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Subterranean Gallery
Rheinhardt--living in a violent and dangerous San Francisco of the near-future and trying to survive as an artist--is abducted by a mysterious Vietnam vet and led to a futuristic underground world
- GenresScience FictionFiction
344 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 14, 2012
The room is a modest rectangle lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves and cluttered with remnants of projects past and materials for future projects.Boxes obscure the sofa and act as a base for the clear plastic bins that contain Magdelanyes poems and collage, unsorted photographs. Tibbetan prayer flags hung with fairy lighta and chakra meditation strings undulate gently over the sliding glass doors that provide a gloomy northern exposure overlooking the mountains across the inlet. A large bed dominates one end of the room. The bed is frshly made up and covered with an arcane pattern of CDs,but the player is silent right now.
Pages from finishing the book, Magdelanye had fallen asleep in the middle of the afternoon. When she woke the darkness was comlete. She groped for the bedside light and pulled the cord. The clock said 6:00 but was it morning or night? Disorientated, Magdelanye lit a cigarette with a match. She studied the tiny cheerful glow and wondered how to proceed.
Now she sits on the bed, propping a clipboard on her knees, herself propped on a pile of pillows. She had switched on the overhead light but the rest of the lights are off, creating a pattern of light and shadow that Magdelanye hoped would allow Rheinhardt to feel at home.
Magdelanye has been trying to conjure up the spirit of Rheinhardt.
She has some questions for him.
Plus, he is always generous with his cigarettes.
Magdelanye is thinking about how to phrase the questions she has about the book.First, she wants to know how the fuck Rheinhardt pronounces his name. And what was going on at Alcatraz. And what about that space station and those stealth machines?
Maybe its still too bright in here. Magdelanye reaches up and turns off the overhead light. The shadows leap to assert themselves and her writing hand gleams in the sharp gleam of the reading lamp. She notices that when she raises her pen from the paper, her fingers are trembling.
Magdelanye lights another cigarette and frowns, brooding into the night. Outside, lights flare and fade, the familiar rumble of cars.
Reihardt is so elusive and slways late. If only she had some scotch, or better yet, some Anchor Steam, so evocative of San Francisco.
Things sure are deteriorating. Magdelanye has noticed that too. The battle between good and evil is suspect. These days,the book suggests, the main battle is between hope and despair. We are bombarded by the news but recieve only distorted fragments of what is really going on. The book was saturated with foreshadowing, keeping the reader in a state of expectancy that quickly fizzled.We are given fragments and glimpses of situations and stories that are mostly but not always somehow linked--by caring. And it is a struggle to care, to overcome doubt and ennui. How be true to your art when devestated by futlity?
Magdelanye flings on the overhead light. The shadows scuttle back to the edges of the room. She hears footsteps dragging across the floor in the apartment above and she tries to remember the last time she went dancing. She does not punch her fist into the wall in frustration.
She doesn't even feel like crying. The importance of art is verified constantly.
Magdelanye picks up the book and lays it gently on the just read pile.
It will continue to work in her. Right now, she is going to get up and get together some dinner.
Pages from finishing the book, Magdelanye had fallen asleep in the middle of the afternoon. When she woke the darkness was comlete. She groped for the bedside light and pulled the cord. The clock said 6:00 but was it morning or night? Disorientated, Magdelanye lit a cigarette with a match. She studied the tiny cheerful glow and wondered how to proceed.
Now she sits on the bed, propping a clipboard on her knees, herself propped on a pile of pillows. She had switched on the overhead light but the rest of the lights are off, creating a pattern of light and shadow that Magdelanye hoped would allow Rheinhardt to feel at home.
Magdelanye has been trying to conjure up the spirit of Rheinhardt.
She has some questions for him.
Plus, he is always generous with his cigarettes.
Magdelanye is thinking about how to phrase the questions she has about the book.First, she wants to know how the fuck Rheinhardt pronounces his name. And what was going on at Alcatraz. And what about that space station and those stealth machines?
