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Punktown #1
Punktown
Like Ray Bradbury, Jeffrey Thomas writes dark science fiction at the border of horror, and like Bradbury's collection, The Martian Chronicles, Thomas's Punktown uses a shared setting to tell very different stories of very different characters, both human and alien. The Martian Chronicles follows the rise and fall of the human colonization of Mars, while Punktown's nine stories (seven previously unpublished) follow a more subtle arc, examining the course of human development, from destructive youth through the dangers of parenthood and career to late adulthood, when losses and the weight of memories bring their own horrors. As The Martian Chronicles uses the future to consider mid-American, midcentury concerns, Punktown uses the future to reflect a fin-de-siècle present shaped by brutally rapid change, by rampant abuse, by the dehumanizing acts of governments and corporations, and by serial-killer epidemics and schoolroom massacres. But in the end, Punktown little resembles The Martian Chronicles. And, though it is not in the same league as Bradbury's classic, Punktown demonstrates that Thomas is a rising talent of considerable power and imagination.
In "The Reflections of Ghosts," an artist clones himself to make art for sadistic patrons, until he finds himself trapped in the ultimate self-absorption. The shadows of Poe and Lovecraft lie subtly over "The Palace of Nothingness," a mysterious, abandoned factory that may not be empty after all. And a chip-implanted detective who can forget nothing must examine mass-murder scenes in "The Library of Sorrows." --Cynthia Ward
Contains:
* The Reflections of Ghosts
* The Flaying Season
* Wakizashi
* Precious Metal
* Heart for Heart's Sake
* Face
* The Palace of Nothingness
* Immolation
* The Library of Sorrows
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
114 people are currently reading
1415 people want to read
About the author
Jeffrey Thomas
245 books282 followersJeffrey Thomas is an American author of weird fiction, the creator of the acclaimed setting Punktown. Books in the Punktown universe include the short story collections Punktown, Voices from Punktown, Punktown: Shades of Grey (with his brother, Scott Thomas), and Ghosts of Punktown. Novels in that setting include Deadstock, Blue War, Monstrocity, Health Agent, Everybody Scream!, Red Cells, and The New God. Thomas’s other short story collections include The Unnamed Country, Gods of a Nameless Country, The Endless Fall, Haunted Worlds, Worship the Night, Thirteen Specimens, Nocturnal Emissions, Doomsdays, Terror Incognita, Unholy Dimensions, AAAIIIEEE!!!, Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood, Carrion Men, Voices from Hades, The Return of Enoch Coffin, and Entering Gosston. His other novels include The American, Boneland, Subject 11, Letters From Hades, The Fall of Hades, The Exploded Soul, The Nought, Thought Forms, Beyond the Door, Lost in Darkness, and A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers.
His work has been reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII (editor Karl Edward Wagner), The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #14 (editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction #1 (editors Laird Barron and Michael Kelly). At NecronomiCon 2024 Thomas received the Robert Bloch Award for his contributions to weird fiction.
Though he considers Viet Nam his second home, Thomas lives in Massachusetts.
His work has been reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII (editor Karl Edward Wagner), The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #14 (editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction #1 (editors Laird Barron and Michael Kelly). At NecronomiCon 2024 Thomas received the Robert Bloch Award for his contributions to weird fiction.
Though he considers Viet Nam his second home, Thomas lives in Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 85 reviews
July 22, 2017
First a bit of a warning regarding this collection: if you are too happy, you may try reading this all at once. I had to read a story or two between other books. That was the only way for me to get through it and am I glad I did.
Punktown is a gem. Depressing as hell. The stories take place on a remote world collonized by humans. There are so many other races from other planets and even other dimensions. There is a huge chasm between rich and poor, one race and the other, creatures created by humans and those they are replacing. I can't list all the ugly things the Punktown residents have to deal with on a daily basis. And now when I think about it, most stories have redemption and love. It's not exactly in your face good beats evil, but all the small things people could do.
Whatever I write about this book, it won't do it justice.
The stories are:
Punktown is a gem. Depressing as hell. The stories take place on a remote world collonized by humans. There are so many other races from other planets and even other dimensions. There is a huge chasm between rich and poor, one race and the other, creatures created by humans and those they are replacing. I can't list all the ugly things the Punktown residents have to deal with on a daily basis. And now when I think about it, most stories have redemption and love. It's not exactly in your face good beats evil, but all the small things people could do.
Whatever I write about this book, it won't do it justice.
The stories are:
The Reflections Of Ghosts
Pink Pills
The Flaying Season
Union Dick
Wakizashi
Dissecting The Soul
Precious Metal
Sisters Of No Mercy
Heart for Heart’s Sake
The Ballad Of Moosecock Lip
Face
The Pressman
The Palace Of Nothingness
The Rusted Gates Of Heaven
Immolation
Unlimited Daylight
The Library Of Sorrows
Nom de Guerre
The Color Shrain
January 2, 2021
I saw Punktown as being an opportunity to satirize society in a manner as grotesque as my interpretation of that woman in the car. I would attempt to caricature humankind in the often obscure but always unsettling way Bosch did in his paintings.
