The Complete Accomplice

Accomplice #1-4

by Steve Aylett

All four of Steve Aylett's "Accomplice" books in one volume, revised, with a new Preface and an intro by Michael Moorcock. Starburst Magazine has called the books "a hugely impressive example of outrageous literary wit and uncommon good sense, demonstrating once more that Aylett is the coolest writer alive today." SFX has called them "Bizarre, innovative and utterly original." Collecting the titles Only an Alligator, The Velocity Gospel, Dummyland and Karloff's Circus, THE COMPLETE ACCOMPLICE follows the simple Barny and his friends through the intertwisted power manipulations of Accomplice, a zone where hell's defected demons discover they can never match or out-do humanity when it comes to spectacular dishonesty and evasion. "Something this rapid shouldn't be so intoxicating or so dense with ideas. It's a roaring, groaning perpetual motion machine decked out as a fun fair attraction. Read it and you'll need resuscitating" - 3: AM

Genres: Fantasy, Bizarro Fiction, Science Fiction, Fiction

386 pages, Paperback

First published July 5, 2010

About the author

Steve Aylett is a satirical science fiction and weird slipstream author of books such as LINT, The Book Lovers and Slaughtermatic, and comics including Hyperthick. He is known for his colourful satire attacking the manipulations of authority. Aylett is synaesthetic. He lives in Scotland.

Reviews

[Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Welcome to Accomplice, population: deranged.

The setting for these slipstream novels is summed up efficiently enough in the third book:

Accomplice was a sun trap lidding an etheric mesh of connecting tunnels, the creepchannel. This toxic tissue formed a subterranean transit system for demons on their way to people's breakdowns.

That's as good an explanation as you're going to get, frankly.

Steve Aylett – the Bizarro Bard of Bromley – treats the English language like a roll of bubble-wrap, popping it apart in bursts of aesthetic pleasure and leaving it limp and drained. As with the first time I picked up The Naked Lunch, I spent a lot of time with Aylett wondering if I'd forgotten how to read. Since this is a reaction prompted both by great originality and by great incompetence, it takes a while to assess what you're dealing with, but I ended up convinced.

The fact I was laughing so much was the biggest clue. His writing kind of re-wires your brain: after putting one of his books down, everyone else's prose seems either bland, or unintentionally hilarious. I've already talked in punishing detail about his general technique in reviews of the individual books:

Only an Alligator
The Velocity Gospel
Dummyland
Karloff's Circus

These are definitely fated to remain a minority taste. But as the great Bingo Violaine said: ‘Consensus is reality with the crusts cut off.’

[Emory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few things are certain in life. It is generally accepted that two of these few are death and taxes. For Barny Juno not only are these things certain, everyone else around him is in some way conspiring to ensure that they happen sooner than later. It all begins with “Only an Alligator”.

“The Complete Accomplice” collects all four of Steve Aylett's “Accomplice” novels, the aforementioned “Alligator” plus “The Velocity Gospel”, “Dummyland”, and “Karloff's Circus”. These works all center on the titular town of Accomplice, a place of such unbelievable reality, even the demons below have difficulty dealing with it and its all-too human inhabitants.

For Barny Juno and his ragtag group of friends, it is home. They've never known any other place and aren't even sure there is any other place beyond its borders. That the forces of hell exist right next to them is just the status quo. No one even raised an eyebrow when a demon burst forth from below to devour the brain of the local philosopher, Bingo Violaine.

Barny's troubles begin when he is out walking his dog. Chasing the creature into the “creepchannel” (the demonic subway system) he comes across an alligator trapped in the wall. In his desire to “care for the winged and stepping animals of the earth” he frees the reptile and takes it home. Unfortunately for Barny the alligator was to be the demon king Sweeney's snack. Thus begins Sweeney's attempts to exact revenge for the theft.

That is just from the first few chapters. “The Complete Accomplice” is incredibly complex story that sees the hapless Barny dodge disaster at every turn, completely oblivious to what is happening around him. Aylett keeps several distinct but related plots going simultaneously, all in some way connected to Juno and his friends. Add to this thick story language which is incredibly rich in imagery but very dense in execution. The reader must carefully consider each sentence so as to divine the meaning and intent. The dialogue can be unwieldy, at times throwing off the reader simply through the use of a feminine pronoun in reference to a male character, or in more intense instances stringing together words that baffle and even intimidate with their seeming randomness.

In Aylett's defense, he is consistent with this and it is obvious that it is all intentional. One quickly realizes that Aylett has an incredible gift, and that one must rise to his challenge. It is all part of developing the incredibly insane world that is the city of Accomplice. Such verbiage is requisite for a setting where corruption has a tangible effect (an infestation of “floor lobsters” in the Mayor's office) and everyone relies on the sayings of Violaine to save them the trouble of thinking too much.

In short, there is a lot to digest in the book's 386 pages. It is a hard read, but well worth it if you are willing to make the effort. In the words of Bingo Violaine: “Infinity has so much structure, it has no structure.”

