The Last Hiccup - The First Rave

Before I begin a post of unabashed enthusiasm on Christopher Meades' weirdly wonderful new novel The Last Hiccup, a note of caution:

Through careful research and self-imposed paranoid fear-mongering, I have determined that Chris, having never met him physically, is undoubtedly one of the following:

• my doppelganger;
• my long-lost twin, the one I thought I devoured in utero;
• a pod person bent on destroying me.

Why this belief, Corey, oh master of hyperbole? Take a look, and you tell me I'm freaking out over nothing:

All together now;

Meet Corey, who's done most everything,

From practice law to plane jumping.

But Chris has only stayed the course,

He's never even seen a horse.

What a crazy pair!

'Cuz they're authors,

Identical authors and you'll find,

They dress alike, they walk alike,

At times they even write alike:

You can lose your mind,

When authors are two of a kind.

Spooky, no? Maybe it's a coincidence, but I'm afraid to go to sleep at night. Should we meet I have no doubt the universe will cease to exist, or at least suffer a splitting headache.

On the plus side, should I ever die, we have a spare.

But I come here to praise Chris, not to fear him. I was a fan of his debut novel The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark, an unceasingly silly chase novel that gave me no end of pleasure. So when approached, I gladly agreed to blurb his novel (a professional first!), for his sophomore effort The Last Hiccup is everything I look for in a novel; funny, weird, vaguely historical, barely linear, ambiguous, and saturated with synchronous diaphragmatic flutter. Having suffered from a lengthy bout of the devil's esophageal convulsions myself (seven days, no fooling), perhaps I'm inclined to sympathize with Vladimir, the young Russian boy who starts hiccuping at age eight and continues to do so for decades.

If the novel were simply that, twenty-plus years of hiccuping, I think I'd have tired of it. Meades, however, takes the Kurt Vonnegut route of torturing the protagonist, placing his hero in early 20th century Russia and submitting him to horrendous ordeal after horrendous ordeal. In short order, Vladimir, a strangely self-possessed little boy, is abandoned by his mother, experimented on by a mad doctor, and sent to live in the mountains with a strange and silent monk. And I haven't even begun to factor World War I into Meades' melange.

I do love a story that never takes me where I expect, and Hiccup certainly fills that bill. It's also extremely clever, dark, surreal, and unexpectedly poignant. I certainly hope Chris continues to push himself into the unexpected, for I sense there are fathoms of fantastic weirdness in him just aching to be discovered.


[NOTE] Should there ever be interest in mine and Chris' life story, perhaps as a Patty Duke-like family comedy with hijinks galore, I hereby submit the following unknown Canadian actor for consideration:

'Cuz they're triplets!

Identical triplets, and you'll find,

They act alike, they brood alike,

Sometimes they're even subdued alike...

Tiny Monkey Reviews - Triggers by Robert J. Sawyer

Triggers (Penguin, 2012)

by Robert J. Sawyer

Description (from the publisher)

A new mind-bending novel from Canada’s leading futurist

On the eve of a secret military operation, an assassin’s bullet strikes U.S. President Seth Jerrison. He is rushed to hospital, where surgeons struggle to save his life. At the same hospital, Canadian researcher Dr. Ranjip Singh is experimenting with a device that can erase traumatic memories. Then a terrorist bomb detonates. In the operating room, the president suffers cardiac arrest. He has a near-death experience—but the memories that flash through Jerrison’s mind are not his memories.

It quickly becomes clear that the electromagnetic pulse generated by the bomb amplified and scrambled Dr. Singh’s equipment, allowing a random group of people to access one another’s minds. And now one of those people has access to the president’s memories—including classified information regarding an upcoming military mission, which, if revealed, could cost countless lives. But the task of determining who has switched memories with whom is a daunting one, particularly when some of the people involved have reasons to lie ...

What the Tiny Monkey thinks 

I have to put some cards on the table up front: not only do I know Rob Sawyer, not only do I like Rob Sawyer, not only do I bring up the fact that I know and like Rob Sawyer at every opportunity; on top of that, one of the characters in Triggers, Eric Redekop, shares my last name. No mere coincidence this, as Rob confirmed via Facebook that he thought my last name was "cool." This FB message has thereby been printed out and framed, verifiable proof that someone likes the damnable moniker. And this also means that, likely for the first time ever, a Mennonite headlines a sci-fi novel, with the possible exception of Robert A. Heinlein's The Froeses of Mars.

So take this review with salt and imitation buttered popcorn, if you must; Triggers is a lot of fun. Sawyer has never been the greatest of prose stylists, but his enthusiasm for his topics, his hearty dollops of research, and his genuine upbeat attitude (an increasing rarity in science fiction) make the best of his work a pleasure to read (particularly his short stories: I cannot recommend Iterations or Identity Theft highly enough). Triggers, like most of Sawyer's work, sets its narrative around an immensely intriguing hook, and his plot machinations concerning selective telepathic powers keep the pages flying by. It isn't the deepest of reads, and part of me wishes he went further with his ultimate finale, when the plot ventures into Theodore Sturgeon territory (I won't be divulging this ending here, however; unlike a certain reviewer in the Globe and Mail, I try not to give away the ending whether or not I liked the book). I am unsure whether Triggers qualifies as Sawyer's most fanciful work, as the science behind his scenario sounds fairly wonky to the layperson in me, but that hardly counts as a disqualification. Triggers is fast and fun, with just enough inherent plausibility to the shenanigans to keep me glued to my seat.

TINY MONKEY REALLY LIKES