The People’s Republic of Everything

by Nick Mamatas, Jeffrey Ford (Introduction)

“[Mamatas] is the People’s Commissar of Awesome.”
—China Miéville, author of Embassytown

Welcome to the People’s Republic of Everything—of course, you’ve been here for a long time already. Make yourself at home alongside a hitman who always tells the truth, no matter how reality has to twist itself to suit; electric matchstick girls who have teamed up with Friedrich Engels; a telepathic boy and his father’s homemade nuclear bomb; a very bad date that births an unforgettable meme; and a dog who simply won’t stop howling on social media.

The People’s Republic of Everything features a decade’s worth of crimes, fantasies, original fiction, and the author’s preferred text of the acclaimed short novel Under My Roof.

Please note that the digital edition does not contain the story “North Shore Friday.”

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Anthologies

336 pages, Paperback

First published August 29, 2018

About the author

Nick Mamatas is the author of the Lovecraftian Beat road novel Move Under Ground, which was nominated for both the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild awards, the Civil War ghost story Northern Gothic, also a Stoker nominee, the suburban nighmare novel Under My Roof, and over thirty short stories and hundreds of articles (some of which were collected in 3000 Miles Per Hour in Every Direction at Once). His work has appeared in Razor, Village Voice, Spex, Clamor, In These Times, Polyphony, several Disinformation and Ben Bella Books anthologies, and the books Corpse Blossoms, Poe's Lighthouse, Before & After: Stories from New York, and Short and Sweet.

Nick's forthcoming works include the collection You Might Sleep... (November 2008) and Haunted Legends, an anthology with Ellen Datlow (Tor Books 2009).

A native New Yorker, Nick now lives in the California Bay Area.

Reviews

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had Nick Mamatas on my reading radar for quite some time but only now decided to jump in. It helps that I was given the opportunity by Netgalley.

What did I expect? Um. Almost nothing at all. I just saw that gnome on the cover and went, "That's pretty sarcastic." Okay. I'm on board.

So! Short stories!

I'm not going to do a breakdown other than to mention the ones I loved and briefly mention what stood out with the others, but that should be enough. For the most part, I really enjoyed everything. The sarcasm and the black-mirror type punch to the gut were probably the very best aspects. :)

To start out, I absolutely loved the AI HP Lovecraft. To make a composite of the man from his letters and hear about how much he feared to be a consciousness trapped in a bottle to be a self-aware composite of the same man TRAPPED IN A COMPUTATIONAL BOTTLE. It's sick. It's plausible. It's a great commentary on Lovecraftian fiction while striking out on its own and owning it. :)

I loved the Marx and Engles mystery solving duo, too.

But you know what really stood out for me? It was the deadly real-to-life story of a woman who was mercilessly brutalized on twitter and facebook, being called a SJW, and how it ruined her life and how she finally got to the point where she could start living again without being harassed. Only the internet never forgets. ... her revenge was hardly enough and this story actually made me cry with the injustice of it.

I liked most of the others well enough but none of them except the very last short novel really stood out like these other three. The last one had a great concept explored a bit more deeply than I've seen elsewhere, but not quite as deeply as, say, Corey Doctorow's Walkway. I mention that because there's a TON of similarities.

Let's make our own country! Secede from the USA! Make sure we back it up with a homemade atomic bomb! Lol, good start, and excellent exploration, including peace treaties across the world, societal ramifications, a bit of kidnapping and extraditions. :) It was easily the most fun, especially when the guy with the lawnmower made the US government back up and do some chores. :)

This is definitely an author I need to keep my eyes open for. :)

