What do you think?
Rate this book
Metamorfose
263 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
2 people are currently reading
18 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Nielsen
56 books21 followersChristopher Nielsen is a Norwegian comics/graphic novels maker, dramatician and animation movie director. He is the brother of deceased rock musician Joachim «Jokke» Nielsen.
He is "grand old man" of Norwegian underground comics, and has enjoyed success also in more mainstream culture (theatre, movie, national TV) with his often grotesque characters and stories from the marginalized subcultures and classes of Norway: junkies, alcoholics, prostitutes, "rednecks" and so on.
He is "grand old man" of Norwegian underground comics, and has enjoyed success also in more mainstream culture (theatre, movie, national TV) with his often grotesque characters and stories from the marginalized subcultures and classes of Norway: junkies, alcoholics, prostitutes, "rednecks" and so on.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 4, 2018
The distracted and naïve tale where sci-fi meets drug addiction and desperation for fame; never before has the genre description 'pharmapunk' been more well deserved.
Nielsen is primarily known as a cartoonist/graphic novelist who creates stories about the uglier sides of society, and then primarily those related to mind-altering substances and the people whose lives are dedicated to them. (He also wrote the script to the film Slipp Jimmy fri/Free Jimmy, whose story is of the same kind.) So when he decided to write a regular novel it wasn't much of a surprise that he once again let it focus on illegal drugs and the broken dreams of an unfavoured lower class. To shake up this stagnant underworld he chose to invent a drug that actually does what it advertises: it fulfils your dreams – any dream you can imagine; impossible dreams are as achievable as the possible ones—laws of nature be damned!—the only limitations are those of your own imagination and desires; whatever the dream is, if you want it then you can have it – but in order for such a drug to exist he needed a different setting than our current world. He chose the future to aid him in this, and in doing so he chose science fiction as his genre; the setting, more specifically, is Oslo, Norway, in the year 2030.
It is a filthy dystopia: Slums multiply through the coitus of desperation and poverty; their inhabitants may not have abandoned their hopes before they passed the gates, but they might as well have be told to do so. Yet, Evita, the protagonist and narrator, still believes that her dream would be within her grasp if someone would just give her the chance she needs – she should be a model, she should be a household name! but the agencies all reject her at the door. Sometimes she believes, sometimes she despairs. The only two band-aids on her life is her friend and roomie Amanda, and a substance called TripplePep, a drug that she describes as:
A pink flash, like, and then stardust sprinkles all over the grey, sad crib of ours, it sparkles. Everything sparkles, and then someone has been there and painted the whole crib pink, like. All is just pink, glossy, and glamorous. Gold. And it seems so big, and our furniture, like, I just have such cool furniture, then, and some other cool stash, but they just become real designer furniture, then. And the cool stash just becomes cool for realz! But the very, very, very best about TripplePep, is that the clock stops. Literally, time doesn’t pass. Look! The clock on the wall has stopped. And what do you do then, like, time has stopped, you just have lots and lots of time and stuff! (pp. 22-23; translation by reviewer)
TripplePep is expensive enough to leave her penniless for as long as she uses it, but its allure is too great for her to resist when the despair kicks in. She dreams of a better life, tries her luck, gets rejected, despairs, uses TripplePep, and dreams again – and so the circle continues without Evita ever getting any closer to realising that dream. But then her dealer, a young man named Moritz – who is no longer a young man but a tom cat? That is impossible! Is it not? Unless… the rumour is true. The drug Metamorfose is real, and what a pharmaceutical fairy godmother it is! Finally, Evita can be the model she has always dreamt of. But then again, this story is a dystopia after all and her trip is inevitably going to be quite different than what she had in mind.
