Dreams of Amputation

by Gary J. Shipley

Dreams of Amputation reads like the nightmares Derek Raymond might have experienced if he'd written cyberpunk. An exceptionally strange work, but a smart and thoughtful one as well. Disturbing, haunting, and inimitably weird, this is a book like no other.

- Brian Evenson


Gary J. Shipley’s, Dreams of Amputation , is a novel overflowing not only with ideas, but a different type of speech. From the first sentence you know you are walking into a world where you will not be led by the hand, and where even the characters will not be sure exactly what or where they “He wakes in a container, head like a sawn circuit, throat rattling like a battery cage, Dock Code Report flashing tortured symbols from the wall the amp’s back.” So begins what in essence serves as a story brought on in full barrage, equipped with mazes, tunnels, replicant people, goat heads, paranoia, riots, brain manipulation, new disease… Shipley moves fluidly between scenes of various styles, grafting Tarkovsky-like passages of exploration with damaged circuits of putridity and fear, sometimes not far from the clipped feel of Burroughs’s Nova Express . Where so many other books would get caught in one mode or another, Shipley keeps the eye inside the mind alive, spitting other eyes out of the eye itself.

- Blake Butler in VICE

Genres: Horror, Science Fiction, Fiction, Cyberpunk, Short Stories, Weird Fiction, Dystopia

224 pages, Paperback

First published October 22, 2013

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Gary J. Shipley is a writer and philosopher based in the UK. He has published work in various philosophy journals and literary journals.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

So Mr. Shipley dreamt up an amputated posthuman horrorscape and decorated it with pus-filled sacs of prose-poetic philosophical hash that is still congealing in my rusted brainpan. How to even explain this to someone...I thought if William Gibson and J.G. Ballard had cowritten the screenplay for the film Idiocracy with consultancies from Samuel R. Delany, Dennis Cooper, and the disembodied spirit of William Burroughs perhaps that would provide a starting point...or maybe just imagine—to pilfer the words of Shipley's Sage—'a clot of masks, of minds dissected by the vehicle of days, of time leaning into its own perpetually shifting dead-end'... as described by 'the prototypical anhedonian captured in some dark viscid frieze'...

Speaking of viscid friezes, though, (and if we can presume [but can we?] that Shipley intends the architectural meaning of the term 'frieze' as opposed to the textile-related meaning [which also could weirdly apply in context]), Shipley may in fact be constructing his own viscid frieze across multiple textual artefacts, for there are definitely some commonalities here with Terminal Park. But the anhedonia suffusing this moment precludes me from parsing those clotted threads of ooze...

[Gorbulus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished reading Dreams of Amputation by Gary J. Shipley, and you are not cool enough (by far) to buy this book. I'm not. Trust me you aren't either. This book is beyond cool, but not only is it cool as hell, it is so well written that you may not even understand the book and how cool it is, and therefore how uncool you are. Dreams of Amputation is sardonic view in to a Pulp Fiction meets Blade Runner future looming in our uncool radar. Once you realize how Dreams of Amputation is both a cold prophecy of the future and a caricature of modern life, you have a slight inclination towards your uncool and s***ty existence, and thus why you are unworthy to read or comprehend this book. :)

Seriously a great read, can't wait till I read it again in a few months or so. This book is weird, addictive, gritty, and.... well cool! The writing style is not for the light reader, this book demands your cranium while you crack it's puzzle. It has a plot, characters, themes, and all the major literary elements, but it functions more like a "Finnigan's Wake" (Joyce) on your consciousness while you read it. Even though some words may be new/made-up/strange-combos you SEE THE PICTURE so to speak. A very weird and interesting experience! I first had it while reading Joyce's Finnigan's Wake aloud. The words form their meaning from their sound and placement more than their definitions. Pretty trippy. This book Dreams of Amputation would make a great NON AMERICAN film! (bc it would be done as art, and not boxoffice fodder)

I would love to discuss if anyone wants to email me beefyslanky@gmail.com.

I made some music after finishing Dreams of Amputation by Gary J. Shipley.
Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0djXus...

