A Splendid Chaos

by John Shirley

Zero is a young film maker who believes his whole life and career are mapped out before him. That is, until the night he and his friends walk into a rock club ... and are caught in a dazzling trap that spans worlds. They are dropped onto a dreamlike planet whose surrealistic beauty cannot hide its grotesque reality. Fool's Hope — a world, so stunningly bizarre, nightmares are irrelevant. Here, abductees — both human and alien — are pitted against a neverending succession of hellish parasites, carnivores, shape-changers, and symbiotes. Yet the greatest enemy of all could be human. When former professor Harmon Fiskle is transformed by the Current — a roving mutagenic force — he is freed to pursue his megalomaniacal nature. He advocates a depraved policy of social Darwinism, and forges a grotesque alliance of men and women who have sacrificed their own humanity to become monstrous mutations of their former selves. With an entire world at stake, only Zero can solve the mystery of Fool's Hope ... if it isn't already too late.

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror, Fiction, Aliens, Cyberpunk

Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

John Shirley won the Bram Stoker Award for his story collection Black Butterflies, and is the author of numerous novels, including the best-seller DEMONS, the cyberpunk classics CITY COME A-WALKIN', ECLIPSE, and BLACK GLASS, and his newest novels STORMLAND and A SORCERER OF ATLANTIS.

He is also a screenwriter, having written for television and movies; he was co-screenwriter of THE CROW. He has been several Year's Best anthologies including Prime Books' THE YEAR'S BEST DARK FANTASY AND HORROR anthology, and his nwest story collection is IN EXTREMIS: THE MOST EXTREME SHORT STORIES OF JOHN SHIRLEY. His novel BIOSHOCK: RAPTURE telling the story of the creation and undoing of Rapture, from the hit videogame BIOSHOCK is out from TOR books; his Halo novel, HALO: BROKEN CIRCLE is coming out from Pocket Books.

His most recent novels are STORMLAND and (forthcoming) AXLE BUST CREEK. His new story collection is THE FEVERISH STARS. STORMLAND and other John Shirley novels are available as audiobooks.

He is also a lyricist, having written lyrics for 18 songs recorded by the Blue Oyster Cult (especially on their albums Heaven Forbidden and Curse of the Hidden Mirror), and his own recordings.

John Shirley has written only one nonfiction book, GURDJIEFF: AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS LIFE AND IDEAS, published by Penguin/Jeremy Tarcher.

John Shirley story collections include BLACK BUTTERFLIES, IN EXTREMIS, REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY WEIRD STORIES, and LIVING SHADOWS.

source: Amazon

Reviews

[Lizz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t write reviews.

A very fine title for this delightfully twisted story. It has a bit of everything. I was reminded of the mutants from Vampire Hunter D. There are a wide variety of aliens and concepts to sample. Shirley did a great job creating a convincing group of different species, each with their own societal norms and customs, as well as filling the planet of Fool’s Hope with an interesting array of native flora and fauna.

Note: It appears that Shirley updates his novels with modernity. This book was published in 1988, yet somehow internet usage, the show Lost and a few other not-yet-invented things were mentioned in passing. Thankfully “in passing” was all, since it would have really taken me out of the fantasy otherwise. I’m not sure why he would do this. Then again, why did George Lucas destroy Star Wars 4-6 by adding computer graphics and changing scenes, then finish off by making the originals extinct, as if to wipe them from history?

[Valerie Book Valkyrie]

Stand by, final Rating & Review currently being sorted out of this splendid chaos 💛🧚‍♀️🙋🏼.

[David Agranoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been saving this novel for a special occasion and decided a train ride to and from LA would be it. If I have not already expressed this a million times John Shirley is my favorite author. With both Horror (Wetbones) and Science Fiction (City Come a Walkin') masterpieces I have only so many classic era Shirley novels left to read. In a attempt to savor it I held off on this novel that had won praise not only from publisher's weekly "the world he's created is a knockout, from telepathic Venus's-flytraps to the floating radioactive Current that instantly Twists a person into a grotesque parody of his inner fears and desires." but also China Mieville who said "... a revel of delirious, intoxicating, popular surrealism."

A Splendid Chaos is really John Shirley at the top of his game combining many of the elements that make him one of a kind. The novel is bonkers sci-fi that is more bizarro or surreal that your average entry in the genre. Despite hitting on on Sci-fi adventure power cords like the hero's journey and the plot of a character kidnapped and plopped on a alien world. Shirley was going for weird. On his website he said "A Splendid Chaos was an attempt to write surrealism that nevertheless made sense...writing allegorically and using archetypal characters."

