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Sensation
When Julia Hernandez leaves her husband, shoots a real estate developer, and then vanishes without a trace, she slips out of the world she knew and into the Simulacrum—a place where human history is both guided and thwarted by the conflict between a species of anarchist wasps and a collective of hyperintelligent spiders. When Julia's ex-husband Raymond spots her in a grocery store he doesn't usually patronize, he's soon drawn into an underworld of radical political gestures where Julia is the new media sensation of both this world and the Simulacrum. Told ultimately from the collective point of view of another species, this allegorical novel plays with the elements of the Simulacrum apparent in real life—media reports, business speak, blog entries, text messages, psychological-evaluation forms, and the lies lovers tell one another—and poses a fascinating idea that displaces human beings from the center of the universe and makes them simply the pawns of two warring species.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
2 people are currently reading
241 people want to read
About the author
Nick Mamatas
188 books247 followersNick Mamatas is the author of the Lovecraftian Beat road novel Move Under Ground, which was nominated for both the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild awards, the Civil War ghost story Northern Gothic, also a Stoker nominee, the suburban nighmare novel Under My Roof, and over thirty short stories and hundreds of articles (some of which were collected in 3000 Miles Per Hour in Every Direction at Once). His work has appeared in Razor, Village Voice, Spex, Clamor, In These Times, Polyphony, several Disinformation and Ben Bella Books anthologies, and the books Corpse Blossoms, Poe's Lighthouse, Before & After: Stories from New York, and Short and Sweet.
Nick's forthcoming works include the collection You Might Sleep... (November 2008) and Haunted Legends, an anthology with Ellen Datlow (Tor Books 2009).
A native New Yorker, Nick now lives in the California Bay Area.
Nick's forthcoming works include the collection You Might Sleep... (November 2008) and Haunted Legends, an anthology with Ellen Datlow (Tor Books 2009).
A native New Yorker, Nick now lives in the California Bay Area.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
June 24, 2017
You know that moment in the midst of a book when you blink, take a mental step back, and think, “What in the hell am I reading?” This happened quite early on in ‘Sensation’ and the feeling persisted. I picked it off the shelf in the library and was attracted by the concept of a civil war between ‘anarchist wasps’ and ‘a collective of hyper-intelligent spiders’. I was expecting some Grant Morrison or Steve Aylett-type weirdness and hoping the whole thing would be told from spider and wasp points of view. Hardcore weirdness is not at all what I got. Although the narrators do appear to be spiders, they have a remarkably similar tone and perspective to, say, an American man. Moreover, there just isn’t a weird atmosphere at all.
‘Sensation’ reads as zeitgeist-chasing fiction, stuffed as it is with references that allow you to date it very specifically. Lolspeak, people checking their blackberries, and arguments about Godwin’s Law, for example. I am also at a loss to explain the plot, as there wasn’t really one. A woman got possessed by radioactive wasps for a short while; this got the super-smart spiders somewhat concerned but not very. Humans pursued love affairs and futile battles against gentrification. At one point the internet stopped working for a few days and this demonstrated how humans live enmeshed in a web like spiders, or something. Events were generally baffling, random, and deliberately stripped of meaning. That’s not to say no entertainment can be found here. There are some memorably ridiculous bits of dialogue, such as:
The cover of ‘Sensation’ includes a quote by China Miéville (of all people) calling it ‘post-pulp’. I interpret that as ‘determined to sound cool at the expense of making any sense whatsoever’. I may be a grumpy old woman when it comes to cool, but surely it’s obvious that this kind of consciously superficial, densely referential writing dates very rapidly. Frankly it seemed like a waste of an arachnid-wasp civil war idea to me, although the flippant humour and occasional surreal moments were enough to keep me reading to the end. (I wasn’t impressed by the ending, either.) Maybe the author was trying to make some nihilistic point with this whole thing, about reality and life and everything we do being pointless and devoid of meaning? If so, this was a pretty annoying way to go about it. Good use of a theremin, though.
‘Sensation’ reads as zeitgeist-chasing fiction, stuffed as it is with references that allow you to date it very specifically. Lolspeak, people checking their blackberries, and arguments about Godwin’s Law, for example. I am also at a loss to explain the plot, as there wasn’t really one. A woman got possessed by radioactive wasps for a short while; this got the super-smart spiders somewhat concerned but not very. Humans pursued love affairs and futile battles against gentrification. At one point the internet stopped working for a few days and this demonstrated how humans live enmeshed in a web like spiders, or something. Events were generally baffling, random, and deliberately stripped of meaning. That’s not to say no entertainment can be found here. There are some memorably ridiculous bits of dialogue, such as:
"Anyway, what I’m trying to say, Hamilton, is that I am a bad motor scooter, so don’t try to be a hero. I eat murder and poop ideology. I learned to play the theremin in three days. If you fight, you lose. So just chill."
The cover of ‘Sensation’ includes a quote by China Miéville (of all people) calling it ‘post-pulp’. I interpret that as ‘determined to sound cool at the expense of making any sense whatsoever’. I may be a grumpy old woman when it comes to cool, but surely it’s obvious that this kind of consciously superficial, densely referential writing dates very rapidly. Frankly it seemed like a waste of an arachnid-wasp civil war idea to me, although the flippant humour and occasional surreal moments were enough to keep me reading to the end. (I wasn’t impressed by the ending, either.) Maybe the author was trying to make some nihilistic point with this whole thing, about reality and life and everything we do being pointless and devoid of meaning? If so, this was a pretty annoying way to go about it. Good use of a theremin, though.
September 13, 2011
I have been told that insulting Brian Keene and Nick Mamatas would lead to fame and fortune as an indie writer, and I read some of Brian Keene's work and was crushed to discover that I have little to insult him over. I mean, I could, but that would be all petty, and we know I'm NEVER petty, right?
But here, despite my being retired and hopelessly unmarketable, HERE is my ticket to fame and fortune as a writer! For in this very fine month, I have finally picked up a Mamatas title, Sensation, and I was ready to toss it almost immediately. I did not because it's an ebook and my ereader is really expensive. But I WANTED to throw it. So I imagined it, hard.
That I made it far enough in to sort out a woman is impregnated with mutant wasp eggs that change her behavior so she becomes rich and famous is a stunning and grand testament to my patience. Really, I think I did a super job. I had a major eyelid twitch that it was some random basement chemicals that mutated them. But then I found out that the story was being narrated by non-mutant spiders who are in an eternal war with the wasps. Well, pour me a big cup of couldn't care less, and I'll be moving on.
This book has "dream-like narrative," which in lay terms means it's a bit wandery and wordy without really saying much of anything. I've encountered similar prose with Straub and Vonnegut, and nothing makes it harder for me to avoid skimming than wandery passages. This of course is a ringing endorsement to people who like dream-like narration, which is why I mention it. Because I'm balanced while attacking authors, damn it.
I give Sensation one star, and I await fame and fortune eagerly. If it turns out I must insult Nick Mamatas AND Brian Keene to achieve fame, then I will say that Brian is butt ugly and way too smug for his own good.
Publishers, please send all publishing contracts to Milan. You know how to find me.
But here, despite my being retired and hopelessly unmarketable, HERE is my ticket to fame and fortune as a writer! For in this very fine month, I have finally picked up a Mamatas title, Sensation, and I was ready to toss it almost immediately. I did not because it's an ebook and my ereader is really expensive. But I WANTED to throw it. So I imagined it, hard.
That I made it far enough in to sort out a woman is impregnated with mutant wasp eggs that change her behavior so she becomes rich and famous is a stunning and grand testament to my patience. Really, I think I did a super job. I had a major eyelid twitch that it was some random basement chemicals that mutated them. But then I found out that the story was being narrated by non-mutant spiders who are in an eternal war with the wasps. Well, pour me a big cup of couldn't care less, and I'll be moving on.
This book has "dream-like narrative," which in lay terms means it's a bit wandery and wordy without really saying much of anything. I've encountered similar prose with Straub and Vonnegut, and nothing makes it harder for me to avoid skimming than wandery passages. This of course is a ringing endorsement to people who like dream-like narration, which is why I mention it. Because I'm balanced while attacking authors, damn it.
I give Sensation one star, and I await fame and fortune eagerly. If it turns out I must insult Nick Mamatas AND Brian Keene to achieve fame, then I will say that Brian is butt ugly and way too smug for his own good.
Publishers, please send all publishing contracts to Milan. You know how to find me.
September 6, 2018
[This is an old review I'm just now adding to Goodreads.]
It all starts with a wasps' nest in Raymond's mother's basement. The wasps are Hymenoepimescis sp., which usually reproduces by attacking the Plesiometa argyra spider and laying its eggs within the spider's abdomen. As the larvae feed off the spider, they change its behavior, compelling it to create a web that can allow them to finish their development. When the spider is done with its work, the larvae kill it. (The spider and wasp species are real – nature is freaky and horrifying.)
Hymenoepimescis sp. doesn't usually build a nest or use humans as its hosts, but in this case it was affected by the unusually high radon levels in Raymond's mother's basement. Julia, Raymond's wife, is attacked by one of these wasps and unknowingly has its eggs injected into her. Over the course of the next few months, the larvae gradually affect her behavior in various ways, until one day she decides to leave Raymond. From that point on, she proceeds to become famous, carrying out an assassination and inspiring a nameless political movement which has no apparent goal. What neither she nor Raymond realizes is that they are both pawns in an ancient war between Hymenoepimescis sp. and Plesiometa argyra.
I'm not sure how I feel about this book. Part of the problem was that “war” was maybe too strong of a word for what was going on between the spiders and the wasps. Although the spiders were an intelligent collective and were, in fact, the book's narrator, the wasps were just doing their thing. When their hosts were spiders, “their thing” meant inspiring behaviors that would allow their larvae to survive and become adult wasps. They weren't intelligent and hadn't evolved to grow inside and control human hosts, so their effect on humans was more aimless and chaotic. The end result left me wondering what the point was supposed to be, and the story became more tedious than interesting.
I did enjoy the bulk of this book, though. I was drawn in by Julia's erratic behavior. I wanted to know what she'd do next and what sorts of actions she'd inspire (although she was the only one being directly affected by the wasps, she seemed to inspire changes in everyone around her, apparently without even meaning to). Raymond watched her antics on the news and desperately tried to make some sense of it all, unable to truly move on.
The main reason why I decided to read this book was because of the intelligent spiders. I liked that the story was told from their collective point of view, both as individual spiders trying to keep track of the movements of the various characters and as spider-controlled masses of webbing designed to look like “men of indeterminate ethnicity.” There were moments when I felt that the author occasionally slipped up, including details that Raymond would have known (about his own experiences and feelings, for example) that the spiders probably wouldn't have. Still, it was interesting, and I liked their very alien perspective on how they should behave and what sorts of things humans might feel comfortable with and enjoy. I wish there had been more of that.
The world-building didn't really work for me. I could deal with the way the wasps mutated to be able to inject their eggs into Julia (honestly, it wasn't much different than accepting that radiation could create superheroes), and the author did eventually (a bit later than I'd have liked) provide some of the history of the spiders' influence on humans. However, there were lots of things I wanted to know more about, and instead I got vagueness or absolutely nothing. I'm still wondering how a giant mass of spiders could create a believably human-looking being, especially since the spiders didn't always seem to be confident about their ability to successfully communicate like humans or create natural human facial expressions. And why weren't they more confident about their mimicry, considering how long they'd existed alongside humans?
I also had issues with the characters. Just about every female character in the book behaved, at one time or another, like she was Julia under the influence of wasps. It didn't seem like they were consistently themselves. And the thing was, I'd probably have been able to put up with that, and my issues with the world-building, if it had all amounted to something.
I really liked the premise and the unusual POV. I just wish the finale had been as good as the buildup.
Additional Comments:
I counted at least six typos or instances of missing words. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it was more than I expected in a work this short, and the errors were really noticeable.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
It all starts with a wasps' nest in Raymond's mother's basement. The wasps are Hymenoepimescis sp., which usually reproduces by attacking the Plesiometa argyra spider and laying its eggs within the spider's abdomen. As the larvae feed off the spider, they change its behavior, compelling it to create a web that can allow them to finish their development. When the spider is done with its work, the larvae kill it. (The spider and wasp species are real – nature is freaky and horrifying.)
Hymenoepimescis sp. doesn't usually build a nest or use humans as its hosts, but in this case it was affected by the unusually high radon levels in Raymond's mother's basement. Julia, Raymond's wife, is attacked by one of these wasps and unknowingly has its eggs injected into her. Over the course of the next few months, the larvae gradually affect her behavior in various ways, until one day she decides to leave Raymond. From that point on, she proceeds to become famous, carrying out an assassination and inspiring a nameless political movement which has no apparent goal. What neither she nor Raymond realizes is that they are both pawns in an ancient war between Hymenoepimescis sp. and Plesiometa argyra.
I'm not sure how I feel about this book. Part of the problem was that “war” was maybe too strong of a word for what was going on between the spiders and the wasps. Although the spiders were an intelligent collective and were, in fact, the book's narrator, the wasps were just doing their thing. When their hosts were spiders, “their thing” meant inspiring behaviors that would allow their larvae to survive and become adult wasps. They weren't intelligent and hadn't evolved to grow inside and control human hosts, so their effect on humans was more aimless and chaotic. The end result left me wondering what the point was supposed to be, and the story became more tedious than interesting.
I did enjoy the bulk of this book, though. I was drawn in by Julia's erratic behavior. I wanted to know what she'd do next and what sorts of actions she'd inspire (although she was the only one being directly affected by the wasps, she seemed to inspire changes in everyone around her, apparently without even meaning to). Raymond watched her antics on the news and desperately tried to make some sense of it all, unable to truly move on.
The main reason why I decided to read this book was because of the intelligent spiders. I liked that the story was told from their collective point of view, both as individual spiders trying to keep track of the movements of the various characters and as spider-controlled masses of webbing designed to look like “men of indeterminate ethnicity.” There were moments when I felt that the author occasionally slipped up, including details that Raymond would have known (about his own experiences and feelings, for example) that the spiders probably wouldn't have. Still, it was interesting, and I liked their very alien perspective on how they should behave and what sorts of things humans might feel comfortable with and enjoy. I wish there had been more of that.
The world-building didn't really work for me. I could deal with the way the wasps mutated to be able to inject their eggs into Julia (honestly, it wasn't much different than accepting that radiation could create superheroes), and the author did eventually (a bit later than I'd have liked) provide some of the history of the spiders' influence on humans. However, there were lots of things I wanted to know more about, and instead I got vagueness or absolutely nothing. I'm still wondering how a giant mass of spiders could create a believably human-looking being, especially since the spiders didn't always seem to be confident about their ability to successfully communicate like humans or create natural human facial expressions. And why weren't they more confident about their mimicry, considering how long they'd existed alongside humans?
I also had issues with the characters. Just about every female character in the book behaved, at one time or another, like she was Julia under the influence of wasps. It didn't seem like they were consistently themselves. And the thing was, I'd probably have been able to put up with that, and my issues with the world-building, if it had all amounted to something.
I really liked the premise and the unusual POV. I just wish the finale had been as good as the buildup.
Additional Comments:
I counted at least six typos or instances of missing words. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it was more than I expected in a work this short, and the errors were really noticeable.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
October 23, 2011
It's really just silly. And it rambles. The latter is more irritating than the former.
December 18, 2011
Tiresome and smug. Wouldn't have finished it but I didn't have anything else to read while I was on jury duty.
August 7, 2011
from author/publisher
Read 7/30/11 - 8/6/11
3.5 Stars - Strongly Recommended to readers familiar with genre
Pgs:198
Publisher: PM Press
Sensation by Nick Mamatas is a first for me in many ways. It's my first encounter with this publishing company, who publish political, edgy fiction and non-fiction. It's my first experience reading the author, who has two previous novels under his belt. AND - probably most importantly - it's the first time I've ever willingly read a novel whose story line revolved around spiders and wasps.
If you are familiar with me and my irrational fears, you'll know that spiders top the chart of things I am terrified of. Thank god the book didn't have one sitting menacingly on the cover, because I don't know if I would have had the courage to look at it, let alone pick it up to read it.
Sensation, like Zazen, is set in a parallel America. In this one, humans are not the only intelligent species - although they think they are. There is age old war brewing between spiders and wasps, and our unsuspecting characters are about to find themselves smack in the middle of it all.
The story is narrated by the collective consciousness of the spiders, who are walking around amongst the public , spying on them from within the brainpans of men of indeterminate ethnicity. They report on the whereabouts of Julia, a woman who was inadvertently stung by a wasp - get ready to be grossed out - that laid its eggs in the sting wound. These eggs, which send out certain chemicals that change the behavior of their host, compel Julia to kill a man, which inadvertently begin a nationwide sans nom movement. The spiders, in their human transports, whisk Julia away to the Simulacrum in an effort to contain and protect her. But the movement continues, and with it, so does the war between insect and arachnid.
Many, many times as I read, I found my skin crawling. Just the thought of spiders being these hyper-intelligent super-spies turns my stomach. Every time I see one now, I think - What are you looking at, you little fucker? - right before I smear its guts across the wall.
This novel was, by far, one of the stranger ones I have ever read. Readers must be able to suspend their own realities in order to experience its full effect. It certainly poses the question of free will vs. puppetry. Are the decisions we make truly our own, or are they a result of someone or something else's influence over us?
Read 7/30/11 - 8/6/11
3.5 Stars - Strongly Recommended to readers familiar with genre
Pgs:198
Publisher: PM Press
Sensation by Nick Mamatas is a first for me in many ways. It's my first encounter with this publishing company, who publish political, edgy fiction and non-fiction. It's my first experience reading the author, who has two previous novels under his belt. AND - probably most importantly - it's the first time I've ever willingly read a novel whose story line revolved around spiders and wasps.
If you are familiar with me and my irrational fears, you'll know that spiders top the chart of things I am terrified of. Thank god the book didn't have one sitting menacingly on the cover, because I don't know if I would have had the courage to look at it, let alone pick it up to read it.
Sensation, like Zazen, is set in a parallel America. In this one, humans are not the only intelligent species - although they think they are. There is age old war brewing between spiders and wasps, and our unsuspecting characters are about to find themselves smack in the middle of it all.
The story is narrated by the collective consciousness of the spiders, who are walking around amongst the public , spying on them from within the brainpans of men of indeterminate ethnicity. They report on the whereabouts of Julia, a woman who was inadvertently stung by a wasp - get ready to be grossed out - that laid its eggs in the sting wound. These eggs, which send out certain chemicals that change the behavior of their host, compel Julia to kill a man, which inadvertently begin a nationwide sans nom movement. The spiders, in their human transports, whisk Julia away to the Simulacrum in an effort to contain and protect her. But the movement continues, and with it, so does the war between insect and arachnid.
Many, many times as I read, I found my skin crawling. Just the thought of spiders being these hyper-intelligent super-spies turns my stomach. Every time I see one now, I think - What are you looking at, you little fucker? - right before I smear its guts across the wall.
This novel was, by far, one of the stranger ones I have ever read. Readers must be able to suspend their own realities in order to experience its full effect. It certainly poses the question of free will vs. puppetry. Are the decisions we make truly our own, or are they a result of someone or something else's influence over us?
March 4, 2019
...even in these latter days of the law, where tyranny and sadism seem to have filled to overflowing the scales of blind justice, there ain’t no criminal statutes about being tedious.As I read this little quip, I couldn't help but think that Mamatas is lucky that it's true that he can't be arrested for being tedious. I suppose Sensation is readable. I think that it might have even gotten closer to rounding up to 3 stars if it had been edited more carefully. Each time I had to reread a sentence due to a grammatical error or missing punctuation making it nonsensical it made me wonder if it was worth the effort. I did laugh out loud a couple of times, though they weren't very satisfying laughs. There were some rather trite observations on the modern society and corporate dependency, but Mamatas didn't seem to take them seriously. In fact, he didn't seem to take anything seriously. And not in some fun way or a way that made a point about the absurdity of it all. I didn't see a position of any kind in his writing or a point to this book. I came away feeling like the author was just a narcissistic dick mocking idealism and hope with a bunch of jokes that make him laugh and that are almost funny but definitely lack any real cleverness. Reading this felt a lot like being stuck in an airport with nothing to do to pass the time but to listen to a Starbucks-philosopher talk at me about his cynical and fatalistic disdain for everything and everyone. It's not a horrible book, but I'll probably think slightly less of someone if they were to tell me that they liked it.
June 29, 2013
This is a fantastic, smart, engaging book, with polished writing. It's also a complex story, involving shifting relationships and loyalties, and two additional sentient (insect) species in a long-term struggle for survival, with humans as part of their battlefield. The use of a first person plural ("we") narrator throughout the book (though with much of the work reading like third person narration) adds another dimension, and a degree of uncertainty. There are areas of ambiguity and uncertainty in the work that some readers may not be entirely comfortable with, but they add to the novel and, ultimately, make it more thought-provoking. Great book!