A short-story collection linked by setting rather than theme or character, Punktown collects roughly a dozen stories set in an Earth-established colony called Paxton, but known as Punktown, on the planet Oasis. Punktown is essentially the creation of a Lovecraftian monster who was really into cyberpunk and had the capacity to make a planet. At it's core, it's Weird fiction but it's also heavy on the sci-fi and elements of cyberpunk. A healthy dash of Lovecraft too, for example the Tikkihotto race who have medusa like antennae in their eye sockets instead of traditional eyes.
The stories themselves are sort of slice-of-life style stories that follow a character through some part of their life. A lot of varied lives are lived in Punktown, and the stories are varied too, ranging from stories about struggling artists, to assassins to a man who creates clones of himself to defile. None of the stories are directly linked, though some stories contain references to characters from other stories. Instead, they all paint a picture of a small part of this intriguing place that Thomas has come up with, though with each I felt like there was more to discover about this place, not less, and I'm compelled to read the rest of Thomas' Punktown work to find out more.
I was impressed by the consistent quality of the stories here, and while some will be more memorable to me than others, I enjoyed all of them equally which is not something I can say about other short-story collection I have read or sampled. I'm glad I've discovered this bizarre work and can go one to read more by this author.
A short-story collection linked by setting rather than theme or character, Punktown collects roughly a dozen stories set in an Earth-established colony called Paxton, but known as Punktown, on the planet Oasis. Punktown is essentially the creation of a Lovecraftian monster who was really into cyberpunk and had the capacity to make a planet. At it's core, it's Weird fiction but it's also heavy on the sci-fi and elements of cyberpunk. A healthy dash of Lovecraft too, for example the Tikkihotto race who have medusa like antennae in their eye sockets instead of traditional eyes.
The stories themselves are sort of slice-of-life style stories that follow a character through some part of their life. A lot of varied lives are lived in Punktown, and the stories are varied too, ranging from stories about struggling artists, to assassins to a man who creates clones of himself to defile. None of the stories are directly linked, though some stories contain references to characters from other stories. Instead, they all paint a picture of a small part of this intriguing place that Thomas has come up with, though with each I felt like there was more to discover about this place, not less, and I'm compelled to read the rest of Thomas' Punktown work to find out more.
I was impressed by the consistent quality of the stories here, and while some will be more memorable to me than others, I enjoyed all of them equally which is not something I can say about other short-story collection I have read or sampled. I'm glad I've discovered this bizarre work and can go one to read more by this author.
November 10, 2015
Within the confines of Punktown, a far-future multi-species colony on a faraway world, Jeffrey Thomas weaves gritty sci-fi, body horror and a constant sense of alienation (in more ways than one) to tell tales of artists, aliens and assassins coming face to face with poverty, violence, disease, heartbreak and more. The viewpoints are diverse and not always human, the stories are all different and yet there's a great unity to this collection, most obviously seen in how characters from different stories are alluded to in other tales, but also in the common themes and the despairing but somehow still romantic and humane worldview underlining everything. Like John Claude Smith, Thomas is a writer who will drag you through the grime and gore, but will never leave you feeling grimy for having partaken of his fictions. This work may have splatterpunk roots, but there is a generosity of spirit and broadness of vision that makes it a real classic of modern weird fiction. This is where your journey through Punktown begins. You won't like it here, but you'll want to come back.
May 31, 2016
Not badly written, but extremely depressing and almost without hope. I don't think I'm going to continue this anthology series because it simply drags me down emotionally.
December 28, 2020
Wonderfully creative stories with a range of tastes and tones that run the gamut of emotions. Jeffrey Thomas is an author I wasn't familiar with before this year, but I am looking forward to diving headfirst into his work. Simply put, this was awesome and was exactly what I needed.
My favorites include The Reflections of Ghosts, Wakizashi, Dissecting the Soul, Precious Metal, Face, Immolation, Unlimited Daylight, The Palace of Nothingness, and Nom De Guerre.
My favorites include The Reflections of Ghosts, Wakizashi, Dissecting the Soul, Precious Metal, Face, Immolation, Unlimited Daylight, The Palace of Nothingness, and Nom De Guerre.
May 31, 2014
The stories in Punktown blend the fantastic with the utterly human to form a techno, dystopian dreamscape that is as amazing and horrific as it is heartbreaking, and painfully real. Jeffrey Thomas is one of the masters of modern horror fiction, and Punktown is a great example of why.
In stories where the awe of speculative fiction could sometimes shadow character, Thomas's honesty and sensitivity keep everything down to earth...even when we are dealing with Choom and Tikkihotto! As remote as some of the species of characters are they tend to be highly relatable as Thomas never strays from themes that are totally human, and universal.
The stories Face and Heart for Heart's Sake are great examples of speculative wonderment meeting the painfully real. In Heart For Heart's Sake, we see lovers part ways when they are faced with a financial ultimatum, and Face deals with a father who loses his son. Both stories have the backdrop of a cyberpunk dystopia that surprisingly goes well with the subject matter, and this kind of juxtaposition is not an easy thing to pull off. Not since I read Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles has, what essentially is a Science Fiction universe been so believable. Art also plays a huge role in terms of Thomas's themes, actually art is probably the most pervasive theme in the book.
The stories also contain a good amount of eroticism and violence. Thomas handles these well, and with such lush, gorgeous descriptions there is a certain beauty in a decapitated body as rendered by Jeffrey Thomas, particularly The Library of Sorrows where a killer has headless victims hanging from the ceiling like stalactites for aesthetic reasons...well done, Mr. Thomas.
I'm glad I finally got around to reading Punktown, and I'm looking forward to delving deeper into this universe and the work of Jeffrey Thomas.
In stories where the awe of speculative fiction could sometimes shadow character, Thomas's honesty and sensitivity keep everything down to earth...even when we are dealing with Choom and Tikkihotto! As remote as some of the species of characters are they tend to be highly relatable as Thomas never strays from themes that are totally human, and universal.
The stories Face and Heart for Heart's Sake are great examples of speculative wonderment meeting the painfully real. In Heart For Heart's Sake, we see lovers part ways when they are faced with a financial ultimatum, and Face deals with a father who loses his son. Both stories have the backdrop of a cyberpunk dystopia that surprisingly goes well with the subject matter, and this kind of juxtaposition is not an easy thing to pull off. Not since I read Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles has, what essentially is a Science Fiction universe been so believable. Art also plays a huge role in terms of Thomas's themes, actually art is probably the most pervasive theme in the book.
The stories also contain a good amount of eroticism and violence. Thomas handles these well, and with such lush, gorgeous descriptions there is a certain beauty in a decapitated body as rendered by Jeffrey Thomas, particularly The Library of Sorrows where a killer has headless victims hanging from the ceiling like stalactites for aesthetic reasons...well done, Mr. Thomas.
I'm glad I finally got around to reading Punktown, and I'm looking forward to delving deeper into this universe and the work of Jeffrey Thomas.
September 11, 2017
I first read 'Monstrocity' about a year ago. This was the original collection of short stories from which that setting sprang. These tales are a kind of 'low-sci-fi' focusing more on mood and often sadness over great and terrible journeys of derring-do. The science fiction/noir/pseudohorror meshes perfectly however (add a gloomy retrowave soundtrack for optimal reading) and it becomes a necessary addition to the collections of those who enjoy genre-benders.
December 9, 2020
This collection is incredible. Thomas does a great job of capturing different moods. I loved how dark this book was, but I also liked how every once in a while a story would have a somewhat happy ending.
March 18, 2016
It's sad because I love stuff like this (the stories are all set in the same gritty human/alien city and interconnected with cameos of characters from other stories popping up at random - absolutely one of my favorite things in a story collection), but this is actually going to be a DNF for me. I normally don't rate DNFs, but this is one of those instances where everything was going pretty well (solid 3.5 star and rounding up) but then I hit Heart for Heart's Sake and it derailed. There are enough spoilers in other reviews that I will not recap the plot (this is the artist-sold-as-part-of-art-installation story). I will just cut to the main issue: Nimbus (the female artist) is a total freaking fembot. Authors out there, let me just issue a plea: if your story involves a protagonist being raped, and the wrap up looks anything like: [Woman:"Baby, I'm sorry I had to destroy your beautiful art (that I will never tell you got me raped)." Man: "It's OK I guess I can get a job so we never have to do this again" *hug* *walk off into sunset*] --- REWRITE. Rewrite immediately. I'm not saying a woman in this postition would never be so shellshocked that she would react this way. I'm saying that the way this reaction in this story was presented was so unbelievable I almost threw my e-reader. This woman should be awesome. I thought she was going to be awesome. Then she had not one believable shred of reaction to what happened to her. She exists to please her man-child. FEMBOT. The sad thing is that other stories in the collection had such emotional realism about situations of trauma (including rape) that this just stuck out like a soar thumb. I've been wrestling with this a while now, as I really did enjoy a few of the stories prior to this one, but I really don't think I can finish. This story has been bugging me for a month now and after an author commits an atrocity like this maybe I don't trust him enough to go back into the world he built. (I'm giving it two stars instead of one based on the strength of the other stories before the deal breaker.)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 17, 2015
The book that kind of defines Jeffrey Thomas and sets out his most famous creation is Punktown. I was first introduced to Punktown (the setting) via three stories in his totally fucking awesome Unholy Dimensions collection, and was interested to see more of it.
Punktown (the place) is the nickname of Paxton, a future Earth colony on a different planet that is like a mix of a lot of stuff, Total Recall springs to mind, but mostly I think of Shadowrun, the badass RPG. But don't think this is sci fi, no way dudes, well, kind of yes, and kind of horror, and kind of crime fiction, and kind of fantasy. Don't get wrapped up in that.
I'm not typically a fan of sci fi or fantasy or cyber(or steam)punk or noir, etc., but the strength of Jeffrey Thomas, as I've written in my last three reviews of his books, all read within the last couple of months, is in his plots. This dude can write stories that, no matter what kind of genre cloak you put on them, are absolute page turners. Mostly nail-biting "what the fuck is going to happen NEXT?!" stories, and some other more low-key stuff, some of it, as wussy as it makes me feel saying so, actually touching.
In my opinion (this is my fourth book by him, so I may be speaking from too little experience, but he's 4-0 so far) he's another Rod Serling, but a modern, punky Rod Serling, one that gets gory and horrifying and gross sometimes, but still the same old Rod, the one whose stories just stick a hook in your brain and reel you in to the end.
I'd go into my favorite stories, but I don't have my Kindle on me at the moment, maybe later.
