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Alien Accounts
Alien Accounts, published in British paperback in 1982, was the third collection of John Sladek's brilliant and eccentric short stories. There has never been an American edition until now.
140 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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About the author
John Sladek
106 books81 followers
John Thomas Sladek
(generally published as John Sladek or John T. Sladek, as well as under the pseudonyms Thom Demijohn, Barry DuBray, Carl Truhacker and others) was an American science fiction author, known for his satirical and surreal novels.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 24, 2019
The best short story collection by one of my favourite writers.
Sladek is (in my opinion) one of the finest SF writers who ever lived, comparable to Lem, Aldiss, Ballard, Vonnegut... Actually he is even better than Vonnegut, despite the superficial similarities between certain aspects of their styles (these similarities tend to be over-stressed by critics). For one thing, Sladek's irony is darker and more technically astute, his humour more complicated, his situations much more bizarre. But comparisons are odious, we all know that; so let's just say that Sladek was a genius and an underrated one. Alien Accounts frames its component stories with Kafkaesque absurdity. If there is a common theme to all (or most) of these tales it is the utter nightmarishness of modern office and commercial life.
The collection opens with the brilliantly offbeat 'Masterson and the Clerks' and concludes with the even more brilliantly offbeat 'The Communicants'. Both are extended novelettes, dense with extraordinary logical and illogical invention, unique witticisms, wordplay, paradoxes, subplots that would fuel entire novels of other authors. They are substantially important works of science fiction, simultaneously satirizing and contributing to the genre. These masterpieces are bolstered by stories that are absurd fake forms, blank for the reader to fill in, except that they are impossible to fill in correctly. They are Kafkaesque blueprints.
The other stories in the collection are also very important. 'Scenes from the Country of the Blind' is one of the most ingenious pseudoscience debunking tales I have read. 'The Interstate' is a superb bus-centred infinite road trip with a relentlessly grotesque consumer society background... Sladek deserves to be much better known than he is. His work consistently challenged lazy thinking and simplistic tropes, and it did so in an enormously entertaining, stylish and informative manner.
Sladek is (in my opinion) one of the finest SF writers who ever lived, comparable to Lem, Aldiss, Ballard, Vonnegut... Actually he is even better than Vonnegut, despite the superficial similarities between certain aspects of their styles (these similarities tend to be over-stressed by critics). For one thing, Sladek's irony is darker and more technically astute, his humour more complicated, his situations much more bizarre. But comparisons are odious, we all know that; so let's just say that Sladek was a genius and an underrated one. Alien Accounts frames its component stories with Kafkaesque absurdity. If there is a common theme to all (or most) of these tales it is the utter nightmarishness of modern office and commercial life.
The collection opens with the brilliantly offbeat 'Masterson and the Clerks' and concludes with the even more brilliantly offbeat 'The Communicants'. Both are extended novelettes, dense with extraordinary logical and illogical invention, unique witticisms, wordplay, paradoxes, subplots that would fuel entire novels of other authors. They are substantially important works of science fiction, simultaneously satirizing and contributing to the genre. These masterpieces are bolstered by stories that are absurd fake forms, blank for the reader to fill in, except that they are impossible to fill in correctly. They are Kafkaesque blueprints.
The other stories in the collection are also very important. 'Scenes from the Country of the Blind' is one of the most ingenious pseudoscience debunking tales I have read. 'The Interstate' is a superb bus-centred infinite road trip with a relentlessly grotesque consumer society background... Sladek deserves to be much better known than he is. His work consistently challenged lazy thinking and simplistic tropes, and it did so in an enormously entertaining, stylish and informative manner.
February 14, 2018
These tales of bureaucracy gone mad are a challenging read especially as the plotlines shift and tangle and the cast of characters multiply during the descent into madness and catastrophe. However this collection has some surprising gems, most noticeably '198-, a tale of 'tomorrow'' which is which predicts contemporary computer technology and it's effects on society with eerie accuracy. It was so accurate that I had to double check the date of publication and I still find it difficult to believe the story was written around 1970!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews