including an epilogue which repositions the entire narrative as a surprisingly benevolent exercise in role-playing. although the subject matter made my skin crawl, I don't like it when an author so rigorously attempts to make her tale less disturbing in the end. sort of takes away the whole point of this creepy anti-romance.
overall an intriguing little novel but mainly of interest to Tanith Lee completists. like myself!
this is a futuristic morality tale in which Pygmalion is a beautiful, psychopathic young genius and Galatea his equally beautiful handmade toy. it is also a chilly deconstruction of independence and class with a sad-at-heart, sadistic Henry Higgins transforming, degrading, and abusing his elevated Eliza Doolittle. all in all, quite an unpleasant tale. our heroine is an intriguing cipher capable of who knows what but she's also an irritatingly unformed pawn. I was happy to cheer her on when she demonstrated small moments of defiance and independent thought, but those moments could have come more frequently.
but it's absorbing too, in its own odd way. the prose is hypnotic, which is par for the course for Lee. in Electric Forest the author had yet to reach her zenith and her lush prose is heavily reliant on the naming of various colors - but she still demonstrates how strong of a stylist she can be in her striking descriptive passages, the ambiguous and sinister characterization, and offhand moments of mannered conversation.
the dreamlike narrative increasingly centralizes a corporate espionage plot. the espionage is interesting enough but seems to be working at cross-purposes with the main goals of the novel - which at first appeared to be the examining of various forms of control and various uses of beauty. the author also does the novel no favors by including an epilogue which repositions the entire narrative as a surprisingly benevolent exercise in role-playing. although the subject matter made my skin crawl, I don't like it when an author so rigorously attempts to make her tale less disturbing in the end. sort of takes away the whole point of this creepy anti-romance.
overall an intriguing little novel but mainly of interest to Tanith Lee completists. like myself!
December 29, 2023
4.0 Stars
Video Review: https://youtu.be/Kri0TLzmctk
I read this book based on a friend's recommendation. I knew nothing about it going in and honestly still felt in the dark during my reading experience. I really enjoyed the science fiction worldbuilding which had a fantastical and creative quality.
If you decide to start this story, you must finish it. As my friend promised, this story had a fantastic ending. It really reframed the whole story and uplifted my whole experience.
I would recommend this one to readers looking for a lesser known, short piece of science fiction.
Video Review: https://youtu.be/Kri0TLzmctk
I read this book based on a friend's recommendation. I knew nothing about it going in and honestly still felt in the dark during my reading experience. I really enjoyed the science fiction worldbuilding which had a fantastical and creative quality.
If you decide to start this story, you must finish it. As my friend promised, this story had a fantastic ending. It really reframed the whole story and uplifted my whole experience.
I would recommend this one to readers looking for a lesser known, short piece of science fiction.
June 24, 2023
Interesting speculative science fiction by Lee, but ultimately, not that satisfying, even given the rather unique twist at the end. Our main protagonist, Magdada, is an ugly duckling in a sea of swans. Via in vitro fertilization and gene manipulation, people in the Earth Federation are uniformly beautiful, smart, etc. Magdada, however, was conceived the natural way and is mildly deformed, and yes, ugly. In fact, her co-workers just call her Ugly as her name. Magdada leads a solitary, lonely existence until one day, a (of course) beautiful man crashes into her world and makes her an offer she really cannot refuse-- a new, beautiful body!
Essentially, the technique 'C.T.,' or "consciousness transfer" where the subject's body is kept in something like status but the consciousness is transferred into an organic, but man-made body; something like a meat cyborg. Magdada goes along-- she feels she has nothing really to live for anyway if for some reason it fails-- and the transfer works. The 'mad scientist' who did the transfer is cruel, however, and basically orders her around, constantly demeaning her ugly, deformed real self. Why did he do this? Obviously, there is some agenda, and Magdada slowly starts to uncover what the real deal is, or so she thinks...
Lee does some neat things here. I liked the 'consciousness raising' part regarding one's looks in society; Magdada's social ostracism was unnecessary and mean. I last part-- e.g., the last ten pages where Lee drops the bomb on the entire story? Not sure about that, but hard to discuss without spoilers. Lee's prose takes a bit to get used to as well:
Neat little novella, but not quite sure what Lee was going after here. 2.5 Electric stars!!
Essentially, the technique 'C.T.,' or "consciousness transfer" where the subject's body is kept in something like status but the consciousness is transferred into an organic, but man-made body; something like a meat cyborg. Magdada goes along-- she feels she has nothing really to live for anyway if for some reason it fails-- and the transfer works. The 'mad scientist' who did the transfer is cruel, however, and basically orders her around, constantly demeaning her ugly, deformed real self. Why did he do this? Obviously, there is some agenda, and Magdada slowly starts to uncover what the real deal is, or so she thinks...
Lee does some neat things here. I liked the 'consciousness raising' part regarding one's looks in society; Magdada's social ostracism was unnecessary and mean. I last part-- e.g., the last ten pages where Lee drops the bomb on the entire story? Not sure about that, but hard to discuss without spoilers. Lee's prose takes a bit to get used to as well:
Unaware, the car shot through it, while, spread on the dash, Magdada's hands gained transparent gauntlets of violet and crimson while, like infernal sweets, carnation and quince candied and dissolved on the polarized windscreen.
Neat little novella, but not quite sure what Lee was going after here. 2.5 Electric stars!!
March 17, 2025
Electric Forest by Tanith Lee. Her style is something I can get used to. But her story is nothing great. It was ok, going to look at her other stuff to see what else she has. The only character I could get into and relate to was Ugly. Because of the way people treated her. Why I could sympathize with her a whole lot. The way she saw herself. As I'm reading this story, Different movies and stories popped into my mind. Frankenstein, Ugly Duckling. And towards the end of the story, when the experiment was explained. I was thinking of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I would definitely seek out her other books to see if there is something that might strike me as fantastic. Going to rate this as 3/5
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 4, 2024
APPARENTLY I MISUNDERTOOD THE ENDING WHEN I FIRST READ IT!!!
In the very far future, on the planet Indigo within the Earth Conclave (E.C.) where pretty much everything is blue, an ugly, deformed dwarf of a woman named Magdala Cled toils her life away, shunned by everyone for her appearance. You see, in this future conception and genetic engineering are controlled by the government (no, not in the way you're thinking of) and so almost all children are test tube babies born beautiful with incredible intellect that persists throughout life. Magdala, however, was conceived naturally by a prostitute mother and an unknown father, and thus she had been deformed since birth. Her only comforts are her stuffed cat toy and the dramas she watches on Tri-V (basically future television). But one day she meets Claudio Loro, a wealthy scientist and tech engineer a man who ropes her into a world of espionage. Through the process of consciousness transfer (C.T.), Claudio puts Magdala's mind into an artificially-reconstructed clone of his ex-lover Christophine "Christa" de Jan. Once Magdala inhabits this new, beautiful body, her life and the world around her change. But just how in touch is she?
In terms of Tanith Lee's science fiction, this is a step up from Don't Bite the Sun and its sequel Drinking Sapphire Wine--not that those are bad books, but Lee has more focus here. Like Sabella, Electric Forest has a rare Gothic quality in a sci-fi setting that adds multiple layers to both the themes of the story and Magdala's personality. At first glance, the synopsis is oddly reminiscent of James Tiptree Jr.'s (Alice Sheldon) The Girl Who Was Plugged In i .e. women who are less than attractive transferring to more beautiful bodies and the privileges and societal implications that brings in its wake; but ultimately, the resembles end there. After its initial start, you have no idea where Electric Forest is going, but can pick up that this is a story that intermixes religious symbolism and concepts with elements from other stories like Frankenstein. It's a bizarre, beautiful, yet also unsettling story, although that depends on how you view the epilogue, which I will address.
The prose is that ornamental prose so typical of Lee at this point in her career (the 70s), so luscious and colorful. True to the Gothic influence, the prose highlights the many, mostly blue, colors that pervade the environment and how these colors correspond to the tone of the actions within the story or with Magdala's mentality. You truly do understand that Magdala is a woman uncared for and unloved by anyone and that she gives off this disinterest towards anybody, especially Claudio, to protect herself. The prose's tone and descriptions bleeds into the character of Magdala herself, even though it is third person. Magdala is mostly presented--or at least presents herself--as this aforementioned cold and unaffected young woman. Her relationship with Claudio is fraught with a power struggle, sometimes quiet and not so quiet, and an untouched sexuality. Readers will either be intrigued by the psychological torment and battlefield happening between Magdala and/or be disturbed at what is happening. Claudio's control and torment over Magdala is Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester taken to his absolutely worst side. Claudio, as we eventually learn, transferred Magdala into the replica of Christophine's body because of both a plot to get C.T. expanded out to planets outside of E.C. and because he wanted Christophine's beauty but under his control. That second explanation is a claim made by Christophine herself, which we'll get to her in a bit, but to be honest who knows if it's true or not. Regardless, Claudio threatens Magdala into submission and much later does Magdala admit her masochism.
“You are my marionette. Dance for me, and keep your mouth shut. Or I won’t be nice to you any more.”
It may be hard to read for some. Magdala desperate wants to remain in her beautiful, new, blue body, even though she'll still have to take care of her old, ugly one in its (kind of) stasis, and also remain in her new life, so she'll do what Claudio says. However, she doesn't always feel threatened by him. At one point, Claudio threatens to drop Magdala out of a window if she doesn't comply, but she only muses that the drop will be quick and the pain brief. Seeing that he his threats have no purchase he pulls her back inside and they have sex. This strange, fraught relationship reveals that Magdala does have some sort of power, which she herself acknowledges. Magdala realizes that Claudio needs her for everything they're doing, so she knows that he will never kill her her or greatly hurt her. Thus, she keeps an unseen, subtle lure in front of Claudio, knowing her hold over him. Lee often wrote women who were passive or who had power very differently to her contemporaries; or even to writers today. There is acknowledgement that women have so sort of power over men, even in situations when it seems like they don't.
However, Magdala's desire for her new life and body and the acknowledging of her quiet power is not only intuited by her realizations and perceptions. You remember those Tri-V dramas I mentioned at the start? As the novella progresses, Magdala keeps using those dramas as a reference or framework for how she perceives herself, certain situations, and the other characters. Once again the Gothic influence rises to the surface. The many heroines and main women characters of the Gothic subgenre are often influenced in their stories by religious figures, fairy-tales, and popular love stories of the times and as such their authors use them as doubles to those stories and figures, inversions, or sometimes so greatly enchanted by them that their eventual mental spiraling makes them believe they are, in some part, apart of those stories or figures. I meandered a bit there, but what I'm trying to say is that Lee uses the Tri-V soap operas to show Magdala's means of coping and escape, of refiguring her (new) world. At some point you begin to wonder if Magdala really believes she's in a soap opera or not. All in all, this silent power struggle with Claudio, her disinterest in those around her, her gradual increasing pining for the new life, and her enchantment by these Tri-V dramas paint Magdala as a multi-faceted, if not, flawed character.
Claudio is also interesting, though I feel that his and Christophine's character were not quite as fleshed out as Magdala's. Nonetheless, Claudio isn't as bad as we initially make him out to be, though he is still a twat, to quote the British. Claudio really wants to get back at Christophine, and his plans and anger toward her both color Magdala's own personality and thoughts, but also show just how the beautiful intellects of this world are really just all power-hungry and unhinged. That's one thing I noticed about Magdala's life in her original, deformed body; though she was lonely, she wasn't unhinged until after the C.T. Anyway, Claudio does feel some sort of shame that he can come under Magdala's control--especially after they have sex--and he does eventually try to become nicer and help Magdala out towards the end. There is a spoiler involved with Claudio, I won't reveal it here, but there is a question of whether or not Magdala truly loved or forgave Claudio in the end. Honestly, I don't know. Magdala is so frazzled and broken by that moment in the book that I cannot tell if Magdala realized what was happening to her mentally at that point.
Christophine is introduced much later in the story, but prior to that all, all we have about her is from second hand accounts, particularly Claudio. When we finally meet her, we see a woman who pretty much knows what is already going on. Smart and confident, but also truly manipulative. Her interactions with Magdala, her mirror, were very interesting. Let's just say that at this point, Magdala had separated from Claudio and was fully against him, but sadly, just because she was not under his thumb at that point did not mean she couldn't be manipulated still. With Christophine, Lee reminds us that women can be both manipulated and manipulator, victim and victimizer. To me, Christophine was more than just an antagonist to Magdala and Claudio, she was a representation of that ethereal, overidealized paragon of true beauty and intellect. This brings us to the religious symbolism of the story.
It is obvious were Magdala's name comes from, it's even said within the text itself. Christophine occasionally called Christa is also highlighted. The fact that Magdala is transferred into a clone-like body of Christophine's is filled to the brim with meaning. As another reviewer pointed out, Electric Forest utilizes transfiguration, death, and resurrection; Lee plays and twists with these concepts to guide the story. Briefly, it is mentioned that as a child Magdala never felt like Jesus would save her because he was beautiful and she was not. Magdala's transfiguration is going into the clone Christa body; this can also be considered her first death as her original body goes into its stasis within a mechanical coffin that she has to keep maintenance over. Her and/or Christophine's "death" happens at the novella's final climax. The two fight each other into Christophine's home after Claudio's death and Magdala kills Christophine. Afterwards, Magdala sits in front of a piano-like instrument and plays it, crying. I saw some reviewers claiming this scene was intentionally made to be confusing, as in questioned which Christa won the fight, but I disagree. Christophine would have no reason to cry over Magdala and Claudio's deaths--this is Magdala, crying after everything has occurred, after she has gained all she wanted. The Magdalene is now the Christ(a). The second death has been achieved. Her resurrection is on that piano instrument and in the somber epilogue.