[Bandit · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nick Mamatas is an author I was aware of, someone I meant to check out. When his latest collection appeared on Netgalley, it was time. So now I’ve read him and…I’m not in love. I’m not even sure I’m in like. I usually take emotions seriously. This was just a very complicated first impression. Objectively the man is obviously talented and has the imagination to go along with it. A few of the stories were really good, with The Great Armored Train being a personal favorite and an all around great tale. Subjectively, though, a lot of the stories didn’t work for me, which is to say while I appreciated their originality, the execution inspired a sort of indifference. I’ve tried to put in words exactly what it is about Mamatas’ writing and it seems that it’s just very self aware, very autobiographical and politically correct in an obvious way (one story first published in this volume is a proof of that, it’s just well meaning and tragically unsubtle), this information is mainly gathered from extensive and informative afterwords provided for each story by the author and when you read these stories it just has message in neon letters printed all over them. Kind of like how there are some actors who disappear into their roles and you can enjoy an immersive movie experience and there are some where it’s just…it’s so and so being a teacher/mother/etc. And there’s also pacing, these stories read quite slowly at times, particularly We Never Sleep, which ironically would send me nodding off at every other page. And that was the last short story of the collection, after that it’s a previously published novella or a short novel which is all about the message, a nuclear family reimagined quite literally when a father declares his place in Long Island a sovereign nation, an armed one at that, and proceeds to succeed, all told from a perspective of his precocious mindreading young son. This was supposed to be the star of the show probably and it started off decently enough, but then it just dragged on and on like a one note song on a protracted loop or, more accurately, a one punch joke told too long, since this is obviously a work of political satire. Didn’t care about that one at all, had I not been a completist, this would have been abandoned without a second thought. In fact had this collection ended before the soporific We Never Sleep, it would have been a much more enjoyable reading experience, one from which I would have walked away entertained and intrigued, instead like a frustrating guest it stayed too long and talked too much about its world views and thoughts and ideas and just kinda made you tired. Though I definitely think this is the sort of book that has its adoring audience, somewhere out there. And everyone can agree on great cover. Not a complete turn off, just a mixed bag introduction to the author. Frustratingly the story with the one of the most intriguing concepts (psi research) was pretty much digitally unreadable due to a messed up format, but then again this’ll most likely be taken care of for proper publication. Thanks Netgalley.

[Frank Errington · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review copy

The People's Republic of Everything is made up of fourteen short stories and one novella from genre fiction writer Nick Mamatas and is the most varied assemblage of work I've read in some time.

Walking with a Ghost - A Lovecraft inspired piece right off the bat and one of the best in the collection. It's the story of H.P. Lovecraft as AI (Artificial Intelligence).

Arbeitskraft - A steampunkish story about the elimination of the proletariat. I even see a bit of our times in this unusual tale.

The People’s Republic of Everywhere and Everything - A crime noir story, of sorts, about stealing the Q-chip, or quantum chip, which promised to be capable of breaking any and every code. This one has one of my favorite lines in the entire collection...

"...even the Revolution appreciated a pretty girl who shaved her armpits and smelled like patchouli rather than patchouli and landfill."

Tom Silex, Spirit-Smasher - Fiction that smacks of realism. A story about an attempt to obtain the rights to reprint the works of a forgotten pulp writer...

"Tom Silex is like a Sherlock Holmes/ cowboy/ ghostbuster/ Harry Potter-type all rolled up into one."

The Great Armored Train - A fanciful tale of the Russian Revolution and a Polish girl who can turn into an owl.

The Phylactery - Sort of an essay on Greekness. Phylactery. It's a Greek thing. A good luck charm, if you will.

Slice of Life - "Not many women of child-bearing age make arrangements to leave their bodies to science. Fewer still die while in their third trimesters."

North Shore Friday - (Please note that the digital edition does not contain this story) A tale of immigration. Here's a helpful tip: If you think the government is reading your mind. Think in Greek.

The Glottal Stop - Living a life inside of social media...

"By the time she got out of “the joint”— she was thinking in TV clichés from her own childhood now !— all the social media platforms would be obsolete and abandoned, a graveyard of controversies as accessible as floppy disks."

The Spook School - Inspired by time spent in Scotland.

A Howling Dog - The curious incident of a bark without a dog. This was once produced as a full-cast audio adaptation at pseudopod.org and appears in print for the first time in this volume.

Lab Rat - Supplementing a freelance writer's income by being a lab rat. I wonder how many of my writer friends have actually done this.

Dreamer of the Day - A terrific crime story of an aging daytime actress wanting her philandering husband dead.

We Never Sleep - It's the Pinkerton slogan. Dieselpunk - Just like steampunk, but greasier and more efficient.

Under My Roof - What would happen if an otherwise ordinary man built a nuclear bomb, put it a garden gnome on his lawn and became a sovereign state. I loved this novella to finish up the collection.

I found much of the work in The People's Republic of Everything to be introspective, clever, and fun.

Recommended.

The People's Republic of Everything is available now in both paperback and e-book formats from Tachyon Publications.

From the author's bio - Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including Love is the Law, I Am Providence and the forthcoming Hexen Sabbath. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, and many other venues. His fiction and editorial work have been nominated for the Hugo, Locus, World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and International Horror Guild awards. Nick lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

[Tammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.The nitty-gritty: Although I didn't enjoy all the stories in this collection, I'm still a big fan of Mamatas and his unending, quirky imagination, and some of these stories will be hard to forget.

I have read and enjoyed a couple of Nick Mamatas’ novels, and I thought it would be interesting to see how he approached the short story. Unfortunately, this collection was a mixed bag for me, and I ended up really enjoying only a handful of stories. Each one includes an afterword by the author, explaining how the story came about and where he was in his writing career when it was written. These “story notes” were in some cases more interesting than the stories themselves, which made me wonder if a collection of Mamatas' essays might be a better fit for me. As I try to write this review, a couple of descriptive words about this book come to mind: Avant garde, experimental, and erudite to name a few. Some of these stories were tough to read. If you enjoy putting effort into your reading, then there is a lot to love and discover between the covers of this book, but the casual reader might struggle a bit like I did. Mamatas seems to love to draw on his own personal experiences for story fodder, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Except, not all life experiences deserve their own short story, in my opinion, and so I found that some of these just didn’t interest me enough to even read them to the end.

That being said, I am blown away by Mamatas’ imagination. These stories are weird , folks, and even though there were quite a few that I just didn’t “get,” several of them were delightfully strange in a way that I could relate to. Those are the stories I’d like to talk about in this review.



One of my favorites opens the collection. Walking with a Ghost is about a couple of graduate students who decide to create a Lovecraft AI. They use Lovecraft’s written correspondence to create the AI, although the results aren’t quite what they expected. I thought this story was clever and funny, and having read and enjoyed one of Mamatas’ Lovecraft-inspired novels ( I Am Providence ), I thoroughly enjoyed this story as well.



The title story of the collection, The People’s Republic of Everywhere and Everything , is a weird little tale about a couple of kids and their scheme to steal a device that can crack any password. I loved it in a “what the fuck did I just read?” sort of way. It takes place in Berkeley, California, a techy college town, where such a scheme is probably the norm. It also involves a character with a condition called Cotard’s Delusion, which leads you to believe you’re literally a dead man walking. Mamatas gathered several disparate ideas and somehow cobbled them together into an effective story.



The Great Armored Train was one of my very favorites. Mamatas takes a bit of history—Leon Trotsky’s famous armored train used in the Russian Civil War—and adds in the legend of a woman who can turn into an owl. Somehow he combines these two ideas into an exciting, war-time tale that ends unexpectedly in a love story.



Mamatas turns his attention to the perils of social media and online dating in The Glottal Stop , a story about a girl who uses her knowledge of chemistry to defend herself on a date gone wrong. We’ve all been there, right? If only we had half the imagination of the main character Beatriz!