Evita is a rare protagonist and even rarer narrator in the sense that she is not a likeable person. She is unkind, demanding, and rather selfish. True, Metamorfose (Metamorphosis) hints that this might be common character traits of the 2030's Slogenser (inhabitant of Oslo), but nevertheless they colour her in a way that makes the reader think, ”I'm glad I'm not like that.” Most of all, though, she is characterized by her stupidity. In turn this stupidity robs her of that insight which would have let her empathise with her fellow humans, and so in a sense dooms her to be as objectionable as she is. Nielsen even made her use a specific kind of street language – a version of high-class, uptight Slogenser (dialect spoken by inhabitants of Oslo) which she, like many others, faultily imitates, altering it further by adding the idioms of a young generation to it; it is a way of speech which attempts to make its speakers seem too important to be poor and undesirable, yet rebellious and independent enough to not be part of the stagnancies of this upper class – which, quite frankly, is associated by others with the lack of intelligent cogitation, making Evita sound like a perfectly superficial person. (With regard to the translation of the quote above, this reviewer is not at all well versed in English street languages and it is therefore likely to be a poor representation. For this I apologise.) Though, perhaps, for the purposes of describing her role as a protagonist, it is better to call her a simpleton because it is a simpleton's view that she gives us of the unfolding events. And somehow, this is why she turns out to be perfect in leading us through this be-careful-for-what-you-wish-for tale. She is simply simple enough that the tale, and its “morale” becomes all the clearer for being presented to us as simply as she does. (The tale isn't as much moralizing as it is Kafkaesque, hence I hesitate to use the word 'morale.') Not to mention that this trait is also what brings about much of the novel's, usually dark but satisfying, comedy.
The term 'pharmapunk' seems largely unused – the only instance of its use that this reviewer has been able to find is from a forum related to the RPG Shadowrun – yet it is the most accurate genre description for Metamorphosis in the sense that it showcases the underbelly of a world dominated by pharmacon technology. The potential of such a genre seems to be immense. If it can showcase and deal with human emotions and needs that are as deep as those in this novel, and do so in as unique a manner as is done here, then 'pharmapunk' clearly holds both merit and great opportunities for those who wish to explore it.
Metamorphosis turned out to be one of the most unique science fiction experiences out there. Besides the unique setting and unusual protagonist it also has a plot and penmanship that demands that one attaches either of the the terms 'experimental' and 'avant-garde' in order to do justice to it. It is, in other words, highly recommendable to those who wish for a different kind of sci-fi, one that has not been done before. Moreover, it should also appeal to those who seek modern fables or stories that functions as entries in the debate over our current human conditions. Unfortunately, it seems that this book won't be translated from Norwegian, nor is it easily translatable without loosing some of the subtler points, and so will probably never be made available to a wider audience. This underground gem is thus unattainable by most.
Nielsen is primarily known as a cartoonist/graphic novelist who creates stories about the uglier sides of society, and then primarily those related to mind-altering substances and the people whose lives are dedicated to them. (He also wrote the script to the film Slipp Jimmy fri/Free Jimmy, whose story is of the same kind.) So when he decided to write a regular novel it wasn't much of a surprise that he once again let it focus on illegal drugs and the broken dreams of an unfavoured lower class. To shake up this stagnant underworld he chose to invent a drug that actually does what it advertises: it fulfils your dreams – any dream you can imagine; impossible dreams are as achievable as the possible ones—laws of nature be damned!—the only limitations are those of your own imagination and desires; whatever the dream is, if you want it then you can have it – but in order for such a drug to exist he needed a different setting than our current world. He chose the future to aid him in this, and in doing so he chose science fiction as his genre; the setting, more specifically, is Oslo, Norway, in the year 2030.