Ah, yes. That epilogue. I completely misread that epilogue Everyone is divided over the epilogue. Some say it wasn't needed and weakened the book, while others think it added an inventive, but dark twist. I am in the latter camp, given the climax's end with Magdala weeping at the piano instrument and the implications of the epilogue.
Major spoilers! Expect some Philip K. Dick stuff here!
It is definitely wild.
In terms of negatives, there's only a few things I can point out here. There's a few moments where the otherwise quick pacing slows down, but just a few times. There's three major info-dumps within the story, two from Claudio and one from Christophine. They're lengthy, but they aren't the worse info-dumps in history. I should note that I am mostly use to Lee's writing style at this point, so a newcomer may differ.
Electric Forest is haunting, beautiful, and disturbing in so many different ways. The titular forest is a fake one, holographic. It is merely there for beautiful and intrigue. And as Magdala discovers, beneath beauty can lay some truths that are far more harmful than an ugly body.
In the very far future, on the planet Indigo within the Earth Conclave (E.C.) where pretty much everything is blue, an ugly, deformed dwarf of a woman named Magdala Cled toils her life away, shunned by everyone for her appearance. You see, in this future conception and genetic engineering are controlled by the government (no, not in the way you're thinking of) and so almost all children are test tube babies born beautiful with incredible intellect that persists throughout life. Magdala, however, was conceived naturally by a prostitute mother and an unknown father, and thus she had been deformed since birth. Her only comforts are her stuffed cat toy and the dramas she watches on Tri-V (basically future television). But one day she meets Claudio Loro, a wealthy scientist and tech engineer a man who ropes her into a world of espionage. Through the process of consciousness transfer (C.T.), Claudio puts Magdala's mind into an artificially-reconstructed clone of his ex-lover Christophine "Christa" de Jan. Once Magdala inhabits this new, beautiful body, her life and the world around her change. But just how in touch is she?
In terms of Tanith Lee's science fiction, this is a step up from Don't Bite the Sun and its sequel Drinking Sapphire Wine--not that those are bad books, but Lee has more focus here. Like Sabella, Electric Forest has a rare Gothic quality in a sci-fi setting that adds multiple layers to both the themes of the story and Magdala's personality. At first glance, the synopsis is oddly reminiscent of James Tiptree Jr.'s (Alice Sheldon) The Girl Who Was Plugged In i .e. women who are less than attractive transferring to more beautiful bodies and the privileges and societal implications that brings in its wake; but ultimately, the resembles end there. After its initial start, you have no idea where Electric Forest is going, but can pick up that this is a story that intermixes religious symbolism and concepts with elements from other stories like Frankenstein. It's a bizarre, beautiful, yet also unsettling story, although that depends on how you view the epilogue, which I will address.
The prose is that ornamental prose so typical of Lee at this point in her career (the 70s), so luscious and colorful. True to the Gothic influence, the prose highlights the many, mostly blue, colors that pervade the environment and how these colors correspond to the tone of the actions within the story or with Magdala's mentality. You truly do understand that Magdala is a woman uncared for and unloved by anyone and that she gives off this disinterest towards anybody, especially Claudio, to protect herself. The prose's tone and descriptions bleeds into the character of Magdala herself, even though it is third person. Magdala is mostly presented--or at least presents herself--as this aforementioned cold and unaffected young woman. Her relationship with Claudio is fraught with a power struggle, sometimes quiet and not so quiet, and an untouched sexuality. Readers will either be intrigued by the psychological torment and battlefield happening between Magdala and/or be disturbed at what is happening. Claudio's control and torment over Magdala is Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester taken to his absolutely worst side. Claudio, as we eventually learn, transferred Magdala into the replica of Christophine's body because of both a plot to get C.T. expanded out to planets outside of E.C. and because he wanted Christophine's beauty but under his control. That second explanation is a claim made by Christophine herself, which we'll get to her in a bit, but to be honest who knows if it's true or not. Regardless, Claudio threatens Magdala into submission and much later does Magdala admit her masochism.
“You are my marionette. Dance for me, and keep your mouth shut. Or I won’t be nice to you any more.”
It may be hard to read for some. Magdala desperate wants to remain in her beautiful, new, blue body, even though she'll still have to take care of her old, ugly one in its (kind of) stasis, and also remain in her new life, so she'll do what Claudio says. However, she doesn't always feel threatened by him. At one point, Claudio threatens to drop Magdala out of a window if she doesn't comply, but she only muses that the drop will be quick and the pain brief. Seeing that he his threats have no purchase he pulls her back inside and they have sex. This strange, fraught relationship reveals that Magdala does have some sort of power, which she herself acknowledges. Magdala realizes that Claudio needs her for everything they're doing, so she knows that he will never kill her her or greatly hurt her. Thus, she keeps an unseen, subtle lure in front of Claudio, knowing her hold over him. Lee often wrote women who were passive or who had power very differently to her contemporaries; or even to writers today. There is acknowledgement that women have so sort of power over men, even in situations when it seems like they don't.
However, Magdala's desire for her new life and body and the acknowledging of her quiet power is not only intuited by her realizations and perceptions. You remember those Tri-V dramas I mentioned at the start? As the novella progresses, Magdala keeps using those dramas as a reference or framework for how she perceives herself, certain situations, and the other characters. Once again the Gothic influence rises to the surface. The many heroines and main women characters of the Gothic subgenre are often influenced in their stories by religious figures, fairy-tales, and popular love stories of the times and as such their authors use them as doubles to those stories and figures, inversions, or sometimes so greatly enchanted by them that their eventual mental spiraling makes them believe they are, in some part, apart of those stories or figures. I meandered a bit there, but what I'm trying to say is that Lee uses the Tri-V soap operas to show Magdala's means of coping and escape, of refiguring her (new) world. At some point you begin to wonder if Magdala really believes she's in a soap opera or not. All in all, this silent power struggle with Claudio, her disinterest in those around her, her gradual increasing pining for the new life, and her enchantment by these Tri-V dramas paint Magdala as a multi-faceted, if not, flawed character.
Claudio is also interesting, though I feel that his and Christophine's character were not quite as fleshed out as Magdala's. Nonetheless, Claudio isn't as bad as we initially make him out to be, though he is still a twat, to quote the British. Claudio really wants to get back at Christophine, and his plans and anger toward her both color Magdala's own personality and thoughts, but also show just how the beautiful intellects of this world are really just all power-hungry and unhinged. That's one thing I noticed about Magdala's life in her original, deformed body; though she was lonely, she wasn't unhinged until after the C.T. Anyway, Claudio does feel some sort of shame that he can come under Magdala's control--especially after they have sex--and he does eventually try to become nicer and help Magdala out towards the end. There is a spoiler involved with Claudio, I won't reveal it here, but there is a question of whether or not Magdala truly loved or forgave Claudio in the end. Honestly, I don't know. Magdala is so frazzled and broken by that moment in the book that I cannot tell if Magdala realized what was happening to her mentally at that point.