[D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The “Turbo GT” version of The Complete Accomplice was allegedly written in order to show J.R.R. Tolkein “what a barn looks like on the inside.” Exploding dirigibles immediately leap to mind. Then: electrolytes, pantry-goers, and the villainy of toads. This collection of four parthenogenetic novellas proves that mongrels do in fact possess the capacity to evolve beaks by means of their own dripping volition. Adages fester like the creeds of old men. There are no “discursive furies” swimming beneath the tarmac, and when technologiades destabilize and usurp the blood of alchemists, shiny guyparts ensue. As Lofton Gitt contends, “Sleepbugs fall from the eyesockets like paperweights onto a wounded rubbertop. The 4th Wall lingers in obscurity. Cracks spread further across the plaster with each seismic shift. Plaster Inspectors scrutinize the cracks, adjusting and readjusting their instruments, and deliver ominous verdicts.” All else reifies compulsory heterosexuality. Aylett has suggested that beards ought to listen to the razors that shave them. I can’t disagree. Not only in light of certain overweening, intermingling, transmutative factors, but because social questions have a right to don flesh, too.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I've never put so much effort into reading a book of so little consequence. This was a steeper climb than the Beerlight books and I didn't find it as rewarding, so I'm left with fewer stars than I had expected. I found the second two books of the set more enjoyable, although that may have just been my acclimation to the world. It's still a refreshing change from everyone else, although I'd recommend Slaughtermatic to someone wanting to dip their toes into Aylett's absurdism.

[Felix Millar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot express what a breath of fresh air this was. Completely joyous in what it is, wildly strange and ominous.
Halfway through the third one I couldn't decide if the whole thing had been a mistake, and this had been total nonsense the whole time. Very good. Completely mad. Deeply strange.

[Harry · Rating 5 out of 5]

"When I got a big deal from Orion to write four books I was as happy as a dog in a sidecar, but failed to realise that this was my time to ‘sell out’ and write some sprawling fantasy containing nothing conspicuous. Instead I wrote the four Accomplice books (now collected in one volume as THE COMPLETE ACCOMPLICE), deemed some of the strangest and most unduly interesting books ever written, an inconvenience that ended my commercial career. One editor hinted that he wanted to break every bone in my body, forcing me to point out that the hundreds of tiny cartilaginous ones in my ears would take weeks of precision work, and that by the time he’d finished the second one the first will have healed and he would have to start the whole process again. It would in effect be like painting the Forth Bridge." ~ Aylett on The Complete Accomplice

Steve Aylett is quite simply one of the most original, creative, off-the-wall artists I've ever come across. I'm hooked. I'm in my mid-to-late 30s and it's rare for me to come across something truly new and excitingthese days, but Aylett makes me feel like I'm a teenager again, experiencing that rush of stumbling across an amazing new band.

Aylett is not afraid to take risks, running roughshod over conventions of form, plot, character development. He has an uncanny ability to dip into his literary pockets and pull out rich handfuls of bizarre, smart, audacious sentences. At first glance his prose might resemble a stream of consciousness, but look closer and notice the incredible care and attention to detail he lavishes on every single sentence, jam-packed as every paragraph is with wit, visual flair and brilliant ideas. There's real depth and profundity here too, beneath the colourful comic book capers.

Aylett never relies on lazy cultural references, tired structural tricks, the same old worn tropes. He is a master of world building from the ground up. Little of the world he crafts and populates bears any resemblance to anything else you've encountered, which makes his writing feel fresh and alive. By the fourth book, you as a reader are perfectly accepting of and familiar with stuff like floor lobsters and Jonathan glasses. Accomplice sucks you in and makes you feel right at home amid the chaos.

Aylett's work is a breath of fresh air, the likes of which I haven't experienced since Reeves & Mortimer burst out of nowhere and into my childhood, getting me hooked on their surrealist, absurdist comedy which was unlike anything I'd seen before.

[Savannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m stopping at 11%. The language is startling, definitely, but it becomes weary when things happen for no reason, without explanation, and there is no plot. If I had even a thread of plot to cling to, I’d keep reading for the daring novelty of it. The first two chapters were incredible. But after alligator and demon fall away we’re left with dry office buildings and dead museums and nothing explicable happening.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't often say this but I hated this book and couldn't finish it and, again something I rarely do, I recommend you to avoid it like the plague.

[Joey Comeau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steve Aylett is one of the most interesting and unique voices writing today, but there are times when I just don't feel up to the task. This is the sort of book that could very well be someone's favourite. The sort of book that could hit someone the way Slaughtermatic and Bigot Hall originally hit me - with the sensation that books could be more exciting than you already thought.

But the complete accomplice left me cold. I don't know if I just wasn't in the mood for it, or - like I said - just not up to the task, but I didn't feel invested enough to make the effort. The lines were as clever as ever, but I couldn't find any heart, and so didn't read very far.

Please, though, understand this may well have been a failure of the reader!

[Donald Armfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of things comes in groups of four like Kit Kat bars, and that's how most watering this quartet is. I had a head start after reading the first installment of Accomplice "Only An Alligator" Then seen this gem all in one. This is a great collection I put "Dummyland" above all but a serious reading phenomenon by Steve Ayllett. A non-stop kick in the face laughter.Bizarro and utterly original at its best.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steve Aylett writes like a man who grew up in Burroughs's Interzone reading Borges and watching Marx Brothers movies. The world he imagines is dark, complex, and silly.I have read a fair amount of Aylett now and what i expect from his writing is wonderfully weird ideas and hilarious one-liners, this book delivers on both of those in a big way.

[Richard Derus]

Copy arrived