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

[ipsit · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not sure how to tell what this book’s about-or even what exactly happens—but that doesn’t really matter because it’s less about plot and more about amassment and shape. There are characters and recurring set pieces, but much of the pleasure comes from Shipley’s great array of authorial control. The plot’s trajectory alters over and over, even in mid-stream, providing the reader with more of an experience than a narration, and one designed to pull up a hidden layer of the world, shedding wicked light not on who we are, but what is right underneath us.

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s like if Philip K Dick had lived through the 90s and collaborated with China Mieville (in the style of Looking For Jake) to write the gnarliest mind-fuck of a cyberpunk horror novel.

[David Peak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shipley's most straight-forward work to date--and also his most tightly focused. This is an immensely weird and disturbing piece of cyberpunk head-fuckery.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is ostensibly 'cyberpunk' but the guy is a philosophy academic so it isn't really concerned with plot and has a lot of sentences like these:
"Trickery's unblinking progress sending and receiving messages to and from remote corners of the globe - flailing worm-holed bodies and the wool of abstract faces approximated from a conglomerated parasite clearing their minds with city dreams of submerged truths hidden in a fetus yet to be conceived."

"Rows of eyes like swollen full stops trained on bowls of black glass and slim chambers of white spiralled smoke: FOCUS, focus inside the disorder of stilled lives, lives free of paraphernalia: time without its equipment, thinned time, pure time; the sanguine liquidity of unencumbered duration, of hearts eaten by their beats inside twitching ghosts mincing anxiety into coiling worms of tenseless time."

[Angie Dutton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this maybe wears its influences on its sleeves a bit too much, in terms of basically just playing off pulp, Burroughs, Ballard, and all the blood and cum soggy edgelords of the 1950s onwards, I was wondering whether to give a three star, but I enjoyed it immensely.

Not sure if I'd recommend it though, especially as it's all been done elsewhere, but if you like that kind of thing and want a slightly more VICE magazine style take on it then probably try this out.

[final muzak · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amalgamated mess of hanging wires, broken glass and the sound of dragging bodies. At once, it is literal, metaphor, prophecy and something else entirely; Shipley has a uniquely ominous way of speaking in a language that at surface level seems understandable, but upon further inspection is inconceivable. If you’re worried about the TV static that you hear off in the distance when reading this book, fear not— your brain is just short circuiting from the experience.

I don’t necessarily feel inclined to categorize this, but I recall seeing another GR reviewer call Shipley’s writing “weird bummer fiction”, which seems apt.

[Benoit Lelièvre · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of these books fulls of fun and original ideas, but that doesn't tell them in a very compelling way.

Mostly centered around the idea that the self is a virus (which is kind of cool), Dreams of Amputation alternates between non-narrative body horror scenes and very straightforward (and unorignal) cyberpunk storytelling. Some writers are stylists. Some are storytellers. Truly great writers are both. Shipley is not one of them. He's a thinker and a creative mind, but he struggles telling a compelling story out of uniquely jagged pieces.

[Jim Ivy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard and Phillip K. Dick infiltrating and infesting a film noir detective story... yeah, pretty cool.

[C.L. Methvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Admittedly, I did not finish this novel, though I find that more my fault than the book's. The imagery was mesmerizing and I admire that about it; however I felt that after about a third through, the book lacked a sense of propulsion to keep my interest. I tried picking the book back up a few times, as I really did want to like it: on paper, it sounded like all of my interests.
For the right reader, this will be excellent. My best shorthand summary would be literary modernism meets cyberpunk . It's a surreal world with a nightmarish air to it. This is unfortunately just an instance in which I had to accept the book didn't work for me.

Three stars because, despite not finishing, I admire what the book was doing and don't think less would be fair because of my personal tastes. In a later chapter in my life, I may revisit it.

[Fede · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the characters is Lucinda the Equine Toff, a transexual horse/human living in a penthouse as a concubine. Thoroughbred racer's hind quarters, human penis, large female breasts, horse head and a posh English accent.
He/she dies early on in the story, but no worries - the other characters are much worse than that.

Still, this one of the most complex novels I've ever read, a philosophical allegory in the form of a cyberpunk tableau.
I bought it just because I liked the cover art and, of course, the title, so I was quite willing to see my money go down the drain for the sake of it. I found myself dealing with a mind-blowing work of unexpected depth and remarkable literary value instead, by an author I was shamefully unaware of. The writing is amazingly good and the imagery (violent, obscene, extreme and poetic) left me utterly speechless on several occasions.