Maybe its still too bright in here. Magdelanye reaches up and turns off the overhead light. The shadows leap to assert themselves and her writing hand gleams in the sharp gleam of the reading lamp. She notices that when she raises her pen from the paper, her fingers are trembling.
Magdelanye lights another cigarette and frowns, brooding into the night. Outside, lights flare and fade, the familiar rumble of cars.
Reihardt is so elusive and slways late. If only she had some scotch, or better yet, some Anchor Steam, so evocative of San Francisco.
Things sure are deteriorating. Magdelanye has noticed that too. The battle between good and evil is suspect. These days,the book suggests, the main battle is between hope and despair. We are bombarded by the news but recieve only distorted fragments of what is really going on. The book was saturated with foreshadowing, keeping the reader in a state of expectancy that quickly fizzled.We are given fragments and glimpses of situations and stories that are mostly but not always somehow linked--by caring. And it is a struggle to care, to overcome doubt and ennui. How be true to your art when devestated by futlity?
Magdelanye flings on the overhead light. The shadows scuttle back to the edges of the room. She hears footsteps dragging across the floor in the apartment above and she tries to remember the last time she went dancing. She does not punch her fist into the wall in frustration.
She doesn't even feel like crying. The importance of art is verified constantly.
Magdelanye picks up the book and lays it gently on the just read pile.
It will continue to work in her. Right now, she is going to get up and get together some dinner.
May 15, 2019
Das Musiker-/Künstler gerne in besonderen Locations arbeiten ist nichts Neues.
(Ich denke da nur an den unterirdischen Techno-Club TRESOR in Berlin, Anfang der Neunziger oder die New Yorker Künstlerszene in Greenwich Village, in den 60er/70er).
Von einem 1989 erschienenen Buch, welches unterirdische Galerien zum Thema hat, hätte ich daher etwas mehr erwartet; also einen „Mehr-Wert“. Diese Erwartungen werden allenfalls im letzten Viertel des Buches abgehandelt. Doofe Erwartungen meinerseits?
Beim Lesen des Romans hatte ich nie den Eindruck Scifi zu lesen; eher eine real wirkende Geschichte, die sich im Künstlermilieu von San Francisco bewegt und das Leben der Protagonisten ganz gut beleuchtet; hier liegen auch ganz klar die Stärken des Buches, welches übrigens 1989 den Philip K.Dick Award erhielt.
Wer eine Affinität zu Kunstschaffenden hat und mit wenig SciFi-Content leben kann, könnte Gefallen an dem Buch finden. Starke drei Sterne.
(Ich denke da nur an den unterirdischen Techno-Club TRESOR in Berlin, Anfang der Neunziger oder die New Yorker Künstlerszene in Greenwich Village, in den 60er/70er).
Von einem 1989 erschienenen Buch, welches unterirdische Galerien zum Thema hat, hätte ich daher etwas mehr erwartet; also einen „Mehr-Wert“. Diese Erwartungen werden allenfalls im letzten Viertel des Buches abgehandelt. Doofe Erwartungen meinerseits?
Beim Lesen des Romans hatte ich nie den Eindruck Scifi zu lesen; eher eine real wirkende Geschichte, die sich im Künstlermilieu von San Francisco bewegt und das Leben der Protagonisten ganz gut beleuchtet; hier liegen auch ganz klar die Stärken des Buches, welches übrigens 1989 den Philip K.Dick Award erhielt.
Wer eine Affinität zu Kunstschaffenden hat und mit wenig SciFi-Content leben kann, könnte Gefallen an dem Buch finden. Starke drei Sterne.
April 24, 2024
Not sure how this book won the PKD Award, but I can definitely see why it’s out of print. Pretty solidly boring. Revolves around a Vietnam veteran who is a sculptor. He’s been scarred by the war. He’s lost his desire to sculpt. It’s set in a dystopian future where Roe vs. Wade has been overturned and includes what sort of nightmare that could actually be. So a note of prescience. However, the story centers around a Vietnam veteran who was scarred by the war and has lost his desire to sculpt. That’s all that happens. A bunch of pomposity about art and artists and the protagonist losing his desire to sculpt. Very close to one star.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews