Tag: Jon Frankel

Jon Frankel’s The Man Who Can’t Die (Book acquired sometime in October of 2016, or maybe some other time, not sure, early November was rough)

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Jon Frankel’s The Man Who Can’t Die is new from Whisk(e)y Tit. Their blurb:

New York, 2180. Manhattan is cut with sewage-filled canals and walled in by levees. The world has been suffering from epidemic despair and apathy, when Dr. Ruth Bryson invents Paragane, a Euphoric drug that cures ennui and depression. Monozone Inc, the monopolistic pharmaceutical who employs her, is thrilled.

There is only one problem: the drug kills 10% of everyone who takes it. Monozone decides to market it anyway, despite Bryson’s objections, and puts her former lover Owen Bradlee in charge. Bryson knows she must either fix Paregane or stop it, but if she is caught she will certainly be killed.

Meanwhile, Felix and Veronica Clay are typical pod-dwelling office workers, whose lives seem like an endless extenuation of meaningless circumstance. When Veronica plunges into psychosis and tries to kill herself, her doctor prescribes the new drug Paragane, and everything changes. Soon Felix is also taking the drug, and they spend their nights under its influence, roaming Paradise and conversing with Angels. One day Felix returns from work to discover her dead, of no apparent cause. In short order, he loses his job and apartment and soon finds himself living in the wilds of upper Manhattan, addicted to Paregane, unable to find Veronica in Paradise, unable to die. Meanwhile, Dr. Bryson searches for a test subject. When she discovers Felix they are set on a course that will lead them deep into the Iroquois territories of upstate New York and a bloody struggle for survival.

 

Gaha: Babes of the Abyss (Book acquired and read sometime in May 2015)

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Jon Frankel’s Gaha: Babes of the Abyss is simultaneously familiar and estranging, a bizarre California crime-noir-dystopian shot through a druggy haze. It’s funny and weird, part caper, part adventure story, where everything’s just a little off (and more than a little sleazy). The easy comparison to Philip K. Dick is not unwarranted: Frankel’s satire is a dark mind-bender and a propulsive page-turner. Civil War, a genetically-altered ruling class, sex, violence, drugs, and real estate. The title is new from new indie imprint Whiskey Tit (Ms. Miette’s the honcho there, so you know it’s good stuff). Their blurb:

She was seventeen and all leg, banging the hell out of a pinball machine. I watched her play, my back to the bar. There was a cigarette going in her left hand with a cone of ash hanging off the end. The muscles in her bare thighs tensed up every time she bumped her pelvis into the coin box. As the ball shot toward her flippers she turned her feet in and banged with the right and then the left hand, knocking the ash to the floor. The red light on top of the machine started to turn and a police siren went off. It barked, “Pull off to the side of the road!” and she slapped the flipper, sending the ball up into a thousand-point hole. While the lights flashed and sirens sang she took a long drag off the cigarette.

I should have known better.

So begins Jon Frankel’s unflinching saga of Bob Martin, real estate pimp of Los Angeles in the year 2540, and his hapless, hopeless efforts to stay out of trouble in the company of 17-year-old Irmela von Dorderer and her big sister Elma.  He should have known better, indeed.