Christophine is introduced much later in the story, but prior to that all, all we have about her is from second hand accounts, particularly Claudio. When we finally meet her, we see a woman who pretty much knows what is already going on. Smart and confident, but also truly manipulative. Her interactions with Magdala, her mirror, were very interesting. Let's just say that at this point, Magdala had separated from Claudio and was fully against him, but sadly, just because she was not under his thumb at that point did not mean she couldn't be manipulated still. With Christophine, Lee reminds us that women can be both manipulated and manipulator, victim and victimizer. To me, Christophine was more than just an antagonist to Magdala and Claudio, she was a representation of that ethereal, overidealized paragon of true beauty and intellect. This brings us to the religious symbolism of the story.
It is obvious were Magdala's name comes from, it's even said within the text itself. Christophine occasionally called Christa is also highlighted. The fact that Magdala is transferred into a clone-like body of Christophine's is filled to the brim with meaning. As another reviewer pointed out, Electric Forest utilizes transfiguration, death, and resurrection; Lee plays and twists with these concepts to guide the story. Briefly, it is mentioned that as a child Magdala never felt like Jesus would save her because he was beautiful and she was not. Magdala's transfiguration is going into the clone Christa body; this can also be considered her first death as her original body goes into its stasis within a mechanical coffin that she has to keep maintenance over. Her and/or Christophine's "death" happens at the novella's final climax. The two fight each other into Christophine's home after Claudio's death and Magdala kills Christophine. Afterwards, Magdala sits in front of a piano-like instrument and plays it, crying. I saw some reviewers claiming this scene was intentionally made to be confusing, as in questioned which Christa won the fight, but I disagree. Christophine would have no reason to cry over Magdala and Claudio's deaths--this is Magdala, crying after everything has occurred, after she has gained all she wanted. The Magdalene is now the Christ(a). The second death has been achieved. Her resurrection is on that piano instrument and in the somber epilogue.
Ah, yes. That epilogue. I completely misread that epilogue Everyone is divided over the epilogue. Some say it wasn't needed and weakened the book, while others think it added an inventive, but dark twist. I am in the latter camp, given the climax's end with Magdala weeping at the piano instrument and the implications of the epilogue.
Major spoilers! Expect some Philip K. Dick stuff here!
It is definitely wild.
In terms of negatives, there's only a few things I can point out here. There's a few moments where the otherwise quick pacing slows down, but just a few times. There's three major info-dumps within the story, two from Claudio and one from Christophine. They're lengthy, but they aren't the worse info-dumps in history. I should note that I am mostly use to Lee's writing style at this point, so a newcomer may differ.
Electric Forest is haunting, beautiful, and disturbing in so many different ways. The titular forest is a fake one, holographic. It is merely there for beautiful and intrigue. And as Magdala discovers, beneath beauty can lay some truths that are far more harmful than an ugly body.
November 10, 2023
What an INCREDIBLE ending!?!?
Talk about the last chapter changing my entire take away from the story!!! Woah.
Stewing and will come back
Talk about the last chapter changing my entire take away from the story!!! Woah.
Stewing and will come back
September 28, 2018
At the end of this book, the character sits at the piano and begins playing variations on a theme. It is Lee's way of saying that she herself has been giving us variations on religious metaphor, twined within what seems a classic sci-fi tale. Lee is riffing on Christian themes such as sacrifice, transubstantiation, resurrection and original sin. The writing here is more subtle than in much of Lee's writing. But more moving.
December 13, 2017
Some books leave you stunned when you finish them. This was one of those for me. Conceptual sci-fi at its best. – Magdela Cled, a hideous dwarf jumps at the chance of having her consciousness transferred to a stunning new body. Little does she realise the fiendish plot hatched by her handsome Dr Frankenstein, Claudio. Amazing plot twist.
Themes:
• Pygmalion, Frankenstein,
• Nature of “self”
• Line of Sanity/Insanity
• Narcissism
• Love/Hate relationship
Probably my favourite work by Tanith Lee to date. Astounding.
Themes:
• Pygmalion, Frankenstein,
• Nature of “self”
• Line of Sanity/Insanity
• Narcissism
• Love/Hate relationship
Probably my favourite work by Tanith Lee to date. Astounding.
didnt-finish
January 15, 2025DNF @ 56%. I deeply dislike both these characters and the setup and I'm not interested in whatever semblance of a plot this is moving into.
February 22, 2026
The Electric Forest — Tanith Lee
★★★☆☆ (3) — spoilers
Tanith Lee’s The Electric Forest starts with a premise that feels both elegantly pulpy and psychologically nasty: a girl known as “Ugly,” trapped in a miserable, stigmatized body, is given access to a beautiful “avatar” body. The catch is the old body does not go away. It’s preserved in a capsule, tethered to machinery, and she has to return to it on a strict schedule. That rule is the book’s best invention, because it turns transformation into custody. You can upgrade the surface, but you still have to maintain the discarded self.
For the first stretch, the novel seems aimed at a theme that feels modern and emotionally sharp: what happens when someone with a hard, degrading life is suddenly allowed to inhabit privilege. Not just “pretty body” wish fulfillment, but the moral and psychic whiplash of crossing social strata in your own skin. Lee keeps dropping good lines about fear and selfhood, and the capsule tether functions like a literalized version of the thing you cannot escape, your origin story, your shame, your old life as ballast.
Then the book pulls its twist, and the thematic center of gravity shifts. The late reveal reframes much of what you’ve read as an engineered scenario rather than a straightforward liberation story. The “Ugly” history is manipulated, the environment is staged, and the goal is essentially to test how far the subject can be pushed under controlled conditions. The effect is to recast the novel into something closer to a parable about dangerous technologies and “releasing them into the wild” with supposed safeguards: a story about oversight, experimentation, coercive containment, and the cost of treating a human being as a field trial.
That pivot is intellectually interesting, and it gives the ending a cold, schematic snap. But it also blunts the most powerful thematic pressure the opening sets up. By revealing that the protagonist is not, in the most meaningful sense, a permanently “discarded” person being brought into privilege, the book steps away from the disability and deprivation angle that made the early chapters bite. The twist lands as a kind of technological cautionary tale, almost Cold War in spirit, a fable of controlled experiments and moral hazard. What it loses in the process is the more visceral question the first half seemed ready to interrogate: how identity changes when you move between bodies and classes, and whether the “old self” ever stops dictating the terms.
So I ended up admiring it more than loving it. The setup is terrific, the leash mechanics are smart, and the ending is clever in a way that explains why it sticks in “explainer” corners of the internet. But the story I wanted most was the one the twist partially displaces, the one that keeps disability and the lived experience of being “Ugly” central rather than revealing it as an engineered narrative layer.
★★★☆☆ (3) — spoilers
Tanith Lee’s The Electric Forest starts with a premise that feels both elegantly pulpy and psychologically nasty: a girl known as “Ugly,” trapped in a miserable, stigmatized body, is given access to a beautiful “avatar” body. The catch is the old body does not go away. It’s preserved in a capsule, tethered to machinery, and she has to return to it on a strict schedule. That rule is the book’s best invention, because it turns transformation into custody. You can upgrade the surface, but you still have to maintain the discarded self.
