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Dryco
Ambient
Set in a decaying and violent twenty-first-century New York, Ambient tells the story of O'Malley, a very special bodyguard for an outrageously ruthless CEO named Dryden, and of his attempts to woo Dryden's personal femme fatale, Avalon. But what begins as a simple case of unrequited love quickly turns into a complicated deathtrap involving corporate intrigue, murderous family rivalries, and perverse subcultures.
259 pages, Paperback
First published March 28, 1987
26 people are currently reading
1023 people want to read
About the author
Jack Womack
37 books144 followers"Womack's fiction may be determinedly non-cyber, but, with its commitment to using SF as a vehicle for social critique, it definitely has a punky edge. William Gibson once said that he thought he was more interested in basic economics and politics than the average blue sky SF writer. That counts double for Womack, whose fiction is packed with grimly amusing social satire and powerful little allegories exploring urban breakdown, class war and racial tensions".
--Jim McClellan (from an interview with Jack Womack, 1995).
--Jim McClellan (from an interview with Jack Womack, 1995).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
July 25, 2011
This book is a mixed bag. It's the first book (of six, so far) set in Womack's acclaimed Ambient New York setting. It's also Womack's first novel. Published in 1987, it appeared at the tail end of the Cyberpunk movement, and it shares a lot with that subgenre. Not so much of the cyber-, but quite a bit of the punk (overpopulated, dystopian, corporation dominated society, etc). The setting is very intriguing. Womack's over the top run down New York is a character unto itself. The actual characters not nearly as interesting, although they aren't horribly done. The plot of the book, sadly, isn't all that compelling - this is by far the books biggest weakness. On the other hand, the biggest strength of the book is its prose - particularly the dialog. Womack's character's speak in a dialect that is a joy to read (two dialects, actually. One for the general populace, and another used by the Ambients - deformed outcasts). So even though the story didn't pull me along, I still enjoyed reading the book just for the joy of hearing the dialog in my head. Over all, the pluses and minuses balance out to a 3/5. I anticipate that his later novels will be significantly better as Womack hones his craft.
July 20, 2022
Sorprende la escasa popularidad de esta novela, teniendo en cuenta su alta calidad literaria y una estética singular. Encontré una referencia en “Las mejores novelas de ciencia ficción del siglo XX", editado por “Factoría de ideas", y poco más.
Como digo, uno de sus puntos fuertes es su estética urbana y violenta, formada a partir de un lenguaje sinuoso lleno de neologismos y préstamos, que bebe mucho de Joyce, de Burgess, o, por poner un ejemplo más actual, de Junot Díaz y su genial “La maravillosa vida breve de Óscar Wao". Las imágenes representadas, llevadas siempre al extremo, con exageración, desfiguran la realidad y la vuelven una caricatura grotesca. El conjunto refleja un mundo histriónico, donde la ideología liberal ha triunfado plenamente, sin separación de poderes y con el poder en mano de los millonarios. Una pesadilla deshumanizadora en la que lo corriente son las agresiones, las violaciones, la supervivencia.
En este marco, y con Nueva York como escenario, se desarrolla una historia magnética mil veces contada, pero muy efectiva, que puede resumirse así: “chica y chico problemáticos y enamorados tienen una única salida, huir arrasando con todo". Una variante del “amor prohibido" de “Romeo y Julieta", que se ve potenciada gracias al entorno en que se mueve.
En definitiva, una maravilla de principio a fin.
Como digo, uno de sus puntos fuertes es su estética urbana y violenta, formada a partir de un lenguaje sinuoso lleno de neologismos y préstamos, que bebe mucho de Joyce, de Burgess, o, por poner un ejemplo más actual, de Junot Díaz y su genial “La maravillosa vida breve de Óscar Wao". Las imágenes representadas, llevadas siempre al extremo, con exageración, desfiguran la realidad y la vuelven una caricatura grotesca. El conjunto refleja un mundo histriónico, donde la ideología liberal ha triunfado plenamente, sin separación de poderes y con el poder en mano de los millonarios. Una pesadilla deshumanizadora en la que lo corriente son las agresiones, las violaciones, la supervivencia.
En este marco, y con Nueva York como escenario, se desarrolla una historia magnética mil veces contada, pero muy efectiva, que puede resumirse así: “chica y chico problemáticos y enamorados tienen una única salida, huir arrasando con todo". Una variante del “amor prohibido" de “Romeo y Julieta", que se ve potenciada gracias al entorno en que se mueve.
En definitiva, una maravilla de principio a fin.
September 3, 2018
Definitely had it’s own vernacular, sort of in the vein of Trainspotting, it took a bit of time to get the gist of the language. Outlandish and crazy concepts mixed into a dystopian society set in the future. How many times can someone be double-crossed and how depraved has society become. I’ll certainly carry on with the Dryco novels, but could absolutely understand why someone would quit after starting this one too. Mixed emotions.
September 5, 2017
This thirty-year-old debut novel has been sitting on my shelf unread for probably about twenty years -- I think I picked it up right after enjoying Womack's post-Soviet book Let's Put the Future Behind Us. At the time, I hadn't noticed the tagline across the bottom that proclaims this "An American Clockwork Orange" -- which is a pretty hefty expectation to set. I suppose it more or meets the superficial criteria for the tagline, which is to say that it's set in an ultraviolent dystopian future in which everyone speaks in a heavily stylized slang.
The titular ambients are basically a subclass of genetically deformed victims of a nuclear plant leak, one of whom is a bodyguard in New York for one of the wealthiest men on the planet. That man is the scion of the founder of Dryco, a conglomerate that basically controls what little government is left in America, and by extension must have a controlling interest of the world economy. The founder lives in seclusion in Westchester County and might be going slowly mad, and the bodyguard is ordered to kill him. This seems like the perfect scheme for him to elope with his boss's mistress, an ambient who is particularly proficient in the Rollerball-style death matches by which Dryco symbolically engulfs punier corporations. Basically, stripping away all the stylistic flash, it's a classic plot of two people in service to another, but in love with each other.