What can I say? If authors like G.J. Shipley and B.R. Yeager (Amygdalatropolis) are the new trend in Anglo-American fiction, there are good reasons to feel optimistic about the future of literature.

[Thomas Hale · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ultra-grim, gore-soaked hellscape after a post-Ballardian societal collapse. Cyberpunk screen-addiction, rampant murder and sexual assault, animal and child abuse, etc etc. There are some pretty cool body modifications that (apart from the main protagonist) are largely forgotten after being introduced. The plot takes half the book to get going, after thoroughly desensitising the reader to the grotesqueries of the awful, awful world it's set in. It's a shame, because there are a handful of scenes and Burroughs-style skits that were actually impactful. I don't know how the author identifies, but this felt like a very hetero book, too, with the worst and most pathetic fates saved for the female characters. (There are two trans women featured, briefly: one is a serial killer's sidekick, and the other is a giant horse-woman with a giant penis who is murdered in a spree-killing after maybe three lines of dialogue.) It all felt rather shallow and try-hard-edgy, like if Charlie Brooker wrote snuff porn for a China Miéville fansite. I certainly got through it quickly, but every time I think about the book since finishing it I feel more disappointed.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book may have changed the way I think about reading. Generally speaking I don't particularly enjoy reading abstract stuff where I cant follow the plot thread, I'm okay with things being abstract, but I generally want to be able to tether myself to an actual progression of some sort.

Well I'm going to re-think that about myself now, because for at least the first 1/4 of this book I couldn't grab on to anything that's what made me like it so much. I was sort of just being thrown around in this books insane post-cyberpunk babble and I loved it. Everything about this book is accelerated and amplified to insane levels. Its extremely grotesque and beyond nihilistic

The only reason why I'm not giving this 5 stars is because that feeling went away as a plot slowly revealed itself. It continues to be more and more plot driven as the book goes on. I'm probably being unfair here though since I've never felt that feeling with any other book, and honestly the plot is quite good.

I'm going to follow this writers work for sure because he definitely has a unique voice and I want more.

[Adam Hudson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A true delight to read. I’ll be thinking about this one for a good while.

[Henry Paxton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite sure what happened in a lot of this book but I enjoyed it

[Chris Cabrera · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid book and one I didn't appreciate fully until the end. With its visceral imagery and cybertech-y descriptions, it will require more attention to digest and may impact its readability. However with that being said, this book is undoubtedly "cool" (if I may use the word from one of the major reviews I saw in Goodreads that lead me to the pick this novel) and is a great, dark addition to the genre.

[D Lyons · Rating 4 out of 5]

the COVID19 stuff made me push through and finish this bad boy today. insane prose, all about the body and mind torn apart, reassembled, worse every time. made me come to a moment of great peace with the virus, i am the virus, we are all the virus.

[Jesse Zabel · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 really well written but hard to follow. Very cool imagery and idea. Will read more from this author.

[Harry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wanky, cynical cyberpunk. What's new?

[Christopher Shorewick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Distending a biomechanical metaphorical extension of Deleuze/Guattari's desiring machines and leveraging his expertise on Baudrillard, Shipley explores the idea of self as an epiparasite grafted onto flesh, and of virtual worlds grafted in barely distinguishable layers onto other virtual worlds, the reader left throughout wondering which narrative thread is the most real, and more worryingly, whether that even matters.

In the world of Dreams of Amputation, flesh is a secondary consideration at best: a disposable substrate on which this parasitic machine of self sustains and expresses itself. The concept is well explored, and the Socratic exchange between Nolan and the Sage near the middle of the novel is pretty much exactly what I hoped this book had to offer in terms of expounding on a horrifying prospective future where consciousness and flesh decouple, and the consequences of that schism.

The juggle of voices and the vignettes of ultraviolence reminded me most of Burroughs's Naked Lunch, but the disorientation induced by Shipley's clusterfuck phrasings doesn't help it escape from its over-reliance on cyberpunk cliches that dominate a lot of the conventionally narrative aspects of the novel, and this failure to escape those cliches was one of the central disappointments in my reading of Dreams of Amputation.