For the first stretch, the novel seems aimed at a theme that feels modern and emotionally sharp: what happens when someone with a hard, degrading life is suddenly allowed to inhabit privilege. Not just “pretty body” wish fulfillment, but the moral and psychic whiplash of crossing social strata in your own skin. Lee keeps dropping good lines about fear and selfhood, and the capsule tether functions like a literalized version of the thing you cannot escape, your origin story, your shame, your old life as ballast.
Then the book pulls its twist, and the thematic center of gravity shifts. The late reveal reframes much of what you’ve read as an engineered scenario rather than a straightforward liberation story. The “Ugly” history is manipulated, the environment is staged, and the goal is essentially to test how far the subject can be pushed under controlled conditions. The effect is to recast the novel into something closer to a parable about dangerous technologies and “releasing them into the wild” with supposed safeguards: a story about oversight, experimentation, coercive containment, and the cost of treating a human being as a field trial.
That pivot is intellectually interesting, and it gives the ending a cold, schematic snap. But it also blunts the most powerful thematic pressure the opening sets up. By revealing that the protagonist is not, in the most meaningful sense, a permanently “discarded” person being brought into privilege, the book steps away from the disability and deprivation angle that made the early chapters bite. The twist lands as a kind of technological cautionary tale, almost Cold War in spirit, a fable of controlled experiments and moral hazard. What it loses in the process is the more visceral question the first half seemed ready to interrogate: how identity changes when you move between bodies and classes, and whether the “old self” ever stops dictating the terms.
So I ended up admiring it more than loving it. The setup is terrific, the leash mechanics are smart, and the ending is clever in a way that explains why it sticks in “explainer” corners of the internet. But the story I wanted most was the one the twist partially displaces, the one that keeps disability and the lived experience of being “Ugly” central rather than revealing it as an engineered narrative layer.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 13, 2025
This was everything I always hope a random short SF book with a cool cover will be. The Electric Forest is beautiful, weird, filled with ambiguous and problematic relationships, and remains a page-turning mystery right up until its mad ending.
This is SF in the traditional sense: it's set on another planet, and it has all the familiar technological fare beyond the consciousness transferral central to the plot. Even so, Lee makes it feel like fantasy. She places a strong emphasis on aesthetics, both in the natural beauty of the planet Indigo and the artificial kind produced through technology and architecture, which she elegantly reveals through a concise poetry that just occasionally tips into floridity (which I love btw - if genre fiction can’t indulge in lavish prose, where else can it go?). In true New Wave style, the text is full of references to classic literature: Frankenstein, Dracula, Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors, and also Greek myths like Narcissus and Pygmalion.
The story follows Magdala, a rare ‘ugly’ person in an almost genetically perfect society. She lives a life of monotony, if not penury, as a lower-class worker on Indigo, marginalised for her appearance, until she accepts the offer of a new, beautiful body from the eccentric (and manipulative asshole) Claudio. She then finds herself cast into the world of high-society intrigue and espionage while she adapts to her new condition.
I feel that Tiptree’s The Girl Who Was Plugged In is an obvious comparison here: also about a character pushed to despair by genetic illness, who is given a new and beautiful body. But the similarities end there I think. Tiptree focuses on the capitalist exploitation of women’s bodies, while Lee is more interested in sexual power dynamics, psychological manipulation, identity, and trauma. Their prose styles couldn’t be more different either; while Tiptree’s scattershot style is undeniably cool, I definitely prefer Lee’s indulgent, sensorial writing.
And for me, the sheer audacity of Lee adding a somewhat metafictional coda which completely reframes the story elevates this from a great SF book to an exceptional one.
This is SF in the traditional sense: it's set on another planet, and it has all the familiar technological fare beyond the consciousness transferral central to the plot. Even so, Lee makes it feel like fantasy. She places a strong emphasis on aesthetics, both in the natural beauty of the planet Indigo and the artificial kind produced through technology and architecture, which she elegantly reveals through a concise poetry that just occasionally tips into floridity (which I love btw - if genre fiction can’t indulge in lavish prose, where else can it go?). In true New Wave style, the text is full of references to classic literature: Frankenstein, Dracula, Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors, and also Greek myths like Narcissus and Pygmalion.
The story follows Magdala, a rare ‘ugly’ person in an almost genetically perfect society. She lives a life of monotony, if not penury, as a lower-class worker on Indigo, marginalised for her appearance, until she accepts the offer of a new, beautiful body from the eccentric (and manipulative asshole) Claudio. She then finds herself cast into the world of high-society intrigue and espionage while she adapts to her new condition.
I feel that Tiptree’s The Girl Who Was Plugged In is an obvious comparison here: also about a character pushed to despair by genetic illness, who is given a new and beautiful body. But the similarities end there I think. Tiptree focuses on the capitalist exploitation of women’s bodies, while Lee is more interested in sexual power dynamics, psychological manipulation, identity, and trauma. Their prose styles couldn’t be more different either; while Tiptree’s scattershot style is undeniably cool, I definitely prefer Lee’s indulgent, sensorial writing.
And for me, the sheer audacity of Lee adding a somewhat metafictional coda which completely reframes the story elevates this from a great SF book to an exceptional one.
March 31, 2025
Electric Forest is like a mix of The Substance, Ex Machina, Frankenstein, Possessor, and James Bond.
Really enjoyed this book. Solid writing, great pacing, and loads of twists and turns. Some good SF, but less than great.
Really enjoyed this book. Solid writing, great pacing, and loads of twists and turns. Some good SF, but less than great.
August 11, 2023
** 2.3 STARS **
The best part of Electric Forest is that phenomenal 1979 Daw cover by Don Maitz. I mean, just look at it. It looks like a boss battle in Phantasy Star II.
The first third of this short novel was... ok, but quite interesting. It made me think of the Luc Besson film La Femme Nikita. Unfortunately, unlike that film, the last two thirds were pretty bad, and even worse, boring.
Hopefully I'll find more luck with Tanith Lee's fantasy.
The best part of Electric Forest is that phenomenal 1979 Daw cover by Don Maitz. I mean, just look at it. It looks like a boss battle in Phantasy Star II.
The first third of this short novel was... ok, but quite interesting. It made me think of the Luc Besson film La Femme Nikita. Unfortunately, unlike that film, the last two thirds were pretty bad, and even worse, boring.
Hopefully I'll find more luck with Tanith Lee's fantasy.
February 4, 2020
Танит Ли все же великая писательница. Даже ранние вещи у нее невероятно затягивающие. У слабого автора "Электрический лес" стал бы проходной вещицей про опасные научные опыты по переносу сознания, но в руках Ли повесть обретает некое гипнотическое качество, и мы вместе с уродливой героиней, получившей тело красавицы, тонем в потоке необъяснимых событий и странных совпадений, и смутно догадываемся, что ученый-то себе на уме и вообще наверняка маньяк, и он таки оказывается маньяком, но совсем не таким, как мы думали, и плот твист следует за плот твистом, под маской скрывается другая маска, автор играет жанрами, раз за разом переворачивает все с ног на голову, нагнетая все больше ужаса и беспомощности, а в эпилоге наконец срываются последние маски и все вокруг опять оказывается не таким, как мы думали, но намного добрее и при этом беспощаднее.