The problem is that it's both kind of boring and the world it depicts doesn't really make much sense. It's boring in that the plot takes forever to set up and start moving, which is only amplified by the stylized language, since it takes a while to parse and get used to the rhythm of it. Which then makes getting immersed in the world that much harder, and opens the doors to questioning it. For example, the NYC of the book is crumbling and broken into zones with various militias and prone to just complete anarchy. In such a place, anyone with any sense and the means to do so would wall themselves up in a fortress. Instead, the heir to the planet's largest fortune is chauffeured through this chaos by a driver of dubious reliability, with a lone bodyguard. Another minor example is that in this world where the economy has effectively collapsed, somehow people still subscribe to cable television with 19 channels, including sports and reruns of Dobie Gillis.
There's just too much that doesn't make sense, and all the flashy violence and language can't compensate. The author wrote a later book called "Random Acts of Senseless Violence" that is chronologically earlier in the same setting, and might actually be better, as it details the city's collapse into anarchy. Try that one first, and if you enjoy it, then give this a whirl.
The titular ambients are basically a subclass of genetically deformed victims of a nuclear plant leak, one of whom is a bodyguard in New York for one of the wealthiest men on the planet. That man is the scion of the founder of Dryco, a conglomerate that basically controls what little government is left in America, and by extension must have a controlling interest of the world economy. The founder lives in seclusion in Westchester County and might be going slowly mad, and the bodyguard is ordered to kill him. This seems like the perfect scheme for him to elope with his boss's mistress, an ambient who is particularly proficient in the Rollerball-style death matches by which Dryco symbolically engulfs punier corporations. Basically, stripping away all the stylistic flash, it's a classic plot of two people in service to another, but in love with each other.
The problem is that it's both kind of boring and the world it depicts doesn't really make much sense. It's boring in that the plot takes forever to set up and start moving, which is only amplified by the stylized language, since it takes a while to parse and get used to the rhythm of it. Which then makes getting immersed in the world that much harder, and opens the doors to questioning it. For example, the NYC of the book is crumbling and broken into zones with various militias and prone to just complete anarchy. In such a place, anyone with any sense and the means to do so would wall themselves up in a fortress. Instead, the heir to the planet's largest fortune is chauffeured through this chaos by a driver of dubious reliability, with a lone bodyguard. Another minor example is that in this world where the economy has effectively collapsed, somehow people still subscribe to cable television with 19 channels, including sports and reruns of Dobie Gillis.
There's just too much that doesn't make sense, and all the flashy violence and language can't compensate. The author wrote a later book called "Random Acts of Senseless Violence" that is chronologically earlier in the same setting, and might actually be better, as it details the city's collapse into anarchy. Try that one first, and if you enjoy it, then give this a whirl.
July 27, 2014
-Entretenido mosaico de estereotipos.-
Género. Ciencia-Ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. En el Manhattan del siglo XXI Seamus O´Malley es el guardaespaldas del señor Dryden, el hombre al frente de la multinacional Dryco. Pero en realidad la corporación pertenece a su padre y Dryden planea un movimiento hostil para asegurar que se quedará con la sociedad, para lo que cuenta con la colaboración de su guardaespaldas y de su lala proxy, Avalon, de la que O´Malley está perdidamente enamorado.
¿Quiere saber más de este equipo, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Ciencia-Ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. En el Manhattan del siglo XXI Seamus O´Malley es el guardaespaldas del señor Dryden, el hombre al frente de la multinacional Dryco. Pero en realidad la corporación pertenece a su padre y Dryden planea un movimiento hostil para asegurar que se quedará con la sociedad, para lo que cuenta con la colaboración de su guardaespaldas y de su lala proxy, Avalon, de la que O´Malley está perdidamente enamorado.
¿Quiere saber más de este equipo, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
July 3, 2008
Ambient is a ragged love story set in a corporate dystopia of the future. It's a cross between "Escape from New York" and "The Space Merchants". The language used, especially with the more revolutionary subculture, is vivid, expressive, and entirely original. Additionally, the dialogue and narrative are heavy with delicious irony. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, this book is a must-read for its language, its dialogue, and its ironic, bleak-humored look at a dystopic corporate future.
April 6, 2021
I would have enjoyed this so much more as a Paul Veerhoeven film .
I love a (fictional) dystopian future , but this one had barely any redeeming qualities , save some interesting subcultural languages and a neutral stance on gay relationships. The extreme , graphic , cartoonish violence was just too unpleasant and mean-spirited to have directly funneled into my brain - I had this issue with American Psycho, as well (although I actually enjoyed that book) , in spite of the film adaptation being a favorite of mine .
My theory with regards to American Psycho was that the difference between watching film violence versus reading graphically described violence is that, in the instance of the former, you are witnessing an approximation of pain and gore that had multiple parties involved in its coming to fruition , and is therefore made a subjective spectacle that may or may not repulse ; there is an element of catharsis , as well , and, for the varying degrees of squeamish a viewer feels , they can always avert their eyes and cover their ears . You can’t do this when you read ! Your eyes have to process and comprehend every detail (unless you decide to skim , but I don't do that), and your brain immediately processes this with your own personal version of gruesome. This theory is flawed , though - there are plenty of violent books that I love and have read multiple times. Les Chants de Maldoror is one of my favorite books ,for instance, and it’s full of brutality and hideousness . The same goes for Geek Love, A Clockwork Orange, etc etc, but perhaps it’s a matter of poetics and intent . I don’t believe Jack Womack is a mean guy , and I know there’s a sense of humor and some cultural commentary (although I couldn’t figure out what it's trying to say) behind all of it, but the novel's final manifestation is just cruel and ugly . Which is fine ! We shouldn’t want to live in this world ! But geez louise , at least Gibson and Dick and Ballard and Tepper and Delaney and Butler etc etc etc give us pockets of lovingly rendered humanity and tiny oases of natural beauty and philosophy, even when writing at their most pessimistic . Also , I just didn’t think the deification of Elvis was funny , especially not in cultural cohabitation with socially acceptable female -exclusive pedophilia. Sorry, Jack!