There are sharp tensions between the novel's desire to expound on its philosophical underpinnings, to shock and disorient, and to be, well, a novel, and I don't think Dreams of Amputation succeeds at balancing the tension of this complex scaffolding. Sometimes, when Shipley gets descriptive, the styles really gel. The environment is littered with disposed and rotting corpses, thoughtscapes are composed of body parts and pathologies; the world of Dreams of Amputation is a charnel house and a festering sewer interconnected with burnt wires. But when Shipley gets to the straight fictional and narrative passages, the voice is lacking any style.

I think I understand why Shipley decided to use the archetype of detective for his central protagonist Nolan. Detectives have a central role in a lot of philosophically-minded literary fiction. I'm thinking particularly of Eco's Name of the Rose and Bolano's Woes of the True Policeman/2666. However, Shipley doesn't do enough to distinguish Nolan, and so what we have is a character that is at best a lens into the world, and barely a thoughtful member of it, and at worse a technonoir cliche that isn't successfully twisted on its head like so many other things in this novel.

Another cliche that Dreams of Amputation fails to escape from—this time in domain of transgressive literature—is a staggeringly lopsided misogynistic streak in depictions of violence. Some of the shining examples of ultraviolence in this novel, like the anecdote about the paramilitary squad that plays an brilliantly wretched prank against a father and son—are going to stick with me for their blackly hilarious execution and their functional successes at world-building and conceptual communication. But often, this was not the case, and frequently, it seems that women were being tortured and violated almost out of convenience. Call me an equal opportunity pervert, but I want more severed penises, and this is the second such transgressive novel I've read in recent memory (and publication) where non-cis-het-male perspectives are practically nonexistent; and when you've read enough violence-for-its-own-sake, it ceases to shock and only starts to bore and disappoint when the bias is this apparent, especially with no substance to back it up.

In the end, this is an impressive undertaking for all its weaknesses, but Dreams of Amputation is something I can only recommend with a litany of caveats. I'll definitely be reading Gary Shipley in the future, whether in the domain of fiction or philosophical inquiry. At least now I know what I'm up against.

[Jack Tillett · Rating 4 out of 5]

We need to take iPads away from the babies. Immediately.

This is an assault on the senses and probably one of the least accessible books I have ever read. It is a horrid and disgusting hellscape that somehow feels too close to reality. It is a sickeningly beautiful book, that takes a minute to find its footing, but once it did, I couldn’t put it down. I love nasty gross cyberpunk with hints of disjointed and disingenuous humor and social commentary. I wish there were more books like this, but with that said, I will probably never read this book again. I don’t recommend it to anyone, but good luck if you find yourself reading it.

[Logan Sodo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to give this a 4, because I really did enjoy it. There were some very cool concepts that I loved. There was also some really cool metaphors with beautifully gory descriptions to go with it. This being said, I liked the book. However what kept it from being 4 stars for me was this. Aside from those few moments I really sat back and had a WTF moment of appreciation. The rest I found to be quite lackluster, there's only so many ways that you can try and poetically say fuck society.

[Birds Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is written like a dream (nightmare), flashing from one thing to the next with no sense of coherency, everything just felt like some orgiastic murder party. There were a few consistent narratives, and a few things to decipher as the book goes on, but overall it felt more like it was building a world and shapes within it. More of a prophecy I suppose.

Definitely challenged me, in the good way.

[Bonercop97]

disjointed, out of sync, hard to follow and exactly as intended, the text mirroring the disintegration and reconstitution of its component characters. stylistically enjoyable and engaging, and maybe only so. i have the sense that something is going on out of sight, knitting together it’s frankenstein narrative

[Judy Jo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I may be an idiot for not getting it but honestly it seemed like perversion for perversions sake at times. At other times it was just unnecessarily confusing. I think it may be a good book just not for me.

[Jack Alexander Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phenomenally evocative prose obscured by lurid pointless sexual violence (but that's the point!) and a bare bones, conventional pulp plot.

Starts off really strong, and lost me as the plot took over toward the latter half of the book.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Making my way through this solely during breakfast time over the course of like a month was a choice (especially that part about misusing a toothless rat!) but it's one I would probably make again as it only heightened the experience of reading such a nasty, disjointed narrative.

[Cara Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Uhm. Okay.

[Dog Blood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pleasantly weird