The surrealism infests every page but it is not so surreal that you can't follow the story it is excellently plotted for humor and most importantly in the Shirley cannon- it reflects and comments on our world. Fellow cyperpunk Rudy Rucker wrote more transrealism, it was sorta his thing. What I liked about this novel is as weird as it was it remained ground in the narrative. I never lost track of the story of the characters.

The story of Zero a musician who is kidnapped off earth and stuck on a world called Fool's Hope. Home to 31 other races in the same situation they are meant to compete to survive. Along the way Zero learns about society, has a truly weird adventure. Many of the villains, and characters called twists were humans who were genetically manipulated, and provided many of the the novel's most daring moments.

I still think Transmaniacon is a weirder more bonkers science fiction novel. The Song Called Youth trilogy is his most epic City come a Walkin' is the author finest idea and execution in Scienc Fiction. The Other End is probably his most IMPORTANT in the genre but A Splendid Chaos deserves to be right up there with all those. A bizarro classic before the sub-genre existed. This is social justice themed bizarro science fiction novel will not disappoint.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I need a tissue...

I'm somewhat familiar with John Shirley's work. I've read a couple of his short stories, know he wrote the Bioshock tie-in novel and also had his espionage work loosely adapted for a Sly Stallone movie. But this is my first full-length novel by him and if there's one thing I know about his work, it's that when he busts out the creative chops, he flies so far over the line, you'd think he was using a ski-jump.

The set-up only takes a couple pages. Martin - AKA Zero - and his chums stumbled upon what looks like a outdoors rave in a tent in the middle of the city. Except its not. Turns out to be an organic spacecraft which whisks them and those caught inside to the nightmarish world of Fool's Hope, overseen by an unknowable hive-mind known as the Meta. And for Zero and co, their problems are just starting.

The first thing that pops out to me is just the sheer visuals of Fool's Hope. Shirley said that he wanted to create a literary surreal nightmare and I think it's safe to say he knocked that fucker out of the park. The sheer amount of descriptive designs for the world is both a blessing and a curse. It creates a rich vibrant world which puts you on edge all the time.

Fool's Hope is WEIRD! Nothing is what it seems, the world makes zero consistent sense by human standards and what might look familiar very quickly isn't. And Fool's Hope isn't just home to humans. The Meta have been nicking other alien races from around the galaxy as well and they're just as incomprehensible as the rest of the world. But this descriptive feast is both a blessing and a curse. While it creates for a wild environment to explore and immerse yourself in, sometimes it becomes a lot of a lot. The number of times I found myself skimming setpieces because it just became too much to process after a while got a bit under my skin. It wasn't a dealbreaker and I'm sure more attentive people will lap it up, but for me I did have my limits.

It does help though, that the plot itself is pretty straightforward. After the first half establishes Zero on the world, trying to acclimatize to things, the second half becomes a quest plot, with Zero and a small group of survivors traveling to a 'Progress Station', where the Meta leave behind useful tech for survival. Kinda like Roadside Picnic but with more Shoggoths.

But what's a story without conflict? And in A Splendid Chaos, the conflict comes in the form of Fiskle, a sociology professor who was caught in an planetary anomaly called 'The Current', which twists and mutates living creatures into warped exaggerations of themselves. So naturally Fiskle develops a God Complex, establishes a cult and attempts a takeover of the planet. And Zero and co are in his crosshairs....

Which brings me onto characters. Overall, it's a mixed bag. Shirley doesn't spend a lot of time at the start developing the characters. Only enough to give them names and basic character traits before he dumps on the planet. And the same applies to the rest of the cast. The named characters of the human settlement are basic bitches with basic traits. Here's the tough lesbian, here's the former cop, here's the naive poli-sci student who thinks democracy will work. The same applies to Fiskle's cult. Here's the gibbering sycophant, here's the gender-swapped bloodthirsty sexpot, here's the heavies who function as preachers. It's all pretty by the book. Even Fiskle himself is something of a one-note dude, being given just enough traits for you to know he's a shifty prick before the Current warps him into a megalomaniac with a god-complex.

But when the characters do work, Shirley makes them work. Zero functions as an audience surrogate, lost and confused, stuck with existential dread but over time develops into someone you could call heroic. One of Fiskle's cult starts to have doubts and develops empathy for the humans. Hell even two of Zero's group - two aliens from different races - are given solid characterization, even if only to establish how different they are from the human cast.

And the gore!



One thing I know about Shirley is that his gore is very visceral and very nasty. And while he uses it sparingly here, when he commits to it, he goes full on. The scene where Fiskle and his cult deal with a traitor is goopy and horrifying and given how casual the whole scene plays out, it's a visual nightmare.