I have the sequel , and maybe it’s better . I paid for it , so I’ll read it , I guess . We’ll see. Anyway , a disappointing read, considering Womack is a beloved of Gibson’s.
I love a (fictional) dystopian future , but this one had barely any redeeming qualities , save some interesting subcultural languages and a neutral stance on gay relationships. The extreme , graphic , cartoonish violence was just too unpleasant and mean-spirited to have directly funneled into my brain - I had this issue with American Psycho, as well (although I actually enjoyed that book) , in spite of the film adaptation being a favorite of mine .
My theory with regards to American Psycho was that the difference between watching film violence versus reading graphically described violence is that, in the instance of the former, you are witnessing an approximation of pain and gore that had multiple parties involved in its coming to fruition , and is therefore made a subjective spectacle that may or may not repulse ; there is an element of catharsis , as well , and, for the varying degrees of squeamish a viewer feels , they can always avert their eyes and cover their ears . You can’t do this when you read ! Your eyes have to process and comprehend every detail (unless you decide to skim , but I don't do that), and your brain immediately processes this with your own personal version of gruesome. This theory is flawed , though - there are plenty of violent books that I love and have read multiple times. Les Chants de Maldoror is one of my favorite books ,for instance, and it’s full of brutality and hideousness . The same goes for Geek Love, A Clockwork Orange, etc etc, but perhaps it’s a matter of poetics and intent . I don’t believe Jack Womack is a mean guy , and I know there’s a sense of humor and some cultural commentary (although I couldn’t figure out what it's trying to say) behind all of it, but the novel's final manifestation is just cruel and ugly . Which is fine ! We shouldn’t want to live in this world ! But geez louise , at least Gibson and Dick and Ballard and Tepper and Delaney and Butler etc etc etc give us pockets of lovingly rendered humanity and tiny oases of natural beauty and philosophy, even when writing at their most pessimistic . Also , I just didn’t think the deification of Elvis was funny , especially not in cultural cohabitation with socially acceptable female -exclusive pedophilia. Sorry, Jack!
I have the sequel , and maybe it’s better . I paid for it , so I’ll read it , I guess . We’ll see. Anyway , a disappointing read, considering Womack is a beloved of Gibson’s.
April 28, 2013
"Ambient" is a dystopian-noir novel set in the 21st century where Elvis is worshipped and New York/America has become a Hobbesian hell and a libertarian dreamland. Owners own and rule and kill, Ambients are maimed and deformed (from a chemical/nuclear/biological experiment) and the rest of humanity are just surface irritants to the owners (kind of like now...).
If you lived through the Reagan years when this written, then it is easy to follow the extrapolations Womack has used to create this novel. The Moral Majority, the SALT meetings and mutually assured destruction , punk attitudes and fashion, and above all the hypocrisy/narcissism of the Me Decade are used to see what would happen if the amp went to 11 on all that insanity.
But what sets it above the usual hell/handbasket dystopian novels is the Ambients' lingo. Womack has quite the poets ear for the vernacular that seems to have sprouted beautifully malformed from Shakespeare - like Caliban. While not as powerful as Riddley Walker I would recommend "Ambient" to fans of that book.
If you lived through the Reagan years when this written, then it is easy to follow the extrapolations Womack has used to create this novel. The Moral Majority, the SALT meetings and mutually assured destruction , punk attitudes and fashion, and above all the hypocrisy/narcissism of the Me Decade are used to see what would happen if the amp went to 11 on all that insanity.
But what sets it above the usual hell/handbasket dystopian novels is the Ambients' lingo. Womack has quite the poets ear for the vernacular that seems to have sprouted beautifully malformed from Shakespeare - like Caliban. While not as powerful as Riddley Walker I would recommend "Ambient" to fans of that book.
May 5, 2020
So I gave this book my fourth read through. I still love it and recommend it.
I do think that you have to view O'Malley as an unreliable narrator. The book is told through his eyes, and his perspective is definitely colored. So much of what makes the book is his observations. I was surprised this reread at just how basic the plot was, and also how much is packed into the last chapter, like a sweet nuget of exposition at the center of a candy.
I'm resolved to read the rest of the series. I'm just glad the future we live in is not the one of Ambient.
I do think that you have to view O'Malley as an unreliable narrator. The book is told through his eyes, and his perspective is definitely colored. So much of what makes the book is his observations. I was surprised this reread at just how basic the plot was, and also how much is packed into the last chapter, like a sweet nuget of exposition at the center of a candy.
I'm resolved to read the rest of the series. I'm just glad the future we live in is not the one of Ambient.
October 27, 2020
I was never a great fan of cyber punk, a genre with which this book shares many similarities. I am also not a fan of books where characters speak in created dialects that are not always easy to follow. Having said that I enjoyed parts of this book and empathised with the bodyguard/assassin O’Malley. I understand that this is the first in a series set in this environment, and overall I think I am prepared to risk book 2.
October 12, 2025
“Ambient” was an amazing read. It has everything going for it as a dystopian science fiction novel. Womack created an incredibly dark not-so-distant future world and somehow found a way to balance the evilness with humor. For a book published in 1987, it has extremely accurate foresight into our current existence.
Can’t recommend this one enough! Almost a five star book.