June 4, 2011
Political satire in which humans are tools in the war between parasitic wasps and spiders. And internet culture becomes a prank revolt.
April 10, 2019
Bit better than three stars, this is the second Mamatas book I`ve read and I thought it was going to be a 5 star book until about halfway through. There`s a lot of really great stuff in here, from the premise of human history being a sideshow to a slow conflict between arachnid intelligences and parasitic wasps, to the humor of late capitalism, to the breakneck pace of everything. The language and structure gets a little too experimental for me, but if you dig that sort of thing you`ll probably enjoy this more than I did, as the whole thing got too fragmented for me to really enjoy towards the end, and it grew to be a little bit of a chore to finish.
I was hoping for a little more granular discussion of the premise, taken at face value, but the book is much more interested in using this metaphorically and as a lens for other topics, which probably says more about me than the book itself.
Great premise, lots of interesting component, but not exactly to my liking. Still very worth reading.
I was hoping for a little more granular discussion of the premise, taken at face value, but the book is much more interested in using this metaphorically and as a lens for other topics, which probably says more about me than the book itself.
Great premise, lots of interesting component, but not exactly to my liking. Still very worth reading.
September 8, 2023
It's fine.
I enjoyed the way the author wrote an alien consciousness, different enough to be appropriate but not laying it on too thick.
I was less a fan of how the human consciousnesses were depicted, and connected with none of them.
I enjoyed the way the author wrote an alien consciousness, different enough to be appropriate but not laying it on too thick.
I was less a fan of how the human consciousnesses were depicted, and connected with none of them.
July 31, 2013
Every so often a writer of literary fiction manages to transcend the genre, and create something that you can truly call science fiction. Mamatas has clearly done that with Sensation.
O.K., kids, see how ridiculous that sounds? So lets stop with the whole "literature vs. science fiction" nonsense, shall we? Yes, Mamatas pulls a lot from the literary genre for this book, or alternately Mamatas has written a literary novel with science fiction trappings. It doesn't matter. It's not a war. Using the best of both approaches is, frankly, something more writers should aspire to.
One of the primary ways Mamatas tweaks conventions in this book is with the typography. It's really essential to how the story is told, and I'm not sure I could recommend anyone to the e-book version as a result, though I've not seen the e-book to know how they did it. Fair warning.
The story revolves around a war between spiders and wasps, told from the point of view of the spiders (who are a collective intelligence). Julia Ott Hernandez was stung by a wasp and as a result went crazy, losing her free will, and assassinating a real estate developer. Her husband, Raymond, can't let go and pursues her, along with his new girlfriend and a couple of people from an unnamed movement that sprung up in Julia's wake, through a web (sorry, couldn't resist) of realities in which the world we know is only a small part.
This book is genuinely very funny, with eccentric characters and extreme situations, told using many of the trappings of our online communications. But the nowness of the book is probably also it's greatest weakness. By the time you read Sensation, even if reading it the year it came out, cultural references have already faded (what is Myspace anyway?). I imagine the conversation with my (theoretical) kid when they read this book in 20 years. KID: "I didn't care for it. It appears to be full of slang and cultural references which make no sense." ME: "So, you were, like, WTF?" KID: "No, father, I was not 'like, WTF.' Truly, I don't understand these generational colloquialism you persist in using."
The nowness of the book is also hampered somewhat by failing to take place now. Dates in the book are rendered with the year 20__, despite the fact that one character clearly establishes that 9/11 occurred very recently (he'd been taking the same ferry for three years, and immediately after 9/11 is the only time someone spoke to him on board before Julia chats him up), the Iraq war is still raging, and the Occupy Wall Street movement clearly hasn't occurred yet. And yet, there are Tea Party references, which was a completely unknown (and very different from its current incarnation) in 2002-2003, and other hints that it's meant to be occurring now. While in some ways prescient (the unnamed movement does, in fact, remind the reader of Occupy Wall Street, and we must remember that the book was written and in production already before that movement actually sprung up), the novel is so temporally specific yet non-specific that I suspect readers in a few years will have a hard time figuring out the world it takes place in. LOLcat references, for example, are not something I expect to age well.
But, for now, this book is a funny and thought-provoking conversation about why we do the things we do.
Again, I was a little torn how to rate this one, wishing Goodreads had more options between "liked it" and "really liked it." I don't think it's for everyone, but it's better than average.
O.K., kids, see how ridiculous that sounds? So lets stop with the whole "literature vs. science fiction" nonsense, shall we? Yes, Mamatas pulls a lot from the literary genre for this book, or alternately Mamatas has written a literary novel with science fiction trappings. It doesn't matter. It's not a war. Using the best of both approaches is, frankly, something more writers should aspire to.
One of the primary ways Mamatas tweaks conventions in this book is with the typography. It's really essential to how the story is told, and I'm not sure I could recommend anyone to the e-book version as a result, though I've not seen the e-book to know how they did it. Fair warning.
The story revolves around a war between spiders and wasps, told from the point of view of the spiders (who are a collective intelligence). Julia Ott Hernandez was stung by a wasp and as a result went crazy, losing her free will, and assassinating a real estate developer. Her husband, Raymond, can't let go and pursues her, along with his new girlfriend and a couple of people from an unnamed movement that sprung up in Julia's wake, through a web (sorry, couldn't resist) of realities in which the world we know is only a small part.
This book is genuinely very funny, with eccentric characters and extreme situations, told using many of the trappings of our online communications. But the nowness of the book is probably also it's greatest weakness. By the time you read Sensation, even if reading it the year it came out, cultural references have already faded (what is Myspace anyway?). I imagine the conversation with my (theoretical) kid when they read this book in 20 years. KID: "I didn't care for it. It appears to be full of slang and cultural references which make no sense." ME: "So, you were, like, WTF?" KID: "No, father, I was not 'like, WTF.' Truly, I don't understand these generational colloquialism you persist in using."
The nowness of the book is also hampered somewhat by failing to take place now. Dates in the book are rendered with the year 20__, despite the fact that one character clearly establishes that 9/11 occurred very recently (he'd been taking the same ferry for three years, and immediately after 9/11 is the only time someone spoke to him on board before Julia chats him up), the Iraq war is still raging, and the Occupy Wall Street movement clearly hasn't occurred yet. And yet, there are Tea Party references, which was a completely unknown (and very different from its current incarnation) in 2002-2003, and other hints that it's meant to be occurring now. While in some ways prescient (the unnamed movement does, in fact, remind the reader of Occupy Wall Street, and we must remember that the book was written and in production already before that movement actually sprung up), the novel is so temporally specific yet non-specific that I suspect readers in a few years will have a hard time figuring out the world it takes place in. LOLcat references, for example, are not something I expect to age well.
But, for now, this book is a funny and thought-provoking conversation about why we do the things we do.
Again, I was a little torn how to rate this one, wishing Goodreads had more options between "liked it" and "really liked it." I don't think it's for everyone, but it's better than average.
September 14, 2011
Three and a half stars.
"Culture and society, all of modernity is apparently an epiphenomenon of the occasional wasp who stings a person instead of a spider, in the right circumstances."
Nick Mamatas uses humor and absurdity to explore the futile flailings of human beings in the accretion of cultural practices and social movements, his characters' actions and musings suggest a simultaneous powerlessness and agency in romantic relationships, anarchist political movements and the economic shifts of Brooklyn gentrification.
The novel has a strong opening and the author's use of a variety of co-mingling texts like blog posts, interviews, newspaper articles, political pamphlets and IM logs helps develop this sense of a web of knowledge put to use in different ways. Otherwise, most of the narrative is from the point of view of the collective of intelligent spiders at war with the wasps whose stings cause the outliers of human behavior that steer culture and history -- however, this POV felt inconsistent and seemed to slip away in places, not gripping onto the conceit of their web-spun human avatars (men of indeterminate ethnicity) or other methods of spying close enough to seem to work as well as it should.
On the one hand, the way the novel unwinds into a lack of resolution -- ending very much like it began -- is fitting, but on the other, the action seems a little too random in places. I think I would have preferred seeing characters or the manipulative spider collective trying to impose even the illusion of sense and meaning to what was happening as a way to smooth over the craziness of fickle human behavior as historians and anthropologists are prone to do.
I think taking some time with this text would garner a lot of productive commentary on globalization and unhinging of geographic identity on both the local level (through geographic economic restructuring aka gentrification) and transnationally, as cities and the world wide web connect people and sites that are not geographically proximate, casting into doubt the existence of any kind of authentic origin for understanding ourselves both individually and collectively.
"Culture and society, all of modernity is apparently an epiphenomenon of the occasional wasp who stings a person instead of a spider, in the right circumstances."
Nick Mamatas uses humor and absurdity to explore the futile flailings of human beings in the accretion of cultural practices and social movements, his characters' actions and musings suggest a simultaneous powerlessness and agency in romantic relationships, anarchist political movements and the economic shifts of Brooklyn gentrification.
The novel has a strong opening and the author's use of a variety of co-mingling texts like blog posts, interviews, newspaper articles, political pamphlets and IM logs helps develop this sense of a web of knowledge put to use in different ways. Otherwise, most of the narrative is from the point of view of the collective of intelligent spiders at war with the wasps whose stings cause the outliers of human behavior that steer culture and history -- however, this POV felt inconsistent and seemed to slip away in places, not gripping onto the conceit of their web-spun human avatars (men of indeterminate ethnicity) or other methods of spying close enough to seem to work as well as it should.
On the one hand, the way the novel unwinds into a lack of resolution -- ending very much like it began -- is fitting, but on the other, the action seems a little too random in places. I think I would have preferred seeing characters or the manipulative spider collective trying to impose even the illusion of sense and meaning to what was happening as a way to smooth over the craziness of fickle human behavior as historians and anthropologists are prone to do.
I think taking some time with this text would garner a lot of productive commentary on globalization and unhinging of geographic identity on both the local level (through geographic economic restructuring aka gentrification) and transnationally, as cities and the world wide web connect people and sites that are not geographically proximate, casting into doubt the existence of any kind of authentic origin for understanding ourselves both individually and collectively.
July 1, 2014
The history of humanity and it's culture are being directed by the war between two species, one of spiders and the other of wasps, the first sentients, the second not. Once you set that idea on a book, there are mainly two directions in which the story can go, one is the more typical "humanity is being controlled by external forces, let's do something about it" direction, the other is the one Mamatas chose and also the one which could ostracize a great deal of readers. The book is so well written that early on it's clear that the only satisfying path can be the less trodden one. On the other direction there would have been great disillusionment.
All the while the novel was on precarious equilibrium between witty and annoying. The dialog is very unnatural at times, unless you accept the notion that the characters saying it are the ones most likely to be thinking all along how unnatural what they're saying sounds. Everybody is witty, and if there had been more characters that would have certainly become ridiculous. Luckily it stayed just short of that.
The "science" is mostly believable, making the fictitious part of it acceptable, but there where a few mistakes, for instance Mesoamerican civilizations did invent the wheel, the mystery is why they didn't seem to use it all that much (lack of beasts of burden is one of the most favored possibilities).
The most enjoyable books, for me, are the ones that are not entirely about what they're about. The ones that explore implications and consequences more than just in passing. "Sensation" satisfied in that regard.
The main problem were the typos. I bought the epub from Weightless Books One Day Sale (a wonderful thing that has given me access to a lot of great books for very little money), and there are a lot of typos in the book, a few missing prepositions, and some errors in line breaks. I'm not all that bothered by that kind of thing, at least it doesn't made me want to throw away the book, or some e-reader equivalent of angrily deleting the file. But when the book is good, those little annoyances stand out more.
All the while the novel was on precarious equilibrium between witty and annoying. The dialog is very unnatural at times, unless you accept the notion that the characters saying it are the ones most likely to be thinking all along how unnatural what they're saying sounds. Everybody is witty, and if there had been more characters that would have certainly become ridiculous. Luckily it stayed just short of that.
The "science" is mostly believable, making the fictitious part of it acceptable, but there where a few mistakes, for instance Mesoamerican civilizations did invent the wheel, the mystery is why they didn't seem to use it all that much (lack of beasts of burden is one of the most favored possibilities).
The most enjoyable books, for me, are the ones that are not entirely about what they're about. The ones that explore implications and consequences more than just in passing. "Sensation" satisfied in that regard.
The main problem were the typos. I bought the epub from Weightless Books One Day Sale (a wonderful thing that has given me access to a lot of great books for very little money), and there are a lot of typos in the book, a few missing prepositions, and some errors in line breaks. I'm not all that bothered by that kind of thing, at least it doesn't made me want to throw away the book, or some e-reader equivalent of angrily deleting the file. But when the book is good, those little annoyances stand out more.
Read
July 21, 2016It's possible that I could write one review of Nick Mamatas's work and leave it at that: it's startling, weird, and uncomfortable--not for everyone; and it tends to investigate some fracture or failure in society; often with the motif of multiple worlds or a multiverse.
(I am so looking forward to his I Am Providence: A Novel, in which that society is early 20th-century writer/nerd-con.)
In this case, Mamatas starts with something almost reminiscent of Fritz Leiber's The Big Time, except whereas Leiber has two groups named Snakes and Spiders fighting over time, Mamatas actually has spiders and wasps fighting across time. But Mamatas isn't really interested in a shadow war, so much as he is interested in questions of free will and protest against the status quo.
So the wasps are a type of parasite that usually implants eggs in spiders that can change their behavior; meanwhile, in NY, some newcomers to a neighborhood are protesting gentrification; and the spiders are carefully shepherding human development towards peace, even if that means taking people out of the shared world and into a Simulacrum.
As usual, it's interesting to think what another author would've made with this material. I'm imagining a more commercial writer turning the shadow war into a thriller. Whereas what Mamatas turns in is a digressive, occasionally meandering novel with no clear heroes or villains, and no real answers.
But here's where I tell you that I thought this was a less confident novel than the other Mamatas that I've read. (Bullettime is my favorite now.
(I am so looking forward to his I Am Providence: A Novel, in which that society is early 20th-century writer/nerd-con.)
In this case, Mamatas starts with something almost reminiscent of Fritz Leiber's The Big Time, except whereas Leiber has two groups named Snakes and Spiders fighting over time, Mamatas actually has spiders and wasps fighting across time. But Mamatas isn't really interested in a shadow war, so much as he is interested in questions of free will and protest against the status quo.
So the wasps are a type of parasite that usually implants eggs in spiders that can change their behavior; meanwhile, in NY, some newcomers to a neighborhood are protesting gentrification; and the spiders are carefully shepherding human development towards peace, even if that means taking people out of the shared world and into a Simulacrum.
As usual, it's interesting to think what another author would've made with this material. I'm imagining a more commercial writer turning the shadow war into a thriller. Whereas what Mamatas turns in is a digressive, occasionally meandering novel with no clear heroes or villains, and no real answers.
But here's where I tell you that I thought this was a less confident novel than the other Mamatas that I've read. (Bullettime is my favorite now.
June 8, 2011
The thing about Mamatas...you can't ever say he's done it again, no matter how many great books or short stories or essays he pens, because in doing so you'd run the risk of implying that he's repeating himself, which he isn't. No, what makes him such a vital voice in modern fiction is that he veers so wildly from project to project that you can't really predict his trajectory, but you're always sure he'll land somewhere interesting. He can be a smartass, but like the best of the weisenheimers there's way more of the smart than the ass. To which he'd probably have some choice rejoinder, but then that was a bit of a softball pitch.
The thing about Sensation...it's one hell of a novel. Genre conventions given the brainiac treatment, barbed pop and counter culture references aplenty, a style that's simultaneously inventive yet effortlessly accessible, and a healthy smattering of almost-too-clever-for-their-own-good gags all stewed up in Mamatas' vision of America, a place uncomfortably close enough to the real thing to make you check for webs over the bed before tucking down. Yes, but is it both fun *and* profound? Yeppers.
What's it about? You, me, the whole shebang--read the product description if you're the type who needs to know if there's a bone of SF under all the meaty stuff (spoiler alert: there is). The bottom line is that if you like your fiction sharp, quick, relevant, and refreshingly reckless, this is the fix. Yahbye.
The thing about Sensation...it's one hell of a novel. Genre conventions given the brainiac treatment, barbed pop and counter culture references aplenty, a style that's simultaneously inventive yet effortlessly accessible, and a healthy smattering of almost-too-clever-for-their-own-good gags all stewed up in Mamatas' vision of America, a place uncomfortably close enough to the real thing to make you check for webs over the bed before tucking down. Yes, but is it both fun *and* profound? Yeppers.
What's it about? You, me, the whole shebang--read the product description if you're the type who needs to know if there's a bone of SF under all the meaty stuff (spoiler alert: there is). The bottom line is that if you like your fiction sharp, quick, relevant, and refreshingly reckless, this is the fix. Yahbye.
June 30, 2011
A true pleasure to work on, though it arrived with plenty of polish. A biting satire set on firm entomological foundations, this is hilarious, action-packed and also thoughtful. By that I mean you can be inspired to think deep things while you read it, or not. Just as you wish. The politics are twisted, the text is playful, and the characters are people you are as close to recognising as you can get given the story is told by spiders. Nothing is sacred and the world itself hangs in the balance. . .
November 8, 2012
Great, another lost review. I truly enjoyed the way Mamatas told this tale through (no spoilers) a collective consciousness, allowing a unique perspective on this story. Finally, a tale with an activist bent that plays with and subverts the trappings of these various movements. I feel like maybe the ending should have had a bit more punch to it, considering the scale of the revelations, but I truly love how his characters were undeniably human and flawed. I greatly look forward to reading more of his work!
December 10, 2012
Interesting conceit - and not so far-fetched considering the recent news about linkages between toxoplasmosis and various neuro problems - but although entertaining, could have been written with more attention to developing the main character, Hernandez. However, I loved the sly observations on hipster life, and the sense of events occurring on multiple levels - virtually, in real life, as well as how the characters interpret what is going on. The reader will want to finish reading this book so as to find out what eventually happens to the main characters and the spiders etc.
September 13, 2012
Seinfeld meets P K Dick?
The writing is witty and every bit as hip as the privileged bobos it skewers. So I guess if the reader gets most of the references and catches all the winks then they are indicted along with the cast of the book.
Also, smart alternative presses are not helping themselves by using spellcheck instead of human proofreaders. This book is full of unfortunate substitutions like "lip" for "limp" that jar the reader out of the flow.
The writing is witty and every bit as hip as the privileged bobos it skewers. So I guess if the reader gets most of the references and catches all the winks then they are indicted along with the cast of the book.
Also, smart alternative presses are not helping themselves by using spellcheck instead of human proofreaders. This book is full of unfortunate substitutions like "lip" for "limp" that jar the reader out of the flow.
July 4, 2014
I am completely fascinated by this book even though I'm not entirely sure how I felt about it. I found the arachnid narrator to be alienating, but I choose that word very specifically because it was distancing but also just a little bit alien, a little bit inhuman. It was definitely a deliberate choice, I'm just not sure how well it worked for me. The story also spun a little bit out of control just after the midway point, but still. Fascinating.
April 16, 2012
Weird, compelling, disorienting, either-angry-or-detached, I'm not even sure anymore.
A satire-ish thing about contemporary culture and politics narrated by a collective consciousness of spiders.
I'm never really *affected* by Mamatas's work--only intrigued--and so he's never been an author whose stories I go around recommending, but I'm almost always glad to have read them myself.
A satire-ish thing about contemporary culture and politics narrated by a collective consciousness of spiders.
I'm never really *affected* by Mamatas's work--only intrigued--and so he's never been an author whose stories I go around recommending, but I'm almost always glad to have read them myself.
September 26, 2011
While I'm generally unable to write book reviews, I was able to make a...kind of book trailer for this excellent novel. It can be found here on Youtube.
August 15, 2014
Really cool concept, great narrator, smart & well-muscled prose, but for some reason I can't put my finger on, I lost interest about 4/5 of the way through this short novel. Will have to think on it some more.
November 15, 2012
I think this is my favorite Mamatas book I've read thus far. I enjoyed the strange idea of the eternal war between the spiders and the wasps. It was so out there and bombastic that I read this very quickly.
August 25, 2011
My review at SF Signal: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011...
October 28, 2012
Clever sci-fi novel about wasps and spiders, more or less. More comments some other time.
Read
November 20, 2014 an unusual point of view character - uses "we" written by parasitic spiders attempting to save the world (?!)
January 3, 2016
It is a fun book to read, whimsical, unpretentious, yet one I'm sure will soon forget, no much substance to linger.
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