Punktown (the place) is the nickname of Paxton, a future Earth colony on a different planet that is like a mix of a lot of stuff, Total Recall springs to mind, but mostly I think of Shadowrun, the badass RPG. But don't think this is sci fi, no way dudes, well, kind of yes, and kind of horror, and kind of crime fiction, and kind of fantasy. Don't get wrapped up in that.
I'm not typically a fan of sci fi or fantasy or cyber(or steam)punk or noir, etc., but the strength of Jeffrey Thomas, as I've written in my last three reviews of his books, all read within the last couple of months, is in his plots. This dude can write stories that, no matter what kind of genre cloak you put on them, are absolute page turners. Mostly nail-biting "what the fuck is going to happen NEXT?!" stories, and some other more low-key stuff, some of it, as wussy as it makes me feel saying so, actually touching.
In my opinion (this is my fourth book by him, so I may be speaking from too little experience, but he's 4-0 so far) he's another Rod Serling, but a modern, punky Rod Serling, one that gets gory and horrifying and gross sometimes, but still the same old Rod, the one whose stories just stick a hook in your brain and reel you in to the end.
I'd go into my favorite stories, but I don't have my Kindle on me at the moment, maybe later.
August 27, 2020
What a wild ride. Thomas does not let up at all with dealing with violence, social struggle, and tragedy.
While some of the stories in this felt a smidge dated and I could have done without some of the more "erotic" elements throughout some of these stories, Thomas provides a world-class experience with understanding setting and place. PUNKTOWN is as much an immersive collection of stories as it is a real place in Thomas's mind and the reader's.
It is a clear classic to me and in some ways a foundational tome to understanding the merging of sci fi and horror as well as seeing general trends of how social unrest naturally fits within these genres. Some of these stories are genuinely horrifying, while others are heart-rendingly tragic.
Enthusiasts of these two genres, especially for where they intersect cannot miss out on PUNKTOWN.
While some of the stories in this felt a smidge dated and I could have done without some of the more "erotic" elements throughout some of these stories, Thomas provides a world-class experience with understanding setting and place. PUNKTOWN is as much an immersive collection of stories as it is a real place in Thomas's mind and the reader's.
It is a clear classic to me and in some ways a foundational tome to understanding the merging of sci fi and horror as well as seeing general trends of how social unrest naturally fits within these genres. Some of these stories are genuinely horrifying, while others are heart-rendingly tragic.
Enthusiasts of these two genres, especially for where they intersect cannot miss out on PUNKTOWN.
March 30, 2020
The city stretched before him in layers of paling gray, dense stalagmites to the stalactites of the bedroom, a tainted coral reef teeming with life, helicars floating like swarms of fish. Like swarms of flies above the great misty carcass of Punktown.
March 6, 2019
Remind me to never live in a place like Punktown. Because if I did, I'd probably be robbed, raped and murdered all within the space of an hour.
And then someone would recycle my body into clone parts, to be robbed, raped and murdered all over again.
Punktown is the first in a series of anthology series by Jeffrey Thomas from his titular city-planet, which each story told from the perspective of someone living their lives there. The recurring theme throughout these stories is that something from a previous story is referenced in a connective-tissue kind of way to meld the stories together as one long chain, the idea being that all of Punktown is interconnected. This anthology also has the distinction of being one of the most diverse in terms of alien creativity I've seen. Just to give you an idea, we have:
- The Choom (the natives to Punktown. Humanoid aliens with jawlines that stretch back to their ears. Like this)
- The L'lewed (A race of aliens with bodies like molten wax. They have a ritual that involves the ritual slaughter of a vatbred clone race, by sliding down their throats and experiencing their death spasms.)
- The Wai'Ai (A race of blind humanoid aliens with heads like dolphin domes. They use echolocation like bats. Looks like this)
- The Tikihotto (Thomas's first creation. Humanoid Aliens with writhing tendrils in place of eyes, which they use to perceive the world around them. Like this)
As well as a few others....
So once more with feeling, here's my quick capsule reviews:
The Reflection of Ghosts: Drew is a scientist/artist who makes clone bodies of himself as art pieces for wealthy upper class tosspots to abuse and denigrate. But his latest creation is his best; a female version of himself. And things are about to go south very quickly.
A dark depressing piece about someone rediscovering their humanity. Drew is kind of a shitstain of a human being. He doesn't see his clones as people, rather as objects and its only when he develops a bond to his female clone that he's forced to look in the mirror. And he doesn't like what he sees. A good character study piece but it does depend how much you can stomach Drew.
Pink Pills: A debilitating epidemic has swept over Punktown. Giant pink marble-like tumours are growing on people's bodies, hobbling them, breaking them, destroying them from the inside out. But is the epidemic natural, or was it made by aliens?
This one has a kind of subtle, unsettling dread throughout. The origins of the pink tumours is never spelled out and while their true origins are hinted at, its never clear. Marisol, the main character, is one of those afflicted and her decline into despair and impotence is heartbreaking. Much of the tension and scare factor comes from Marisol's nightmares and they are suitably surreal and unsettling to make you question what is going on. Sad, but effectively unsettling piece.
The Flaying Season: Kohl has a problem. At some point in the past, she was raped. But she agreed to undergo a surgical procedure which removed the incident from her memory. She knows she was raped, but she can't remember who did it, where it happened or why. And now that ignorance is eating away at her.