Can’t recommend this one enough! Almost a five star book.
May 10, 2015
This was a really brilliant piece of science fiction, or maybe cyberpunk, possibly dystopian fiction? Or maybe just, plain, excellently written fiction. Choose your flavour.
We follow O'Malley, our fairly content, fairly well adjusted (by the standards of his day), main character as he goes about his day, he is the bodyguard for a top ranking corporation executive, one of a powerful family who, basically can do whatever they like. O'Malley is grateful for his job, he does not know where or who he would be otherwise in this world where people can have anything done to them with no repercussions, this violently lawless society where anything goes - for some people, and nothing is given for others.
The only thing that O'Malley is dissatisfied about, the only thing he really craves is Avalon, his boss's concubine? Sex slave? or similar. In order to get Avalon he accepts an insane offer from his boss, who is thinking along lines of patricide.
This story is so well written it is virtually timeless, the clever use of invented slang (as was done in Clockwork orange) means that the language does not date it. The society is so outrageously unlike our own that the reader is given no option of dating events based on anything they know. It is an incredibly addictive read.
I would caution people who do not deal well with violence that it is not for them. I would also say that if you HAVE to know the meaning of each word you read, it might drive you insane because the slang and concepts are ones you have to learn by context, as you read. I loved this, but I know some people did not deal in Clockwork orange, there is even more here.
Apparently, one of a series, but you would never know it. This book forms a perfect novel in its own right, reading it you are never even aware that it is a # in a series, you have to log on to goodreads and read up on other Womack books to find out. I will definitely be seeking out more of them now.
Also, it is not a fast read; it took me several days to finish it, a long time for me. Because of the writing style you have to immerse yourself in it for periods of time to get the hang of events. It is so very, very worth doing so though....
Any lover of any of the genera I mentioned, put it on your to read list straightaway!
We follow O'Malley, our fairly content, fairly well adjusted (by the standards of his day), main character as he goes about his day, he is the bodyguard for a top ranking corporation executive, one of a powerful family who, basically can do whatever they like. O'Malley is grateful for his job, he does not know where or who he would be otherwise in this world where people can have anything done to them with no repercussions, this violently lawless society where anything goes - for some people, and nothing is given for others.
The only thing that O'Malley is dissatisfied about, the only thing he really craves is Avalon, his boss's concubine? Sex slave? or similar. In order to get Avalon he accepts an insane offer from his boss, who is thinking along lines of patricide.
This story is so well written it is virtually timeless, the clever use of invented slang (as was done in Clockwork orange) means that the language does not date it. The society is so outrageously unlike our own that the reader is given no option of dating events based on anything they know. It is an incredibly addictive read.
I would caution people who do not deal well with violence that it is not for them. I would also say that if you HAVE to know the meaning of each word you read, it might drive you insane because the slang and concepts are ones you have to learn by context, as you read. I loved this, but I know some people did not deal in Clockwork orange, there is even more here.
Apparently, one of a series, but you would never know it. This book forms a perfect novel in its own right, reading it you are never even aware that it is a # in a series, you have to log on to goodreads and read up on other Womack books to find out. I will definitely be seeking out more of them now.
Also, it is not a fast read; it took me several days to finish it, a long time for me. Because of the writing style you have to immerse yourself in it for periods of time to get the hang of events. It is so very, very worth doing so though....
Any lover of any of the genera I mentioned, put it on your to read list straightaway!
November 30, 2017
This is one of the best books that I've read this year. Wildly funny and eerily prescient, the book was published in 1987 and is one of Womack's Dryco series. Basic background info includes: Dryco is the uber company that is more in control than any other entity of everything that matters; its leader is "the Old Man"; Elvis has left the planet, is considered a God by many and is referred to as "E"; most people are considered to be surplus folks who can be killed off with impunity, and the military is the only real force maintaining the current system.
If the government of the US being run by businesses who are allegedly in control of those very same too- big-to-fail businesses is your idea of dystopic reality, this book should be right up your alley.
Extremely well written, I had to go back numerous times to just reread some passages out loud that just cracked me up. I will close with one example of same: "The president's Food Commission reported that hunger in America had been eliminated among those who hadn't starved. Dryco had done its part in the past to accomplish this goal. Parcels of supplies had been airlifted to starving farm communities in Indiana at the Old Man's request nine months earlier. That the supplies consisted of surplus diet pills, laxatives, and pictures of E was noticed before takeoff. Not even the Old Man's foes claimed that the huge boxes were deliberately dropped into the midst of the crowds; they were."
If the government of the US being run by businesses who are allegedly in control of those very same too- big-to-fail businesses is your idea of dystopic reality, this book should be right up your alley.
Extremely well written, I had to go back numerous times to just reread some passages out loud that just cracked me up. I will close with one example of same: "The president's Food Commission reported that hunger in America had been eliminated among those who hadn't starved. Dryco had done its part in the past to accomplish this goal. Parcels of supplies had been airlifted to starving farm communities in Indiana at the Old Man's request nine months earlier. That the supplies consisted of surplus diet pills, laxatives, and pictures of E was noticed before takeoff. Not even the Old Man's foes claimed that the huge boxes were deliberately dropped into the midst of the crowds; they were."
March 30, 2020
This one didn't work for me at all, and I abandoned at about 30 percent. It struck me as a tiresome example of a book based around gimmicky literary technique, with little or no concern for the content. It's also badly dated and horribly derivative.
So far as I read, this post cyberpunk thriller presents a farcical vision of a future Manhattan which is everything dystopian, all of the time. Think Blade Runner, Judge Dredd, RoboCop, Mad Max and Escape from New York all mashed together in a blender. The marketing spiel referenced A Clockwork Orange, but the only similarity I could see was in the Gutterspeak - a concept deeply and better mined by others long before Ambient came out.