Finally, Mamatas finishes out the collection with a novella called Under My Roof , which I enjoyed immensely, maybe because it seems his longer fiction works better for me than his short stories. It tells the story of Daniel Weinberg and his family, who like millions of other people, were deeply affected by the events of 9/11. Years later, disillusioned with the state of his country, Daniel sets out to build a home-brew nuclear bomb and secede from the United States. Absurd, poignant, funny and irreverent, Mamatas explores the motivations of a man who has had enough and is going to do something about it. The story is told by Daniel's son Herbert, who not only helps him build the bomb (the scenes of scouring the city dump for unlikely bomb parts are some of the funniest I’ve ever read!) but by default becomes a citizen of the newly minted “Weinbergia.” Part anti-war satire, part astute observation on the state of American politics, this story in particular deserves a much wider audience.

In the end, I’m very glad I picked up this book. If I hadn’t, I would have missed some very good stories, and that would have been a shame.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.

 This review originally appeared on Books, Bones & Buffy

[David Agranoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is mostly weird fiction that doesn't fit exactly into any genre but the connective tissue is smart well thought out stories. Mamatas is a politically savvy hard to define writer. I have read three novels of his my favorite being Love is the Law released by Dark Horse.

This collection is not the author's first but it is his first in some time. Best part is it comes with a re-edited early short novel. My favorites of the short stories were the ones when Mamatas explored the nature and thinking of the pulp writers he is descended from. I have feeling this author knows that if he lived in the golden age he would have been one of them.

The best example of this was the stories Tom Silex, Spirit Smasher which explored the legacy of the lost pulp writers and the role that women played in the golden age. Some male writers of the era had unsung women helping them and in the case of James Tiptree (her real name was Alice Sheldon) were not even men. Certainly Andre Norton was a writer many never knew was a woman. It is a fun story but I like that it made a subtle point about pulps and gender.

The more political stories like the Diesel punk (That should be copyrighted) story We Never Sleep and The Great Armored Train about Trotsky show Mamatas as both a radical thinker but a historian of theory. I like the title story's brief but fun look at modern Berkley counter culture. I would like a Mamatas novel set with this backdrop.

The novel Under My Roof is the highlight for me. This story or a smart kid whose father declares their home a free state and builds a DIY nuke is funny as it is thought provoking. I liked the straight-forward but witty prose.

There is only one weakness for me in this collection. Some of the stories like Lab Rat and espically North Shore Friday got a little too cute for me. I understand and respect Mamatas trying to experiment with form. I generally understood what he was trying to do but both stories kinda lost me.

Forgive me but I would like go on a little tangent about the author Nick Mamatas the personality. I am not sure he would find this as the compliment I intend it to be when I say he is Internet age Harlan Ellison. What I mean by that is he is a sharp smart writer who flirts with genre but is hard to pin down because he doesn't write typical inside the box fiction. At the same time he developed a following with his razor sharp live journal entries, blog posts and social media presence. Ellison grew into a creepy old man troll with scary gender politics but there was a time when Ellison was the genre writer with sharpest political points of view. (Note Mamatas wrote two excellent online pieces about Harlan, search "Don't let Harlan Ellison Hear This, and Rest in Anger if you don't believe me.)

I would never want to be on the bad side of a writer who is clearly intelligent and a wit ninja. but for some reason a few have picked online fights with him. I like to think I get along with everyone, well almost everyone in the genre community. The only person I don't get along with is a self published author and editor who I shall just refer to here as Captain Pajama Pants (AKA Asparagus Head). This person for some reason has picked many fights with Nick. This is hilarious to me because their place in the genre community are opposites.

Nick is everything this ego manic thinks he is. The problem is Captain PJ pants thinks he is god's gift to genre. He has not been able to publish hardly anything he didn't do himself. While Nick is widely published and has blurbs from some of the most respected authors in the field, has received praise from Publisher's weekly and NPR. Watching Nick tear about said self-published blow-hard was fun enough but watching him satirize him in his novel I Am Providence, and also get a dig in on him in the story notes of the Great Armored Train is beyond satisfying.

On that note, as a writer I enjoyed the story notes probably most of all in this book. This is a great collection worthy of your time. Mamatas as person might come off as abrasive online, but his talent cannot be denied. As a persona in the genre, I think he is needed. I don't always agreewith him, but I always pay attention. You should too.

[Rob · Rating 2 out of 5]

Short stories. Strong Marxist and/or anarcho-socialist streak. Some New Weird. Some horror. Some noir-ish stuff. My enthusiasm waned more than it waxed. I didn't finish the stories. I might have given more time, but the library loan was expiring, and I was ready to move on.

(Oh and I really could have have done without the author's meta-commentary. I had a writing professor in college that convinced me of just how self-indulgent that crap is. These were a case study in that.)

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm conflicted about this book. Mamatas is a writer with many gifts, an avowed leftist with a deep background in horror who ably mixes classic imagery with premonitions about the future. His writing is Extremely Online and Extremely Correct. And yet, a lot of it was just okay.

The stories are at their best when he does alternate history, imaging a past of steampunk and dieselpunk wonders inhabited by Engels and Trotsky. And there are a few more intimate psychological studies, of Greekness and fatherhood, and of the psychology of pain, that really worked. But about half of the book was filler, a kind of late-Gibson "welcome to you cyberpunk present" without the deep estrangement that makes Gibson so great (it just clicked that my favorite Gibson is "The Belonging Kind"). Without that kind of cutting insight, the scifi was just glib. And the finale story, an antiwar fable about micronations and a telepathic kid, failed to move me entirely.

I appreciated the biographical notes at the end of each story, a sad tale of publications shuttered, of nominations to awards lost, of the quiet desperation of a 'full-time writer' in the 21st century. Mamatas is perhaps best known for a practical book on writing, Starve Better, and this stories are plenty hungry. But the conclusions felt like the first answer to the premise. Mamatas comes up with fascinating ideas, but the workings through of those ideas are all too often predictable, a dish without the necessary ingredient of surprise.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm still digesting this one. There was one story I just could not read, and there was another story I didn't care for, but then - there were 3 stories that just blew me off my feet they were so good, and the remaining stories were almost of that caliber. Overall, this was a fascinating collection, and the stories gave a broad view of the author's style and ability. Now to dig into I Am Providence and other works by Mamatas.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cover & title prompted me to request an ARC through NetGalley though I never heard of the author before. I was pleasantly surprised!
As with every short story collection, some stories stood out while others were so-so. But each of Mamatas writings lingered with me. I took a long break between the first and second half and during that time I found that certain scenes often popped back into my mind. The last story, Under My Roof, was my favorite and if it ever becomes a novel, I'll definitely pick it up. Nick Mamatas has made it on to my radar and I look forward to reading more of his.

Thanks to Tachyon and #NetGalley for the ARC of #ThePeoplesRepublicOfEverything.

[Mónica BQ]

Nope.

[Lou Jacobs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Presented is a eclectic collection of speculative fiction - a heady mixture of politics and philosophy and a lesser input of science fiction and horror. Which is naturally disappointing if you where expecting the later. His writings obviously cannot be pigeonholed into one genre - although not acquainted with his writings - I am impressed with his satire and dark , dry wit. Most helpful the author provides story notes after each tale that relates to significance and origin of each story.
His prose is exceptional and I would have enjoyed the collection more if my expectations were not bound to a preconception and expectation of a "big gulp" of science fiction and horror.
Thanks to Netgalley and Tachyon Publications for providing this Uncorrected Proof for my enjoyment in exchange for an honest review.