Notice a trend here? Yeah, a lot of these stories are depressing as fuck and if you've got this far and are still on board, get ready for more. This story is one long unsettling character piece about a woman's attempt to try and get her life back, only to be hampered by her past. The whole issue of her rape I think is handled in a mature but depressing way. It's not written in a titillating nor exploitative manner and since its the focus of the story, much of Kohl's arc is built around her interactions with others. And Kohl is an interesting figure. One part sympathetic, one part sad, one part One-step-away-from-psychotic-break, watching her fall apart is a train wreck in motion. It kind of highlights how trauma never truly leaves you and while the ending is abrupt, it feels suitable given what it suggests will happen.
Union Dick: Yolk, an ex-Union leader/technical inspector has been given the screw-over. The companies of Punktown are turning their workers into almost literal hamsters on wheels. Except its all totally legal and acceptable. Everything he worked for, the Union War he fought in, has been made meaningless. And now his life is falling apart.
Remember Roadwork? That story by Richard Bachman about a man fighting against the city trying to build a road over his house? This feels like Thomas's Roadwork. The story of a man fighting a losing battle against changing times, about his world and life falling away from him and like Roadwork, it ends in a way that feels like a destructive end to all things. Yolk is a depressing figure to be sure. Like Barton Dawes in Roadwork, Yolk had a loving wife - who's made likeable enough to feel like a gutpunch when she dies needlessly - a job where he was respected and a life he liked. And now it's all draining away. The ending is rough, ugly and hopeless but like Roadwork it's about the journey, not the destination.
Wakizashi: The L'lewed ambassador has committed murder. His retinue forgot to bring the ritual sacrifice clones with them. And now Officer Soko is going to find out the hard way how sometimes there's no reconciling cultural differences.
This one hit me in a particular way. At the time of this review, I'm living in Japan so Soko's plight about dealing with cultural differences is one that intrigues me. Thomas remembers to give Soko a good character arc, examining the former barbarism of Japanese culture - remember that Japan practiced seppuku - and how his own life and culture has changed. The other characters are well developed with the L'lewed ambassador being suitably alien/unsettling, the cultural liason being a combination of earnest compassion/unwavering spineslessness and the Wai'Ai couple's plight being both sad, angering and sympathetic. It also has the distinction of being one of the few stories with a semi-happy ending so it has that going for it.
Dissecting the Soul: Maddie, a forensic pathologist, has extracted the memory files from the mind of Peter Wegener, an alleged mass murderer. And in reviewing those memories, she's going to question what makes a monster.
This one is one of my favourites, not because of the subject matter, but because of how it's written. Maddie is not some judge overseeing Wegener's trial. She's an impartial observer like us, watching things after the fact. Maddie digs deep into Wegener's mind and Thomas's writing humanizes the perpetrator. Thomas doesn't detract from his crimes, but highlights them next to his childhood/adolescence/adulthood and it makes you wonder as a reader where the line is drawn and what happens to turn people bad. And the ending actually made me feel bad for the child that became the monster.
Precious Metal: Grey is an enforcer for the Triad, one of Punktown's crime syndicates. One night he becomes a bystander to a mob hit on a robot jazz quartet. Robots have been outlawed since the Union Wars, but many illegals still live on, eking out an existence. But on Christmas, Grey's going to get caught in much more than a mob hit.
This one is weird. On paper, I like the idea, but the execution is kind of wonky. Grey is initially depicted as a cold, bigoted thug but suddenly has a crisis of conscience when the mob hit goes off. And later when he spares a bot's life, he does it out of blithe dismissal rather than compassion. Stories like this make or break on the protag and here I think Thomas didn't know what he wanted Grey to be. An okay story, let down by wonky characterization.
Sisters of No Mercy: These bitches are badass. They watch the Evil Women Channel and sneer at those milksops who think they're so evil and badass. But their newest recruit is about to show them what it really takes to be an evil woman in Punktown....
This one almost feels like a black comedy deconstruction - if you can forgive me using a bit of high-brow poncy academic lingo here - of both shallow girl-power culture and hangers-on in general. All of the women are suitably smug and arrogant and watching them get their just desserts from a woman who comes across as more than a little unhinged right from the start is both unsettling and satisfying.
Heart for Heart's Sake: Nimbus and Teal are two broke artists living in Punktown. They are barely getting by until a rich Kalian buys Teal's latest exhibit, of which Nimbus is part of the exhibit. Which means he buys Nimbus too....
This one is an interesting piece. I recently did a re-read for this review after getting into a back and forth with someone here on Goodreads about it and found myself liking it still, but seeing it from another perspective. The story by and large is about what happens when artistic integrity is whored out to the rich, shallow upper-class, but it also has a strange matter of Nimbus basically being whored out as well. Personally I found both Teal and Nimbus to be pretty sympathetic characters; broke, desperate yet very much in love and supportive so for me at least when Nimbus is raped - I'm kind of hesitant to use that word given the circumstances - it hit me like a gutpunch. But the person I talked to felt the ending was contrived and the glossing of the rape was poorly handled. I disagree, but I can see where she was coming from. Your mileage may vary.
Personally, I was just shocked to have a civil conversation on this website with someone.....Go me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The Ballad of Moosecock Lip: Brine, a laid-off factory worker is offered a job by his mate Dazey. They're going to a drug trade up on Moosecock Lip. Orange is a drug-addict with nothing in her life. And then she and Brine meet....