And unlike its very obvious influences, Ambient is neither original nor believable nor insightful nor funny nor sophisticated, so it doesn't work as satire or as a thriller or as political commentary.
I can't believe this was published in 1991. Coming at the tail end of the Cyberpunk craze, it was badly dated at the time. Today, it feels positively prehistoric.
So far as I read, this post cyberpunk thriller presents a farcical vision of a future Manhattan which is everything dystopian, all of the time. Think Blade Runner, Judge Dredd, RoboCop, Mad Max and Escape from New York all mashed together in a blender. The marketing spiel referenced A Clockwork Orange, but the only similarity I could see was in the Gutterspeak - a concept deeply and better mined by others long before Ambient came out.
And unlike its very obvious influences, Ambient is neither original nor believable nor insightful nor funny nor sophisticated, so it doesn't work as satire or as a thriller or as political commentary.
I can't believe this was published in 1991. Coming at the tail end of the Cyberpunk craze, it was badly dated at the time. Today, it feels positively prehistoric.
July 29, 2020
Jack Womack's debut is a raucous and vividly realized piece of literary sci-fi/speculative fiction from the late 80s whose grotesque, bleak vision of a near-future post-collapse NYC is equal parts Akira, Mad Max, and Clockwork Orange. This withering skewering of Reaganite American domestic and foreign policy remains relevant today, and makes for a brisk and entertaining read, with an unpretentious and straightforward linear on-the-run narrative that efficiently paints a panoramic picture of this depraved new world populated by homicidal capitalists, sewer freak gangs, and Elvis worshipers.
November 15, 2012
There's a lot to like in this book. However, it's a rather nasty vision of the future and one where I was glad to leave when the book was finished.
July 30, 2016
Stopped reading on page 25
December 26, 2021
I picked this one up because I loved the cover, a trashy 80s version of the ‘near future’ with Judge Dredd / Warhammer 40K aesthetics, and because the story sounded interesting. I do not regret the purchase and while ‘Ambient’ was not a mind-blowingly impressive book, I still liked it enough to buy copies of three further books in the series when I finished the story.
Published in the late 80s as a direct response to the Reagan era, ‘Ambient’ is grim liberal pessimism writ large: the embrace of self-interest and an increasingly bloodthirsty, xenophobic and pro-military American populace have responded badly to the disasters of climate change and financial collapse, as well as the Cold War never ending, and now New York City is a gang-ravaged wasteland, occupied by the US Army, which loses thousands of soldiers a month in the ongoing battle for control of Brooklyn. Also, Elvis is worshipped as a God in this future.
But sometimes there’s a man who, well, he’s the right man for his time, and for ‘Ambient’ that man is the imposing Seamus O’Malley, professional bodyguard with Velcro’d on ears (not a joke). Seamus’ employer is Dryden, the unstable and paranoid son of a high-powered sinister CEO, and the father/son relationship is a dangerous web of resentment, sexual jealousy and thwarted ambition. Unfortunately Seamus is pulled into this power struggle when Dryden decides to kill his father and take the throne for himself. Well, couldn’t Seamus get another job? No, the fool is in love with his boss’ girlfriend and so he’s got to stick around!
As with a lot of stuff of its era, there are chilling moments where you see the author correctly predict that selfish 80s attitudes will have a hugely negative impact on later society. You’ll also read huge swings-and-misses for exactly how that negative impact will manifest, along with a few predictions that are depressingly accurate. But even in its cartoonish, not exactly prescient gloom, it’s kind of fun reading Womack’s dark vision of the future.
The cut-throat corporate culture of the 80s is lampooned with sledgehammer subtlety as hostile takeover attempts are resolved by gladiatorial combat to the death, and unaccountable bosses happily cut down employees or members of the public for fun. It kind of rules, and Womack is making salient (if, again, unsubtle, I can’t stress that enough) points about the Greed is Good attitude taken to its logical conclusion. At the same time, some of the Wild Future here feels less like attempted satire and more just Womack getting goofy and having fun – for example, the Elvis worship detail leads to some pretty funny stuff when we see a service in the church of the Divine E, but what is this meant to lampoon? Older baby boomers’ worship of nostalgic 50s culture slowly becoming a new reactionary religion? I guess that could be kind of funny. But you get the impression that Womack maybe just really likes Elvis. I dunno, I look forward to reading ‘Elvissey’ which I think goes into this part of the universe in a bit more detail.
Seamus lives with his sister Enid, an Ambient. The Ambients seem to be a subculture of mutants created by widespread birth defects following an Event taking place at a nuclear power plant. They’re all from Long Island, it seems, so I imagined all of them talking like Jon Gabrus. The Ambients are all heavily into body modification and drone metal (that’s dope). They also speak in faux-Shakespearean doggerel and it’s here that Womack’s prose really gets creative and different from the usual cyberpunk patter, but it’s also kind of impenetrable and annoying. It feels like the Ambients were meant to be the beating heart of this book, but usually whenever they showed up I quickly got bored and hoped to go back to Seamus being the centre of the narrative.
Womack has a style that took me a while to get used to. Some of the writing lacks finesse, but there are parts where he perfectly nails the tone he seems to be going for: trashy, violent cyber-noir, equal parts Howard Hawks, Commando and Blade Runner. It’s the kind of worldbuilding where people are having an interesting conversation and then because they drive past a river there’s a multi-paragraph digression where the narrator tells us about the catastrophic flooding of New York and how that affected the city back a few years ago. Then we’re supposed to go back to the original conversation as if nothing happened. But at least most of the exposition is in our narrator’s head, not two characters who should know this shit talking to each other about stuff that’s not news to them. I like the clumsy near-future slang and as someone who is playing the Cyberpunk 2077 videogame a lot at the moment, it definitely feels cut from the same cloth.