It is a filthy dystopia: Slums multiply through the coitus of desperation and poverty; their inhabitants may not have abandoned their hopes before they passed the gates, but they might as well have be told to do so. Yet, Evita, the protagonist and narrator, still believes that her dream would be within her grasp if someone would just give her the chance she needs – she should be a model, she should be a household name! but the agencies all reject her at the door. Sometimes she believes, sometimes she despairs. The only two band-aids on her life is her friend and roomie Amanda, and a substance called TripplePep, a drug that she describes as:
A pink flash, like, and then stardust sprinkles all over the grey, sad crib of ours, it sparkles. Everything sparkles, and then someone has been there and painted the whole crib pink, like. All is just pink, glossy, and glamorous. Gold. And it seems so big, and our furniture, like, I just have such cool furniture, then, and some other cool stash, but they just become real designer furniture, then. And the cool stash just becomes cool for realz! But the very, very, very best about TripplePep, is that the clock stops. Literally, time doesn’t pass. Look! The clock on the wall has stopped. And what do you do then, like, time has stopped, you just have lots and lots of time and stuff! (pp. 22-23; translation by reviewer)
TripplePep is expensive enough to leave her penniless for as long as she uses it, but its allure is too great for her to resist when the despair kicks in. She dreams of a better life, tries her luck, gets rejected, despairs, uses TripplePep, and dreams again – and so the circle continues without Evita ever getting any closer to realising that dream. But then her dealer, a young man named Moritz – who is no longer a young man but a tom cat? That is impossible! Is it not? Unless… the rumour is true. The drug Metamorfose is real, and what a pharmaceutical fairy godmother it is! Finally, Evita can be the model she has always dreamt of. But then again, this story is a dystopia after all and her trip is inevitably going to be quite different than what she had in mind.
Evita is a rare protagonist and even rarer narrator in the sense that she is not a likeable person. She is unkind, demanding, and rather selfish. True, Metamorfose (Metamorphosis) hints that this might be common character traits of the 2030's Slogenser (inhabitant of Oslo), but nevertheless they colour her in a way that makes the reader think, ”I'm glad I'm not like that.” Most of all, though, she is characterized by her stupidity. In turn this stupidity robs her of that insight which would have let her empathise with her fellow humans, and so in a sense dooms her to be as objectionable as she is. Nielsen even made her use a specific kind of street language – a version of high-class, uptight Slogenser (dialect spoken by inhabitants of Oslo) which she, like many others, faultily imitates, altering it further by adding the idioms of a young generation to it; it is a way of speech which attempts to make its speakers seem too important to be poor and undesirable, yet rebellious and independent enough to not be part of the stagnancies of this upper class – which, quite frankly, is associated by others with the lack of intelligent cogitation, making Evita sound like a perfectly superficial person. (With regard to the translation of the quote above, this reviewer is not at all well versed in English street languages and it is therefore likely to be a poor representation. For this I apologise.) Though, perhaps, for the purposes of describing her role as a protagonist, it is better to call her a simpleton because it is a simpleton's view that she gives us of the unfolding events. And somehow, this is why she turns out to be perfect in leading us through this be-careful-for-what-you-wish-for tale. She is simply simple enough that the tale, and its “morale” becomes all the clearer for being presented to us as simply as she does. (The tale isn't as much moralizing as it is Kafkaesque, hence I hesitate to use the word 'morale.') Not to mention that this trait is also what brings about much of the novel's, usually dark but satisfying, comedy.
The term 'pharmapunk' seems largely unused – the only instance of its use that this reviewer has been able to find is from a forum related to the RPG Shadowrun – yet it is the most accurate genre description for Metamorphosis in the sense that it showcases the underbelly of a world dominated by pharmacon technology. The potential of such a genre seems to be immense. If it can showcase and deal with human emotions and needs that are as deep as those in this novel, and do so in as unique a manner as is done here, then 'pharmapunk' clearly holds both merit and great opportunities for those who wish to explore it.
Metamorphosis turned out to be one of the most unique science fiction experiences out there. Besides the unique setting and unusual protagonist it also has a plot and penmanship that demands that one attaches either of the the terms 'experimental' and 'avant-garde' in order to do justice to it. It is, in other words, highly recommendable to those who wish for a different kind of sci-fi, one that has not been done before. Moreover, it should also appeal to those who seek modern fables or stories that functions as entries in the debate over our current human conditions. Unfortunately, it seems that this book won't be translated from Norwegian, nor is it easily translatable without loosing some of the subtler points, and so will probably never be made available to a wider audience. This underground gem is thus unattainable by most.
Displaying 1 of 1 review