This one to be honest, I don't remember that well. It's basically a short flash-fiction piece written in poem/song format and I never really cared for it. I've never been one for extensive song lyrics in prose, because it's hard to get a feel for the song or its tune when all you have is the lyrics. Thomas does some interesting things with the format. Brine and Dazey's parts are written like a standard ballad, while Orange's parts are written fast and loose. The story ends somewhat happily, but it wasn't that memorable. Not my cup of tea.
Face: Declan's son is five years old. He is also a mutant, a little boy with the body of a fetus confined to a mechanical wheelchair. And then three weeks before Christmas, Ian dies. And Declan's already difficult life falls apart.
This one is just straight up depressing. No aliens, no robots, no sci-fi. It is pretty much the story of a husband's life falling apart after the death of his son. Declan and his wife Rebecca are decently fleshed out as two well-meaning if flawed people. Their faith stopped them from aborting Ian, they're tired, worn-out emotionally and physically and when Ian dies, both handle it differently. The focus is mainly on Declan however and as we read him quietly fall apart, the ending feels like a slug to the feels.
The Pressman: A new robot pressman has been hired in the printing department of a newspaper in Punktown. And Immanuel Glint's got more than a few choice words to say about that.
This one's another short black comedy piece that seems to be there to lighten the tone of the anthology as a whole. Quick, sweet and simple. Nothing really that stands out although the robot has a kind of dry humour about it that makes it enjoyable.
The Palace of Nothingness: Titus is a property investigator. He's found an abandoned building that shouldn't exist. He doesn't like what he finds inside.
I kind of feel like Thomas was channeling a little of Thomas Ligotti into this one. There's an underlying sense of dread that oozes through the story. Titus feels like a haunted house patron, stumbling through this dark empty place where there's something just....off about the place, but you can't say what. Its not a scarefest, more of a quiet unsettling piece with some subtle moments.
The Rusted Gates of Heaven: Mendeni is a Choom working for Paxton's University's History Department, looking for lost relics of Choom heritage across the planet. So when he finds some remains on the Belakee's estate, he gets more than he bargained for.
This one is a quick little story without too much fluff. A brutally ugly little piece about what happens when people use and abuse history and heritage. Not much to see here, moving on.
Immolation: Magnesium Jones is a clone, vatborn and bred for labour. He has no rights, no freedom until he escapes. He struggles to make ends meet except now he's been hired to kill a man.
A sharp little action thriller with a sympathetic anti-hero and a semi predictable plot. A fun read but nothing outstanding.
Unlimited Daylight: Anoushka is a bibliophile. She loves books and one day comes upon a small bookstore run by a Tikihotto named Kress. Except Kress has an eye disease. His eye-tendrils are rotting away. And Anoushka finds herself falling for him.
This I think is one of the sweetest stories in the whole book. The sci-fi angle is downplayed in favour of being a quiet character drama of two people from two different cultures/races falling for each other. Kress's condition isn't played for melodrama or needless suffering. It becomes something of a linchpin for Anoushka to develop from and the ending is probably the most genuinely happy ending in the whole anthology.
The Library of Sorrows: MacDiaz is a cop. At the age of ten he was implanted with a Mnemosyne, a tiny computer chip that records everything he sees. Every memory he has ever had is there. But sometimes remembering everything is not a blessing.
A slow character piece about a man grappling with the pain and suffering he has to endure throughout his life and work and the effect the computer chip has on him. A sad melancholy piece that actually ends happily. I'm surprised I forgot this one. It's actually very beautiful in a sad way.
Nom De Guerre: Jasper Conch and his assassin mates have been contracted for a job for Ziggurat Pharma. They are to take part in a four-on-four duel against Rescue Pharma's own assassins for the right to produce a medication for the epidemic (seen in Pink Pills). Except the rival assassins are Vlessi. The Vlessi are an alien race that believe that every Vlessi has a shadow self, another entity that is their doppleganger, their double. And the Vlessi have Jasper and his mates in their sights....
In concept, I like this story. The Vlessi are an interesting species in the world of Punktown, a race I don't think Thomas has explored that much. But in execution the story kind of falls flat in the second half. The entire shtick of the story is literally spilled out in something that's almost like a plot dump and none of it feels organic. This could have been such a deeper, more compelling piece but its a bit of a flub.
The Color Shrain: My copy doesn't have this one, but apparently some copies do. This one popped up in Voices from Punktown (reviewed here
The Color Shrain: Specola is a professional thief and he's very good at it. Because Specola has a mutant talent. He can fold things up inside himself, locked away in a dimensional safe place. Except his latest assignment has his latest item stuck. And his employers are going to get it out one way or another....
This is an oddball piece. The chapters are written in chronogical order, but the chapters are out of sequence. Ten chapters with chapter 1 coming right near the end of the story. This was kind of a weird one for me, and not just because of the strange structure. It was also a little bit surreal and disjointed and there were times when I wasn't sure what Thomas was trying to get at, especially with the flashbacks to Specola's childhood. Maybe it was analogous for how we lock away our memories and I'm just a stupid git for not realising it, but....I dunno. Interesting but not one I enjoyed as much as others.