[Alex Sarll]

A collection of stories covering SF, horror and adjacent territory - you know, the sort of stories *about* SF &c which Michael Chabon sometimes does. But not so friendly as Chabon always comes across. I like author notes in general, but compared to the usual love-in where every publication was an honour, Mamatas' can be entertainingly rude about some of the venues, like the one which starts as "an ersatz Cemetery Dance" and then goes mostly downhill from there. Equally, the bit where he finds writing exhausting and distasteful is so much more reassuring than all those writers who apparently love every minute spent with pen in hand. Or 'Slices of Life', which is fiction about science yet not science fiction, and turns out to have been intended to announce a retirement from SF - a plan which the notes explain was abandoned for wholly financial reasons. Sometimes I felt like the shorter pieces in particular worked best as set-ups for these punchlines because, for whatever reason, there was a lot here with which I didn't quite connect, despite many writers I enjoy being huge Mamatas fans. The arrangement of the collection doesn't always help; the story with an AI simulation of Lovecraft is a smart riff on some of the fears expressed in HPL's own fiction, but it's followed too closely by a similar reproduction of Marx, which feels like the same idea filtered through a st**mp*nk setting and makes one worry the whole book will be riffs on that idea. And it's not, but why set up that impression needlessly? Still, there were a few that got me - like a well-timed Charles Rennie Mackintosh nightmare of Glasgow which gets its claws in early with the notion that "It’s the nightmares you don’t recall even having that get you in the end". Or the counterblast against manifestos in general which knows that "the less clear an idea is, the more likely it is to be popular". The collection's final third is taken up by a prescient short novel, Under my Roof. First published in 2006, it envisages a near-future America at loggerheads with practically everyone, where the middle class is being hollowed out and the apparatus of state seems increasingly to be a tool of repression and suppression. So young Herbert Weinberger's dad decides to start his own rogue state in the suburbs. And by way of insurance policy, he makes a nuke inside a garden gnome (the process being described in a degree of detail I found slightly unsettling). Oh, and also - Herbie's telepathic, which comes in handy as things get progressively more out of hand.

(Netgalley ARC)

[Beth ~Book Loving Is My Superpower~ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book... oh this book... I have gone many rounds of mental tug-of-war with myself regarding how to rate this book. To start I must admit that I did not, could not, read all of the stories straight through. The writing was well done. The technique, excellent. BUT the content was so obviously saturated with zealous political ferver, it felt like I was being smacked in the face with a rotting propaganda pamphlet...repeatedly. Can you tell that I don't like politics (unless it's Court Politics) mixing with my favorite leisurely activity? That being said, there were pacing issues and plain old boredom issues so a skimming I went. Man oh man how I skimmed. That's never a good sign! If it weren't for how nicely worded and structured the sentences were I'd have swiftly placed this in the DNF bin. Thanks to the tiny grammar freak residing at my core there was a part of me that enjoyed this solely on the merit of its technique. Accounting for this and the differing tastes of each reader, I bumped the rating up to 3 stars. I know there will be those that will enjoy this book thoroughly but I was not one of them. The humor I originally believed the book would be peppered with was sorely missing and I just didn't enjoy the stories.

NOW I must also admit, for what it's worth, that I am not an avid reader of Compilation books. I gave it a shot and dipped my toes in these waters by first inhaling Faster, Stronger and More Beautiful. That book is a compilation of interconnected futuristic vignettes and it opened my eyes to the beauty of the genre. I know it's unfair to compare the two, especially since the content of both books differs so, but I haven't read many other Compilations to help create a baseline. Without a proper pool of literary peers to reference against, F,SaMB ended up being quite influential in my rating and therefore it's in my review.

Overall: Will I reread this? No. Will I read more of Nick Mamatas' work? Probably not BUT I will also say that based on the writing alone, others might fall reverently in love with this book and I hope they do. Do I reccomend this? Well, yes I do and I know it might seem contradictory to my review but I truly believe that this has a market... just not in my neighborhood.