A Splendid Chaos for me is a mixed bag in all the right and wrong ways. Shirley did succeed in creating a surrealist nightmare, but I would say he sacrificed familiarity a bit too much to get there. The characters vary from bland to solid enough to keep the story going. The plot is basic but doesn't overstep its boundaries as to be alienating and the visual spectacles on display can be both amazing in terms of gore and beautiful or the equivalent of this:



It's still a recommend from me, because despite all my gripes, its something I seek from any piece of fiction. It's original, it's distinct and it's interesting.

Just...don't take any mushrooms beforehand.
Or do. I'm not your dad.

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cyberpunk is dead. Long live the Cyberpunks.

Actually, the c-word field may not be dead, but it seems to have achieved its purpose and the authors of the movement are moving on. Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net, though definitely a progeny of the movement, carries a much larger humanistic message within it. The same could be said for Lewis Shiner's Deserted Cities of the Heart, which sliced the "cyber" off with a flick of the stiletto and decided to just be "punk." And the cyberfather William Gibson with his latest, Mona Lisa Overdrive, matured into the Zen prophet of cyberness and seems to have wrapped it all up for the Sprawl.

And, beyond some of the more fringier Cyberfellows like Rudy Rucker (who writes strange, "transreal" stuff without the need of spiffy titles), Marc Laidlaw, Tom Maddox, and Paul di Filippo, John Shirley seems to be the last kid on the block still fighting the revolution. Or is he? The Eclipse trilogy, billed as "the ultimate cyberpunk epic" has recently seen its second volume, but Shirley's latest work is about as far away from the seamy undersides of technology that you can get. Subtitled "An Interplanetary Fantasy," Shirley's A Splendid Chaos is indeed a chaotic turn of events from the cyberfield.

Shirley's curve ball in this sequence isn't the fact that A Splendid Chaos is fantasy. Shirley's 1980 novel, City Come A-Walkin', straight fantasy in any sense, blasted the staid fantasy field because of the wealth of originality within it and the punk sensibilities. Forget the unicorns and pink furry dragons that inhabit your normal fantasy--City Come A Walkin' was about a walking manifestation of San Francisco, and its accompanying fight against the totalitarian system of monetary control was a story for the eighties. Seedy, paranoiac, and anarchic--fantasypunk, if we must resort to labels.

But A Splendid Chaos isn't like City Come A-Walkin'--just like it doesn't resemble the Eclipse work or Shirley's horror novels. In a totally new departure, Shirley encroaches on the field mined by Piers Anthony and Jack Chalker in their early novels, and what John Varley proved in Titan could be done in an intelligent manner. Plop a bunch of humans together with the weirdest assortment of aliens that you can conceivably manage (throw out the physics book, it's okay), and see what kind of story you can get out of it.

If that makes it sound as if A Splendid Chaos was written haphazardly, I've given you the wrong impression. Sure, that's what the plot boils down to, but the simplest plots can belie the variety of expression and characterization.

Shirley has dropped the "punk" from his repertoire for this book, thought it lurks somewhere in the background like an injured child, and for the most part concentrates on achieving the most alienness that he can manage. And he succeeds, creating a unique cross-section of races and a world that he brings vividly--mainly in purples and bright green--to life.

Just like Shirley's punkness remains in the background, occasionally popping up for a brief visit, his dabbling into the horror field is also evident. For example, despite the fantasy subtitle, Shirley lives by the rules he gives himself. So that, although he has a form of magic incorporated into the novel (IAMton particles--possibly a Rene Descartes allusion?), when he kills off a character, it's uncommonly like the real thing--violent, messy, and permanent.

Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, A Splendid Chaos is exactly what the title says. A little bit horror, some fantasy, a measure of punk, and a lot of Shirley mixed in a 400-page novel that is quite splendid. And is anything better than that?

[Ah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reads like a novelisation of a computer game that does not exist...in a good way.I realise you could say this about any novel to some extent* but it is particularly apt in this case.
*Except for novels that are novelisations of computer games that do exist.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally a book with unique characters , this book had such unique characters and a super unique world , every character had its own traits and biology and culture and i was enthralled from the first page . I often am bored with books cus they are just boring , but this was just so unique ! It had a great story , adventure , peril, love, evil, etc I couldn’t put it down and that says a lot as I almost never find good books . I liked the two story lines that went back n forth , I love when a book shows us one groups perspective then moved us to the other groups perspective so we can see both sides . And it had a great ending as well , everything neatly finished with no questions ! Although I loved it so much I do wish there was more .

[Liz Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very, different, and, interesting? Could definitely tell that a man wrote this book, didn’t care too much for the sexual and descriptive things.

[Andy Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't like it.