So that's Punktown. I think overall the biggest weakness in the anthology is inconsistency. Some of the stories like Moosecock Lip feel like Thomas experimenting and while others like Precious Metal are not up to the best quality. The characters across the board are genuinely interesting while some of the storylines feel a little underdeveloped or a tad cliche. The tone of the book is overall bleak and depressing - although I knew that going in - but there are a few stories scattered throughout that are at least somewhat uplifting in small ways. Overall Punktown is decent, but Voices from Punktown is still a better overall read.
And then someone would recycle my body into clone parts, to be robbed, raped and murdered all over again.
Punktown is the first in a series of anthology series by Jeffrey Thomas from his titular city-planet, which each story told from the perspective of someone living their lives there. The recurring theme throughout these stories is that something from a previous story is referenced in a connective-tissue kind of way to meld the stories together as one long chain, the idea being that all of Punktown is interconnected. This anthology also has the distinction of being one of the most diverse in terms of alien creativity I've seen. Just to give you an idea, we have:
- The Choom (the natives to Punktown. Humanoid aliens with jawlines that stretch back to their ears. Like this)
- The L'lewed (A race of aliens with bodies like molten wax. They have a ritual that involves the ritual slaughter of a vatbred clone race, by sliding down their throats and experiencing their death spasms.)
- The Wai'Ai (A race of blind humanoid aliens with heads like dolphin domes. They use echolocation like bats. Looks like this)
- The Tikihotto (Thomas's first creation. Humanoid Aliens with writhing tendrils in place of eyes, which they use to perceive the world around them. Like this)
As well as a few others....
So once more with feeling, here's my quick capsule reviews:
The Reflection of Ghosts: Drew is a scientist/artist who makes clone bodies of himself as art pieces for wealthy upper class tosspots to abuse and denigrate. But his latest creation is his best; a female version of himself. And things are about to go south very quickly.
A dark depressing piece about someone rediscovering their humanity. Drew is kind of a shitstain of a human being. He doesn't see his clones as people, rather as objects and its only when he develops a bond to his female clone that he's forced to look in the mirror. And he doesn't like what he sees. A good character study piece but it does depend how much you can stomach Drew.
Pink Pills: A debilitating epidemic has swept over Punktown. Giant pink marble-like tumours are growing on people's bodies, hobbling them, breaking them, destroying them from the inside out. But is the epidemic natural, or was it made by aliens?
This one has a kind of subtle, unsettling dread throughout. The origins of the pink tumours is never spelled out and while their true origins are hinted at, its never clear. Marisol, the main character, is one of those afflicted and her decline into despair and impotence is heartbreaking. Much of the tension and scare factor comes from Marisol's nightmares and they are suitably surreal and unsettling to make you question what is going on. Sad, but effectively unsettling piece.
The Flaying Season: Kohl has a problem. At some point in the past, she was raped. But she agreed to undergo a surgical procedure which removed the incident from her memory. She knows she was raped, but she can't remember who did it, where it happened or why. And now that ignorance is eating away at her.
Notice a trend here? Yeah, a lot of these stories are depressing as fuck and if you've got this far and are still on board, get ready for more. This story is one long unsettling character piece about a woman's attempt to try and get her life back, only to be hampered by her past. The whole issue of her rape I think is handled in a mature but depressing way. It's not written in a titillating nor exploitative manner and since its the focus of the story, much of Kohl's arc is built around her interactions with others. And Kohl is an interesting figure. One part sympathetic, one part sad, one part One-step-away-from-psychotic-break, watching her fall apart is a train wreck in motion. It kind of highlights how trauma never truly leaves you and while the ending is abrupt, it feels suitable given what it suggests will happen.
Union Dick: Yolk, an ex-Union leader/technical inspector has been given the screw-over. The companies of Punktown are turning their workers into almost literal hamsters on wheels. Except its all totally legal and acceptable. Everything he worked for, the Union War he fought in, has been made meaningless. And now his life is falling apart.
Remember Roadwork? That story by Richard Bachman about a man fighting against the city trying to build a road over his house? This feels like Thomas's Roadwork. The story of a man fighting a losing battle against changing times, about his world and life falling away from him and like Roadwork, it ends in a way that feels like a destructive end to all things. Yolk is a depressing figure to be sure. Like Barton Dawes in Roadwork, Yolk had a loving wife - who's made likeable enough to feel like a gutpunch when she dies needlessly - a job where he was respected and a life he liked. And now it's all draining away. The ending is rough, ugly and hopeless but like Roadwork it's about the journey, not the destination.
Wakizashi: The L'lewed ambassador has committed murder. His retinue forgot to bring the ritual sacrifice clones with them. And now Officer Soko is going to find out the hard way how sometimes there's no reconciling cultural differences.
This one hit me in a particular way. At the time of this review, I'm living in Japan so Soko's plight about dealing with cultural differences is one that intrigues me. Thomas remembers to give Soko a good character arc, examining the former barbarism of Japanese culture - remember that Japan practiced seppuku - and how his own life and culture has changed. The other characters are well developed with the L'lewed ambassador being suitably alien/unsettling, the cultural liason being a combination of earnest compassion/unwavering spineslessness and the Wai'Ai couple's plight being both sad, angering and sympathetic. It also has the distinction of being one of the few stories with a semi-happy ending so it has that going for it.
Dissecting the Soul: Maddie, a forensic pathologist, has extracted the memory files from the mind of Peter Wegener, an alleged mass murderer. And in reviewing those memories, she's going to question what makes a monster.