И все это на фоне бесконечной грозы и сияния Электрического леса, под ударами молний переливающегося неоновыми оттенками лилового, янтарного, бирюзового, нефрита, багрянца, золота, розового, малахита и серебра.
5/5
И все это на фоне бесконечной грозы и сияния Электрического леса, под ударами молний переливающегося неоновыми оттенками лилового, янтарного, бирюзового, нефрита, багрянца, золота, розового, малахита и серебра.
5/5
September 20, 2024
Electric Forest by Tanith Lee is an underrated Science Fiction. I think most readers don’t know who is Tanith Lee; she was a prolific Fantasy/Sci Fi writer since about 1950. She has produced numerous high quality books, include one of my favorite fantasy books, Night’s Mater which is one of my first 23 English books read. Tanith Lee’s writing for me is poetic, she knows how to move the plots with easily sympathetic characters. In The Flat Earth series, Demon Lords are the powerful and intimidating entities for the mortals who had been living in the underworld of the Deities’s kingdoms. In Night’s Master, the demon Lord who has the mischief personality of teasing those mortals who lived in the underworld. His inimical behaviors always brought the disasters to mortals, even though he has done those things without malicious intentions. Often I saw what the surprising results he could bring to the end of each stories. Especially, in the final short story he saved the mortals world, that exceptionally highlight the demon lord character in a profoundly sophisticated way. Other characters they are also well depicted and play the crucial roles in each One Thousand Night- esque stories.
In Electric Forest, the character Uglies whose appearance is related to her name. One day she met Claudio the rich person who proffered her the Chance of switching body to be a beauty. After she accepted the offer, her world had turned upside down and the more she was staying with Claudio, the more mysteries that he was hiding from her. Who is Christophine del Jan? The story is set In the alien planet, the connection with the Earth and the secrets of the technology which transmits the consciousness to anther body is the key central of the story.
It is a fascinating story was written by one of the Sophisticated writers I have seen. It is real a shame that Tanith Lee didn’t get the attention she deserved. The writing is top notch without a doubt but her writing of Electric Forest indeed has some obscure or quaint words and phrases, so that it would be hard to get into the story. In addition, the story is not straightforward, sometimes the information that as the plot progresses, is bewildering to be comprehended. Mostly In the first read readers may have the problems of following the story till the end.
The ending is excellent, definitely is stupendous to conclude this the dark Cyberpunk like story. I hope that would be more readers to read Tanith Lee’s books.
In Electric Forest, the character Uglies whose appearance is related to her name. One day she met Claudio the rich person who proffered her the Chance of switching body to be a beauty. After she accepted the offer, her world had turned upside down and the more she was staying with Claudio, the more mysteries that he was hiding from her. Who is Christophine del Jan? The story is set In the alien planet, the connection with the Earth and the secrets of the technology which transmits the consciousness to anther body is the key central of the story.
It is a fascinating story was written by one of the Sophisticated writers I have seen. It is real a shame that Tanith Lee didn’t get the attention she deserved. The writing is top notch without a doubt but her writing of Electric Forest indeed has some obscure or quaint words and phrases, so that it would be hard to get into the story. In addition, the story is not straightforward, sometimes the information that as the plot progresses, is bewildering to be comprehended. Mostly In the first read readers may have the problems of following the story till the end.
The ending is excellent, definitely is stupendous to conclude this the dark Cyberpunk like story. I hope that would be more readers to read Tanith Lee’s books.
March 30, 2011
I haven't read this since I was little, but I found its take on body image fascinating then; may not hold up. The ending is absolutely ridiculous -- she clearly got there and realized there was no way to do a happy ending, so she punted to the closest thing to "It was all a dream" she could get away with.
April 22, 2015
Electric Forest is Tanith Lee's take on The Girl Who Was Plugged In/Screwtop. Read that instead, this has a particularly tacky ending.
August 7, 2022
what the fuck
December 16, 2025
Great book, horrible ending.
Seriously, I've never read a worse final chapter in my life. I gave this 4 stars but only because I'm pretending the ending didn't happen. If I have to count the ending, it's more of a 2 or 3. Like, this ending is beyond bad. It goes through the book and, scene by scene, ruins everything I found interesting about every single part. It's like painting a beautiful painting and then saying, "Oh, wait, I forgot to have explosive diarrhea on it, one more step...."
Seriously, I've never read a worse final chapter in my life. I gave this 4 stars but only because I'm pretending the ending didn't happen. If I have to count the ending, it's more of a 2 or 3. Like, this ending is beyond bad. It goes through the book and, scene by scene, ruins everything I found interesting about every single part. It's like painting a beautiful painting and then saying, "Oh, wait, I forgot to have explosive diarrhea on it, one more step...."
June 26, 2016
I've recently borrowed a bunch of relatively obscure Tanith Lee books - I read her a bunch when I was in high school, then I fell off reading, then I started come back to it though now I read "realistic" fiction as opposed to SF/Fantasy/Speculative Fiction, which comprised most of my reading diet when I was younger. I remembered that her prose writing was lush and evocative, but it could also be taut when it had to be. Sometimes the lushness was a bit too indulgent, especially when it would creep into the dialogue, but when it did well, it did well. And I liked her ideas a lot.
So those were my expectations as I peeled open the first Tanith Lee book I've read in 5 or more years. I enjoyed most of this book. At first, I found the writing a little bit too indulgent with its details - in the beginning, the prose was cramped with somewhat excessive pitying descriptions of Magdala. Lee's dogged attention to the richness of detail soon distilled itself into a writerly habit of announcing every new event in the story with a parade of colourful imagery, which Lee had taken apart and restitched together with imagination and metaphor. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
Some other things that I liked:
1) I thought Lee understood Magdala properly when she paid attention to the constancy of her fear, and how she saw very clearly the power dynamic (God I hate that term) btwn herself and Claudio.
2) It's interesting to piece together story alongside Magdala. Electric Forest is sort of an interesting Sci-Fi idea, elaborated and developed like detective story.
3) I do quite like the following passage (surprisingly it's part of a dialogue, which I've always found a little stilted in many Alternate Universe stories that Lee tells):
"His name is Paul Hovak. He's ostensibly on the E.C. government payroll, a coordinator for twenty or so subsidiary chemical research projects on Indigo. He's wealthy, mostly anonymous, and almost certainly has political affiliations outside E.C. He has learned a lot of jargon about the basics of subchem, and a lot more about wheels within wheels and strings that work strings - which the luckless hard-hitting Irlin will discover when he's fired next oneday."
Main complaint? The final actual ending.