On the front cover, there’s a pull quote from Godfather of Cyberpunk, William Gibson, which asserts (I’m paraphrasing) that the world Womack’s created would be way too intense for Gibson’s pussy ‘Neuromancer’ characters (!!). The book jacket also asserts (along with comparisons to Ballard and ‘A Clockwork Orange’) that Womack has “the wit of Raymond Chandler” and as a dyed in the wool Chandler Stan I have to say how dare you, sir, you are no Raymond Chandler, you don’t have a tenth of the lyrical beauty of his prose, etc. You can feel the influence though and sometimes that’s enough for a book like this. Can’t say anything on the Ballard comparison as I haven’t read him.
As with a lot of stuff that has by now become little more than ammo in the culture war, I think in around 2016-2017 the prominence of sexual assault and ‘sexual threat’ here would have made me uncomfortable and fretful about the morality of showing something so upsetting just to establish that the world of the book is grim and awful, and I would have got really self righteous about how men who haven't put much thought into it just use rape as a plot device. Now I’m sort of burned out on the outrage around portrayals of that stuff and I think well, yeah man, assaults would probably be extremely widespread and not hidden in a societal collapse like this. But if you want to avoid reading about that stuff, completely reasonable for you to skip this one.
6.5/10
Published in the late 80s as a direct response to the Reagan era, ‘Ambient’ is grim liberal pessimism writ large: the embrace of self-interest and an increasingly bloodthirsty, xenophobic and pro-military American populace have responded badly to the disasters of climate change and financial collapse, as well as the Cold War never ending, and now New York City is a gang-ravaged wasteland, occupied by the US Army, which loses thousands of soldiers a month in the ongoing battle for control of Brooklyn. Also, Elvis is worshipped as a God in this future.
But sometimes there’s a man who, well, he’s the right man for his time, and for ‘Ambient’ that man is the imposing Seamus O’Malley, professional bodyguard with Velcro’d on ears (not a joke). Seamus’ employer is Dryden, the unstable and paranoid son of a high-powered sinister CEO, and the father/son relationship is a dangerous web of resentment, sexual jealousy and thwarted ambition. Unfortunately Seamus is pulled into this power struggle when Dryden decides to kill his father and take the throne for himself. Well, couldn’t Seamus get another job? No, the fool is in love with his boss’ girlfriend and so he’s got to stick around!
As with a lot of stuff of its era, there are chilling moments where you see the author correctly predict that selfish 80s attitudes will have a hugely negative impact on later society. You’ll also read huge swings-and-misses for exactly how that negative impact will manifest, along with a few predictions that are depressingly accurate. But even in its cartoonish, not exactly prescient gloom, it’s kind of fun reading Womack’s dark vision of the future.
The cut-throat corporate culture of the 80s is lampooned with sledgehammer subtlety as hostile takeover attempts are resolved by gladiatorial combat to the death, and unaccountable bosses happily cut down employees or members of the public for fun. It kind of rules, and Womack is making salient (if, again, unsubtle, I can’t stress that enough) points about the Greed is Good attitude taken to its logical conclusion. At the same time, some of the Wild Future here feels less like attempted satire and more just Womack getting goofy and having fun – for example, the Elvis worship detail leads to some pretty funny stuff when we see a service in the church of the Divine E, but what is this meant to lampoon? Older baby boomers’ worship of nostalgic 50s culture slowly becoming a new reactionary religion? I guess that could be kind of funny. But you get the impression that Womack maybe just really likes Elvis. I dunno, I look forward to reading ‘Elvissey’ which I think goes into this part of the universe in a bit more detail.
Seamus lives with his sister Enid, an Ambient. The Ambients seem to be a subculture of mutants created by widespread birth defects following an Event taking place at a nuclear power plant. They’re all from Long Island, it seems, so I imagined all of them talking like Jon Gabrus. The Ambients are all heavily into body modification and drone metal (that’s dope). They also speak in faux-Shakespearean doggerel and it’s here that Womack’s prose really gets creative and different from the usual cyberpunk patter, but it’s also kind of impenetrable and annoying. It feels like the Ambients were meant to be the beating heart of this book, but usually whenever they showed up I quickly got bored and hoped to go back to Seamus being the centre of the narrative.
Womack has a style that took me a while to get used to. Some of the writing lacks finesse, but there are parts where he perfectly nails the tone he seems to be going for: trashy, violent cyber-noir, equal parts Howard Hawks, Commando and Blade Runner. It’s the kind of worldbuilding where people are having an interesting conversation and then because they drive past a river there’s a multi-paragraph digression where the narrator tells us about the catastrophic flooding of New York and how that affected the city back a few years ago. Then we’re supposed to go back to the original conversation as if nothing happened. But at least most of the exposition is in our narrator’s head, not two characters who should know this shit talking to each other about stuff that’s not news to them. I like the clumsy near-future slang and as someone who is playing the Cyberpunk 2077 videogame a lot at the moment, it definitely feels cut from the same cloth.
On the front cover, there’s a pull quote from Godfather of Cyberpunk, William Gibson, which asserts (I’m paraphrasing) that the world Womack’s created would be way too intense for Gibson’s pussy ‘Neuromancer’ characters (!!). The book jacket also asserts (along with comparisons to Ballard and ‘A Clockwork Orange’) that Womack has “the wit of Raymond Chandler” and as a dyed in the wool Chandler Stan I have to say how dare you, sir, you are no Raymond Chandler, you don’t have a tenth of the lyrical beauty of his prose, etc. You can feel the influence though and sometimes that’s enough for a book like this. Can’t say anything on the Ballard comparison as I haven’t read him.