*** I was given a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review ***

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I'd give this another star if I just read the stories here, which were rich and funny and strange and do a couple formal things that are noteworthy on the level of writing-- Mamatas's stories have strange starts, where he seems to just mash things together, without fuss or hesitation. Maybe this is a genre, or at least a SF thing, where you'll often feel completely disoriented for a chapter or two in good novel, and there's some of that here, but it's even more than that disorientation; there's a propulsive start to these stories. Another strange element is that a lot of these stories shift away from the likely protagonist to follow another character than the one you thought, or else it'll have multiple narrators, which is also pretty unusual. Both elements give the stories a dynamic possibility that I enjoyed a lot. The stories themselves are fun and inventive and don't overstay their welcome, and each has a short essay (usually less than a page) where Mamatas reflects on the story's creation and publication. I've seen these kinds of essay before and usually hate them but I mostly loved these, which were funny and sharp, even when they hammer the idea that Mamatis only writes for money. Party of this might be that Mamatis' author voice is so confident about what he's doing, even as it reveals how often his ambitions fail in the marketplace, as he writes for a contest or a particular source, and they are completely uninterested.

The novella at the end of this book is everything the other stories aren't-- told in first person, it goes on and on to make a series of pretty obvious points and levels a kind of satire that is obvious and doesn't really reveal much beyond its score settling. Oh well. You could always skip it.

[Paul Michael Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

With very few writers, it's their voice that carries the stories, regardless of the actual content of the story (I'm talking plot, not merit). Harlan Ellison was like that. So was Jack Ketchum. Sarah Vowell, the essayist, also springs to mind. Writers whose voice is intrinsically entwined with both the text and subtext--the content is them and vice versa. Nick Mamatas is like that, too. So, whether you're getting a story about online rape culture, a dieselpunk story of a new political order, or a suburban satire of the first nuclear family becoming a nuclear power, you never get that impression that the stories are being told by a variety of writers, which is sometimes the case when reading collections that span a few years of material and the writer's evolution. Here, It's Nick, with all his turns of phrases and hobby horses (that only sounds negative) preserved because Nick has reached a point where he knows what he sounds like and leans into it. So, if you like Mamatas' novels, or you were new to him and didn't want to mentally invest in a novel, THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING would be a handy place to start.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Note: I received an Advance Reading Copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review.

This is a compelling set of short stories that makes you think. It was also my entry point into reading Nick Mamatas. I will read more from him in the near future. The first half of the set of short stories were hard to get through, but stick with it. The last seven stories were quite enjoyable including the novella length "Under My Roof". The political and social commentary was spot on throughout the stories, and there were many laugh out loud moments intermingled with horrific moments.

[J Endress · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much writer's blues, not enough substance

Overall a decent anthology of genre fiction- there is something for everyone in here. Worth it for Under My Roof alone. It sags under the weight of weaker stories and the author's predilection for concluding EVERY. SINGLE. STORY. with a "This story totally almost got published in/by/at" yarn. Spoiler alert: writing is hard, and you get told "No" most of the time. Let the strongest work stand on its own and save the ruminations on the practice and struggle of writing for a separate essay or project.

[Richard Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent writing and very intriguing premises for the stories.

Not each one hit with me but the ones that did are deeper than most work I get to read. Nick is an intelligent man who sometime leaves me in the dust, but I am always the better for it.

Great package, the book, cover, feel, everything. A superior product.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

The engagé lefty weird fiction (mostly) of your dreams. Whether he's writing against streampunk's retro politics or prefiguring the insanity of present-day political culture, Mamatas is funny, sharp, and clear-eyed. Imagine if Upton Sinclair was writing speculative fiction. Like that.

[danny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird and compelling stories about a lot of strange characters. The last story was my favorite, it reminded me of Good Omens except weirder and more political. I couldn't handle the horror short stories, they were completely terrifying, but I'm not someone who can usually handle horror media.

[Beth Younge · Rating 2 out of 5]

This had some interesting ideas inside but it just did not work for me at all. This needed to be a tighter, more driven story as it seemed like it meandered a bit too much for me.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Jimbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nick Mamtas has a way with making you think and mixes horror, science fiction, and politics to send messages to the outside world. His writing is unique and clever. He should be read by all.