So those were my expectations as I peeled open the first Tanith Lee book I've read in 5 or more years. I enjoyed most of this book. At first, I found the writing a little bit too indulgent with its details - in the beginning, the prose was cramped with somewhat excessive pitying descriptions of Magdala. Lee's dogged attention to the richness of detail soon distilled itself into a writerly habit of announcing every new event in the story with a parade of colourful imagery, which Lee had taken apart and restitched together with imagination and metaphor. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
Some other things that I liked:
1) I thought Lee understood Magdala properly when she paid attention to the constancy of her fear, and how she saw very clearly the power dynamic (God I hate that term) btwn herself and Claudio.
2) It's interesting to piece together story alongside Magdala. Electric Forest is sort of an interesting Sci-Fi idea, elaborated and developed like detective story.
3) I do quite like the following passage (surprisingly it's part of a dialogue, which I've always found a little stilted in many Alternate Universe stories that Lee tells):
"His name is Paul Hovak. He's ostensibly on the E.C. government payroll, a coordinator for twenty or so subsidiary chemical research projects on Indigo. He's wealthy, mostly anonymous, and almost certainly has political affiliations outside E.C. He has learned a lot of jargon about the basics of subchem, and a lot more about wheels within wheels and strings that work strings - which the luckless hard-hitting Irlin will discover when he's fired next oneday."
Main complaint? The final actual ending.
May 11, 2013
Electric Forest is classic Tanith Lee science fiction. In a world full of trilogies and 1000 page novels, 150 pages of a compact story with rich, descriptive writing is a breath of fresh air.
The story itself is not very remarkable; like plenty of science fiction, it focusses on alterity...an investigation of what makes the "other," even when that "other" is oneself. Ugly girl in beautiful society is transitioned into a beautiful, android body by enigmatic stranger bent on some sort of retribution. It's a theme directly in the same vein as Frankenstein. The story is somewhat predictable, until the very end, where Lee changes the writing altogether and shifts the perspective of the story dramatically. It is that change and shift that still sits with me, and keeps me wondering if such a thing was actually possible or practical...and I think this is what has caused me to up my rating after initially giving it three stars.
Hollywood should leverage this as a movie. It would be pretty perfect on the big screen...
The story itself is not very remarkable; like plenty of science fiction, it focusses on alterity...an investigation of what makes the "other," even when that "other" is oneself. Ugly girl in beautiful society is transitioned into a beautiful, android body by enigmatic stranger bent on some sort of retribution. It's a theme directly in the same vein as Frankenstein. The story is somewhat predictable, until the very end, where Lee changes the writing altogether and shifts the perspective of the story dramatically. It is that change and shift that still sits with me, and keeps me wondering if such a thing was actually possible or practical...and I think this is what has caused me to up my rating after initially giving it three stars.
Hollywood should leverage this as a movie. It would be pretty perfect on the big screen...
March 22, 2020
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
"Tanith Lee spins a gauzy, sinister, and terrifying tale of manipulative resurrection. A brilliant inventor projects the mind of a grotesque social outcast into a new transcendent body—but this isn’t an altruistic act. There’s a plot afoot. Electric Forest (1979), a shimmery nightmare of psycho-sexual manipulation, enters my pantheon of favorite 70s SF visions.
Electric Forest demonstrates marked improvement over Don’t Bite the Sun (1976). It’s more concise, disturbing [...]"
"Tanith Lee spins a gauzy, sinister, and terrifying tale of manipulative resurrection. A brilliant inventor projects the mind of a grotesque social outcast into a new transcendent body—but this isn’t an altruistic act. There’s a plot afoot. Electric Forest (1979), a shimmery nightmare of psycho-sexual manipulation, enters my pantheon of favorite 70s SF visions.
Electric Forest demonstrates marked improvement over Don’t Bite the Sun (1976). It’s more concise, disturbing [...]"
Want to read
July 8, 2020This would be a novella in current publishing, which sounds good. I missed it when new, but just saw Joachim Boaz's enthusiastic retro-review [caution: SPOILERS]: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
Added to my wish list.
Added to my wish list.
January 21, 2024
In context it relates to the current concerns with artificial intelligence; however, it actually revolves around something else and it’s subsequently filled with so many twists that you don’t truly know what is happening until the last sentence.
July 9, 2025
Unexpectedly Sensuous and Erotic
(some spoilers ahead)
This novel was many things I was not expecting. Looking at the cover and the time it was published in 1979, the book presented to me as a curious science fiction tale that could have easily felt dated. Instead, I walked into an electric forest gleaming with an early cyberpunk aesthetic. It's a clever story that features consciousness transferance from an original body to a "simulate", which is a genetic clone of someone. In the protagonist's case, Magdala at long last experiences the "delight of vanity" through the genetic clone of Christophine del Jan, a sumptuous paragon of classic, physical beauty. There is an element of The Picture of Dorian Gray that comes to mind, but different enough to my enjoyment. The cyberpunk aesthetic comes with “self-lighting, self-dousing cigarettes” and deep, blue, luscious hair. If it had a soundtrack, it might be a summer synthwave dream by a futuristic sea (though the Variations on a Theme by Prokofieff played on the piano in the ending is also fitting, as it prophetically calls to the possible variations that could result from the simulation revealed in the ending sonogram). I never got sidetracked with the futuristic technology because the story was so well-grounded in its characters and their motivations. The pacing always kept me engaged, and the prose was lofty but appropriate for the aesthetic it imparted. I quite liked the structure of the novel, beginning with a classified pre-screening presentation and ending in a post-screening sonogram.
A few choice quotes that I revelled in:
I smile knowing I found an unexpected gem.
(some spoilers ahead)
This novel was many things I was not expecting. Looking at the cover and the time it was published in 1979, the book presented to me as a curious science fiction tale that could have easily felt dated. Instead, I walked into an electric forest gleaming with an early cyberpunk aesthetic. It's a clever story that features consciousness transferance from an original body to a "simulate", which is a genetic clone of someone. In the protagonist's case, Magdala at long last experiences the "delight of vanity" through the genetic clone of Christophine del Jan, a sumptuous paragon of classic, physical beauty. There is an element of The Picture of Dorian Gray that comes to mind, but different enough to my enjoyment. The cyberpunk aesthetic comes with “self-lighting, self-dousing cigarettes” and deep, blue, luscious hair. If it had a soundtrack, it might be a summer synthwave dream by a futuristic sea (though the Variations on a Theme by Prokofieff played on the piano in the ending is also fitting, as it prophetically calls to the possible variations that could result from the simulation revealed in the ending sonogram). I never got sidetracked with the futuristic technology because the story was so well-grounded in its characters and their motivations. The pacing always kept me engaged, and the prose was lofty but appropriate for the aesthetic it imparted. I quite liked the structure of the novel, beginning with a classified pre-screening presentation and ending in a post-screening sonogram.
A few choice quotes that I revelled in:
“desperation was always ready to pray for miracles”
“this lovely cinnamon voice”
“and her drunkeness was delicious”
I smile knowing I found an unexpected gem.