As with a lot of stuff that has by now become little more than ammo in the culture war, I think in around 2016-2017 the prominence of sexual assault and ‘sexual threat’ here would have made me uncomfortable and fretful about the morality of showing something so upsetting just to establish that the world of the book is grim and awful, and I would have got really self righteous about how men who haven't put much thought into it just use rape as a plot device. Now I’m sort of burned out on the outrage around portrayals of that stuff and I think well, yeah man, assaults would probably be extremely widespread and not hidden in a societal collapse like this. But if you want to avoid reading about that stuff, completely reasonable for you to skip this one.
6.5/10
March 19, 2021
Mad Max but corporate and urban
The hallmark of a good dystopia is that it shows snippets of our current reality even when it has sketched out an ostensibly caricatured and gratuitously violent world. There is plenty of mind-boggling gore and barbarism in this society that has collapsed into a colossal mess of factions and sub-culture identity groups under a brutal regime of corporate colonialism. Corporations effectively run the government. The government has receded entirely from any semblance of responsibility and care leaving the people to fend for themselves. The only thing the government is willing to do is to brutally occupy the cities and serve at the command of corporations and business. America is involved in five wars overseas even as its own cities are occupied and bombed into oblivion by its own military forces. Communal sense has been eviscerated. Society is degenerate and delinquent. It's a dog-eat-dog world. Some choice quotes:
It's a cartoonishly evil world which is why the parallels with our world are all the more bone-chilling.
The hallmark of a good dystopia is that it shows snippets of our current reality even when it has sketched out an ostensibly caricatured and gratuitously violent world. There is plenty of mind-boggling gore and barbarism in this society that has collapsed into a colossal mess of factions and sub-culture identity groups under a brutal regime of corporate colonialism. Corporations effectively run the government. The government has receded entirely from any semblance of responsibility and care leaving the people to fend for themselves. The only thing the government is willing to do is to brutally occupy the cities and serve at the command of corporations and business. America is involved in five wars overseas even as its own cities are occupied and bombed into oblivion by its own military forces. Communal sense has been eviscerated. Society is degenerate and delinquent. It's a dog-eat-dog world. Some choice quotes:
The government served those who supervised the sailing of the yacht of state; the government controlled the business that controlled the government. Complex in theory, it was infallible in practice. I gather that new owners weren't much different from old ones; oldboss, newboss, as Enid put it. Live and let live was the word; so went the thought, so went the act. With useful exceptions matters ran themselves; that this did not always work to everyone's benefit aroused among the government apparatchiks no concern, brought no interpretation, produced no apology, stirred no regret.
American society, thus, had three arenas in which all could cavort: that of owners and their servants; that of boozhies, the old bourgeois; that of what the government pegged the Superfluous. The last, like owners, paid no taxes; unlike owners, they were felt to deserve no shielding from the vicissitudes of life. Unless they entered the Army (by draft or, in the case of women, by choice) the Superfluous were underemployed. Some were useful to industry; the elderly were useful in research. All did business on the unders; many got along. There was no excuse for being poor in America; it was much easier to be dead.
When I was young, people still lived in these places [public housing], but before the Ebb, a ruling came down that the state had no legal right to provide anyone's housing, for to provide housing to some was unfair to those who didn't need it. Everyone was evicted and left bare to street's equality.
It's a cartoonishly evil world which is why the parallels with our world are all the more bone-chilling.
January 5, 2026
A pretty weak three stars.
I read this because I loved Random Acts of Senseless Violence—which is an ill-fitting name for a great book, by the way—and I thought it was time to read some more of the author's stuff. I picked this one not realising it was the author's first book, but I didn't want to read about time travel or Elvis, so here we are.
This story is set in a near-future post-apocalyptic New York full of casual violence, where the corporation Dryco owns and runs the government. The setting is hard to pin down and not quite believable, I don't understand how it all works and how anyone is alive given the levels of casual violence on display at every turn. You kind of just have to go with it.
Even if it's kind of fuzzy, the setting is probably the most interesting thing about the book. The vague outline of a plot concerns one Seamus O'Malley, some kind of bodyguard type figure for the son of the owner of Dryco, and eventually it progresses towards some actual plot beats that involve assassinations and double-crossing. None of the characters is well-realised and the plot is only really interesting in the last twenty pages. So we're left to make the most of the setting, a violent world with a group of people with congenital defects from radioactive fallout, and those who mutilate themselves in solidarity, called Ambients; a post-Christian church grappling with evidence that the bible was faked, and the rise of the belief in Elvis as the true saviour; extreme inequality to the point where only a few "owners" really have any money, and it's not clear how anyone else survives; and casual assault, murder, rape, and sex work, with anyone pubescent or older seemingly fair game. It's grim, but it is often grimly funny too. It's pulpy, tongue-in-cheek.
The other aspect worth remarking upon is the use of dialects; there's a kind of "biz speak" that makes new verbs out of consolidated phrasal verbs, which I enjoyed, and the florid, almost Shakespearean speech of the Ambients, which is fun but hard going. None of it is explained, so it's a bit much to take in especially as you begin the book, but it's a great touch that adds a lot of the depth and colour to the setting.
I don't think I care to keep going with the other Dryco books now, and I wouldn't really recommend this one either unless you're obsessed with the author. You won't get a heap out of it.
I read this because I loved Random Acts of Senseless Violence—which is an ill-fitting name for a great book, by the way—and I thought it was time to read some more of the author's stuff. I picked this one not realising it was the author's first book, but I didn't want to read about time travel or Elvis, so here we are.
This story is set in a near-future post-apocalyptic New York full of casual violence, where the corporation Dryco owns and runs the government. The setting is hard to pin down and not quite believable, I don't understand how it all works and how anyone is alive given the levels of casual violence on display at every turn. You kind of just have to go with it.