[Rudi Dewilde · Rating 4 out of 5]

not bad, but not super either

[Matteo Fulgheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last and longest story (almost half the book in fact) is dull and boring, otherwise it'd have been an extremely brilliant book.

[Lyn Remmers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great selection of short stories from a great author! Some are better than others of course, but for me, it was certainly worth reading. Very strong introductions and setups!

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a few stories I liked far more than this rating suggests, and I may revise upward a star--3 or 4 is pretty much a question of rounding in this case.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wide-ranging and thoughtful book of short stories, from a steampunk Dickens tale told by Freiderich Engels, to a story of a family that takes the "sovereign citizen" idea to ludicrous and radioactive extremes. I enjoy Mamatas' writing in part because he refuses to leave politics out of his writing, and wears his leftism on his sleeve, using it to strengthen his ideas and storytelling. His notes explaining the events and thinking surrounding each story add depth.

[Hazel G. Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first thing I need to say about this collection is that it is very clear very quickly from reading it that Mamatas has strong views/opinions, specifically liberal, Marxist views. This is obvious enough from the stories themselves, but it’s made explicit in the story notes included after each story. Now, I’m not saying this because it’s a bad thing; if your views influence your writing, that’s not a problem. However, when it is so obvious (the second story is about Friedrich Engels, a friend of Karl Marx, and the fifth is about Leon Trotsky, without even getting to themes and comments in others), that should be made clear to the reader, and the synopsis mentions Engels’ name, but does not properly represent how much those themes show up.

That being said, the stories are interesting and well-written. The format of the stories is an interesting mix: one is written entirely in dialogue, one is written in neighborhood forum posts tied together by a narrator giving some context and explanation, and one is formatted in an interesting way that I can’t properly explain. Unfortunately, that last one, which is titled “North Shore Friday,” was basically impossible to read in the electronic ARC I got, so I had to find a PDF of it online to be able to read it. I assume (and hope) that this was fixed for the final ebook in some way, but if you’re interested in this book, I might buy a physical copy just to be safe.

Mamatas’ writing is engaging, and the stories lend themselves to being dwelled on. Many of them (“A Howling Dog” comes particularly to mind) have meanings that can only really be understood if you pay close attention and make connections. I think “A Howling Dog” may be my favorite story in the collection for this very reason; I really enjoy stories that appear to be one thing on the surface, but seem to be something different if you look deeper. Mamatas is a masterful writer, and does this well.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nick Mamatas (I Am Providence) creates landscapes in The People's Republic of Everything that are off-kilter yet disconcertingly familiar. This short story collection examines his recurring themes of "the body, technology, [and] materialism" with tales that span conventional narrative, science fiction and dystopian fantasy; dark themes abide, touched with a fair bit of humor.

The title story, "The People's Republic of Everything and Everywhere," introduces a narrator who is part of an anarchist scheme to steal the Q-chip: it breaks every code and cracks every password. "No walls, no doors" is the insurgents' motto. In "Arbeitskraft," factory workers are altered with prosthetic limb devices that repress an already downtrodden class. The main character, a rich man who fancies himself a liberal do-gooder, is used to "critique steampunk without creating an anti-steampunk story."

This collection also includes the preferred author edition of Under My Roof, a novel set in the near future when war is constant. A telepathic boy tells the very funny story of his father's homemade nuclear bomb and the reaction to his declaring their house a new country. Part Kurt Vonnegut and part The Mouse That Roared, it's a biting and relevant satire.

Mamatas adds author notes at the end of each story. The reader may come away with the feeling that it's a minor miracle that any of his unusual work sees print--and a very good thing that it does--because his underground aesthetic and slightly skewed imagination give adventurous readers a wild ride.

-reviewed for Shelf Awareness 9/11/18

[Becky Spratford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review on the blog and in the August issue of Booklist Magazine: http://raforall.blogspot.com/2018/08/...