August 2, 2024
4.5
A wild, twisting story, Tanith Lee's Electric Forest draws a stark lines between consciousness, beauty, and reality, and then refuses to let go while it bucks and kicks into a series of revelations. We very quickly meet the (literally) ugly Ugly, a woman so singularly hideous and shunned by the perfection of society that she's understandably interested when a strange man shows up with a wild offer: what if she could transfer her consciousness into the gorgeous body he has... but who is this man, and why is he so insistent on this?
Their relationship forms a centerpiece for the work, his manic mad scientist and creation feeling not dissimilar from the famous (and commented on) Frankenstein. He is sharp, direct, and vile towards our heroine, but things evolve and change and before you have a full grasp on what their dynamic is, Lee pulls the rug out from under you again and you have to reassess. There's a lull to start as we're shown into this sci-fi world of mind transfers and learn the rules, but once the main plot hits, it's a stunning thriller to the end.
...an End that includes a twist which is equally fascinating - I'm glad Lee included it - but I'm also unsure if it's necessary? A strange change of the plot yet another time that may reframe things... or may not. Nicely meta, and very aware, the book does a wonderful job playing with the titular idea the Electric Forest represents - simulation, and unreality.
A great short sci-fi masterwork.
A wild, twisting story, Tanith Lee's Electric Forest draws a stark lines between consciousness, beauty, and reality, and then refuses to let go while it bucks and kicks into a series of revelations. We very quickly meet the (literally) ugly Ugly, a woman so singularly hideous and shunned by the perfection of society that she's understandably interested when a strange man shows up with a wild offer: what if she could transfer her consciousness into the gorgeous body he has... but who is this man, and why is he so insistent on this?
Their relationship forms a centerpiece for the work, his manic mad scientist and creation feeling not dissimilar from the famous (and commented on) Frankenstein. He is sharp, direct, and vile towards our heroine, but things evolve and change and before you have a full grasp on what their dynamic is, Lee pulls the rug out from under you again and you have to reassess. There's a lull to start as we're shown into this sci-fi world of mind transfers and learn the rules, but once the main plot hits, it's a stunning thriller to the end.
...an End that includes a twist which is equally fascinating - I'm glad Lee included it - but I'm also unsure if it's necessary? A strange change of the plot yet another time that may reframe things... or may not. Nicely meta, and very aware, the book does a wonderful job playing with the titular idea the Electric Forest represents - simulation, and unreality.
A great short sci-fi masterwork.
October 9, 2023
Retorcido, perverso, escrito con maestría y belleza de prosa y lenguaje por igual. Una historia psicológicamente violenta y de la no nos damos cuenta, hasta que es demasiado tarde de que somos nosotros como lectores, las victimas. Ciencia ficción de calidad suprema. Aún con el puñal clavado, aplaudo.
October 5, 2024
I really liked this book a lot...until the epilogue completely rendered moot everything that came before. It didn't make anything I'd just read more interesting. In fact, it made it worse. I don't understand the point of writing a good story with a good, ambiguous ending that makes the reader think and then wrapping it up with a "Actually, what you just read isn't really what happened. Here's what happened." And then relaying said revelation in the most perfunctory manner. It made me mad.
August 16, 2023
Magadala Cled, called Ugly by everyone she knows, is a twenty-six year old naturally born person who lives on planet Indigo. Seemingly literally everyone else was born through genetic engineering that selected for only the best examples of every trait. As to expected of a natural birth, she's considered deformed, hideous, and stunted. When others look upon her they're visibly unable to contain their revulsion. She doesn't let anyone know that this bothers her, but inside she intensely seethes and loathes everyone. Even if she could afford it, she knows that cosmetic surgery couldn't help her in any way. A life-changing opportunity comes her way when an ultrawealthy and extremely attractive young man offers her a new body. All she has to do is whatever he wants and she'll never have worry about anything again. Magadala is very suspicious and doesn't give in easily, but offer is so tempting, regardless of its cost.
Your enjoyment of Electric Forest probably will mostly depend on your perspective on and tolerance for the specific events of the story. I don't know how much you'd get from this if you approach it in an adversarial manner or believe it to be in bad taste. Magadala has understandably severe body image issues, low self-esteem, and a festering resentment for everything. She becomes part of a psychosexually domineering relationship, though she isn't submissive. Her situation is treated as a sort of voluntary horror that she endures because she believes the benefits to be worthwhile. I found its exploration of bodily autonomy, identity, and a host of other psychological issues to be enjoyably written. While there's a bit of flirting and sex, the primary focus of the plot is a mystery thriller. Magadala's new body was designed for a specific purpose, which she's not informed of, though it clearly involves social manipulation. The more involved she becomes, the more she realizes how little control she has over her life now.
There are several mentions of other literary works in the text that are used to describe what is being read. There's Frankenstein, Dracula, Pygmalion, Shakespeare, and others. It made me think of a few more as well. At first I thought it was a bit much, but given how it ends, their inclusion makes sense. I enjoyed this from the start until the end, and up until the epilogue this was a solid four stars. I found the epilogue to be hilarious because it reminded me of one of my all-time favorite movies. It was quite the unexpected experience and I found myself somewhat in disbelief that I wanted to give it five stars. I then looked at the reviews and many others had almost the exact opposite reaction to the ending, which is reasonable. I found it to be less reasonable though to include unmarked spoilers for the ending in a number of them, including the most liked. This book has greatly improved my opinion of Lee and eventually I'll have to read more from her.
Your enjoyment of Electric Forest probably will mostly depend on your perspective on and tolerance for the specific events of the story. I don't know how much you'd get from this if you approach it in an adversarial manner or believe it to be in bad taste. Magadala has understandably severe body image issues, low self-esteem, and a festering resentment for everything. She becomes part of a psychosexually domineering relationship, though she isn't submissive. Her situation is treated as a sort of voluntary horror that she endures because she believes the benefits to be worthwhile. I found its exploration of bodily autonomy, identity, and a host of other psychological issues to be enjoyably written. While there's a bit of flirting and sex, the primary focus of the plot is a mystery thriller. Magadala's new body was designed for a specific purpose, which she's not informed of, though it clearly involves social manipulation. The more involved she becomes, the more she realizes how little control she has over her life now.
There are several mentions of other literary works in the text that are used to describe what is being read. There's Frankenstein, Dracula, Pygmalion, Shakespeare, and others. It made me think of a few more as well. At first I thought it was a bit much, but given how it ends, their inclusion makes sense. I enjoyed this from the start until the end, and up until the epilogue this was a solid four stars. I found the epilogue to be hilarious because it reminded me of one of my all-time favorite movies. It was quite the unexpected experience and I found myself somewhat in disbelief that I wanted to give it five stars. I then looked at the reviews and many others had almost the exact opposite reaction to the ending, which is reasonable. I found it to be less reasonable though to include unmarked spoilers for the ending in a number of them, including the most liked. This book has greatly improved my opinion of Lee and eventually I'll have to read more from her.
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