Even if it's kind of fuzzy, the setting is probably the most interesting thing about the book. The vague outline of a plot concerns one Seamus O'Malley, some kind of bodyguard type figure for the son of the owner of Dryco, and eventually it progresses towards some actual plot beats that involve assassinations and double-crossing. None of the characters is well-realised and the plot is only really interesting in the last twenty pages. So we're left to make the most of the setting, a violent world with a group of people with congenital defects from radioactive fallout, and those who mutilate themselves in solidarity, called Ambients; a post-Christian church grappling with evidence that the bible was faked, and the rise of the belief in Elvis as the true saviour; extreme inequality to the point where only a few "owners" really have any money, and it's not clear how anyone else survives; and casual assault, murder, rape, and sex work, with anyone pubescent or older seemingly fair game. It's grim, but it is often grimly funny too. It's pulpy, tongue-in-cheek.
The other aspect worth remarking upon is the use of dialects; there's a kind of "biz speak" that makes new verbs out of consolidated phrasal verbs, which I enjoyed, and the florid, almost Shakespearean speech of the Ambients, which is fun but hard going. None of it is explained, so it's a bit much to take in especially as you begin the book, but it's a great touch that adds a lot of the depth and colour to the setting.
I don't think I care to keep going with the other Dryco books now, and I wouldn't really recommend this one either unless you're obsessed with the author. You won't get a heap out of it.
November 29, 2024
Mám rád pôvodný cyberpunk, lebo je špinavý a realistický, lebo je kontrakultúrny aj filozofický.
Womackov Ambient je fajn žánrovka, aj keď podľa mňa nie je správne namiešaný. Svet je v rozklade, ale takom premrštenom, nafúknutom, komixovom a násilie je samoúčelné. Tam by som asi ubral. Čo sa podarilo, sú hlavné východiská toho stavu - Západ je vo vojne s Ruskom, ktoré neokupuje Ukrajinu ale Turecko, globálne otepľovanie porobilo riadne problémy a hlavný oligarcha je taký zostarnutý Elon Musk.
Aj záver sa mi páčil, keďže sa pozrieme do tajných archívov Bieleho domu a zpoznámime sa s umelou inteligenciou, ktorá je veľmi podobná tej, ktorá sa zrodila nedávno. Tri a pol hviezdičky.
Womackov Ambient je fajn žánrovka, aj keď podľa mňa nie je správne namiešaný. Svet je v rozklade, ale takom premrštenom, nafúknutom, komixovom a násilie je samoúčelné. Tam by som asi ubral. Čo sa podarilo, sú hlavné východiská toho stavu - Západ je vo vojne s Ruskom, ktoré neokupuje Ukrajinu ale Turecko, globálne otepľovanie porobilo riadne problémy a hlavný oligarcha je taký zostarnutý Elon Musk.
Aj záver sa mi páčil, keďže sa pozrieme do tajných archívov Bieleho domu a zpoznámime sa s umelou inteligenciou, ktorá je veľmi podobná tej, ktorá sa zrodila nedávno. Tri a pol hviezdičky.
March 18, 2018
An enjoyable book. A freakish yet believable, almost post-apocalyptic world. Humans are worth nothing. Much death, raping and pillaging. Yet somehow, he manages to draw a small thread through it all.
I enjoyed the odd language he creates, which is used no more than 20% through the book I’d say. Things like:
“We kept alone. Given wood for cake and stones for bread, our way lined each morn with numps and nowls and gagtoothed pricksters all achant, bespewing larkish cries of freak-freak-freak.”
The style of the book reminds me a little of William S Burroughs.
I enjoyed the odd language he creates, which is used no more than 20% through the book I’d say. Things like:
“We kept alone. Given wood for cake and stones for bread, our way lined each morn with numps and nowls and gagtoothed pricksters all achant, bespewing larkish cries of freak-freak-freak.”
The style of the book reminds me a little of William S Burroughs.
August 22, 2017
una distopia che mescola ambientazioni tra "blade runner" e "mad max", tentazioni cyberpunk, sesso droga e rock'n'roll (la divinità più in voga -se si esclude un autista rastafariano e il culto seguito dagli "ambient"- è elvis...), il tutto tenuto insieme da un ottimo senso dell'umosrismo, spesso nero se non cinico.in sè non è affatto male, peccato che sia molto poco scorrevole perchè altrimenti le quattro stelle le avrebbe meritate tutte.
August 16, 2024
I didn't think I would like this one at first because the lime delivery and direction was jarring. In time, at page 50, the flow came and with that the humour I may have originally been missing.
What followed was a wild, silly, funny. Disturbing, noir, dystopia nightmare fantasy that I want to find more of.
What followed was a wild, silly, funny. Disturbing, noir, dystopia nightmare fantasy that I want to find more of.
September 2, 2018
This is one of those science fiction books you look for your whole life. A masterpiece. A NOVA. An A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. A THE STARS MY DESTINATION. A Science fiction book that is equally ahead of its time as it is outside of the time it’s written. Sadly overlooked...until now.
June 6, 2025
A dystopian work that you can feel the threads of Riddley Walker, A Clockwork Orange, and bit of W.S. Burroughs running through. Could be classified as cyberpunk, though it feels more punk. With, of course, some distinctly Shakespearean dialog.
December 15, 2025
Seemed like somewhat a retelling of 1984 but in a cool way. Literally can’t recommend enough if you love New York and dystopia.
At first I hated the way everyone spoke and it was rlly pissing me off but once I adjusted I found it very beautiful and almost Shakespearean
At first I hated the way everyone spoke and it was rlly pissing me off but once I adjusted I found it very beautiful and almost Shakespearean
July 16, 2018
Womackov svet sa vymkol kontrole. Jeho svet ma dráždil a rozčuľoval zároveň.
September 23, 2018
I found this a difficult read, but an interesting one as well.
February 21, 2019
4/10. Distopía cyberpunk que no me llegó a gustar.
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