This one is one of my favourites, not because of the subject matter, but because of how it's written. Maddie is not some judge overseeing Wegener's trial. She's an impartial observer like us, watching things after the fact. Maddie digs deep into Wegener's mind and Thomas's writing humanizes the perpetrator. Thomas doesn't detract from his crimes, but highlights them next to his childhood/adolescence/adulthood and it makes you wonder as a reader where the line is drawn and what happens to turn people bad. And the ending actually made me feel bad for the child that became the monster.
Precious Metal: Grey is an enforcer for the Triad, one of Punktown's crime syndicates. One night he becomes a bystander to a mob hit on a robot jazz quartet. Robots have been outlawed since the Union Wars, but many illegals still live on, eking out an existence. But on Christmas, Grey's going to get caught in much more than a mob hit.
This one is weird. On paper, I like the idea, but the execution is kind of wonky. Grey is initially depicted as a cold, bigoted thug but suddenly has a crisis of conscience when the mob hit goes off. And later when he spares a bot's life, he does it out of blithe dismissal rather than compassion. Stories like this make or break on the protag and here I think Thomas didn't know what he wanted Grey to be. An okay story, let down by wonky characterization.
Sisters of No Mercy: These bitches are badass. They watch the Evil Women Channel and sneer at those milksops who think they're so evil and badass. But their newest recruit is about to show them what it really takes to be an evil woman in Punktown....
This one almost feels like a black comedy deconstruction - if you can forgive me using a bit of high-brow poncy academic lingo here - of both shallow girl-power culture and hangers-on in general. All of the women are suitably smug and arrogant and watching them get their just desserts from a woman who comes across as more than a little unhinged right from the start is both unsettling and satisfying.
Heart for Heart's Sake: Nimbus and Teal are two broke artists living in Punktown. They are barely getting by until a rich Kalian buys Teal's latest exhibit, of which Nimbus is part of the exhibit. Which means he buys Nimbus too....
This one is an interesting piece. I recently did a re-read for this review after getting into a back and forth with someone here on Goodreads about it and found myself liking it still, but seeing it from another perspective. The story by and large is about what happens when artistic integrity is whored out to the rich, shallow upper-class, but it also has a strange matter of Nimbus basically being whored out as well. Personally I found both Teal and Nimbus to be pretty sympathetic characters; broke, desperate yet very much in love and supportive so for me at least when Nimbus is raped - I'm kind of hesitant to use that word given the circumstances - it hit me like a gutpunch. But the person I talked to felt the ending was contrived and the glossing of the rape was poorly handled. I disagree, but I can see where she was coming from. Your mileage may vary.
Personally, I was just shocked to have a civil conversation on this website with someone.....Go me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The Ballad of Moosecock Lip: Brine, a laid-off factory worker is offered a job by his mate Dazey. They're going to a drug trade up on Moosecock Lip. Orange is a drug-addict with nothing in her life. And then she and Brine meet....
This one to be honest, I don't remember that well. It's basically a short flash-fiction piece written in poem/song format and I never really cared for it. I've never been one for extensive song lyrics in prose, because it's hard to get a feel for the song or its tune when all you have is the lyrics. Thomas does some interesting things with the format. Brine and Dazey's parts are written like a standard ballad, while Orange's parts are written fast and loose. The story ends somewhat happily, but it wasn't that memorable. Not my cup of tea.
Face: Declan's son is five years old. He is also a mutant, a little boy with the body of a fetus confined to a mechanical wheelchair. And then three weeks before Christmas, Ian dies. And Declan's already difficult life falls apart.
This one is just straight up depressing. No aliens, no robots, no sci-fi. It is pretty much the story of a husband's life falling apart after the death of his son. Declan and his wife Rebecca are decently fleshed out as two well-meaning if flawed people. Their faith stopped them from aborting Ian, they're tired, worn-out emotionally and physically and when Ian dies, both handle it differently. The focus is mainly on Declan however and as we read him quietly fall apart, the ending feels like a slug to the feels.
The Pressman: A new robot pressman has been hired in the printing department of a newspaper in Punktown. And Immanuel Glint's got more than a few choice words to say about that.
This one's another short black comedy piece that seems to be there to lighten the tone of the anthology as a whole. Quick, sweet and simple. Nothing really that stands out although the robot has a kind of dry humour about it that makes it enjoyable.
The Palace of Nothingness: Titus is a property investigator. He's found an abandoned building that shouldn't exist. He doesn't like what he finds inside.
I kind of feel like Thomas was channeling a little of Thomas Ligotti into this one. There's an underlying sense of dread that oozes through the story. Titus feels like a haunted house patron, stumbling through this dark empty place where there's something just....off about the place, but you can't say what. Its not a scarefest, more of a quiet unsettling piece with some subtle moments.
The Rusted Gates of Heaven: Mendeni is a Choom working for Paxton's University's History Department, looking for lost relics of Choom heritage across the planet. So when he finds some remains on the Belakee's estate, he gets more than he bargained for.
This one is a quick little story without too much fluff. A brutally ugly little piece about what happens when people use and abuse history and heritage. Not much to see here, moving on.
Immolation: Magnesium Jones is a clone, vatborn and bred for labour. He has no rights, no freedom until he escapes. He struggles to make ends meet except now he's been hired to kill a man.
A sharp little action thriller with a sympathetic anti-hero and a semi predictable plot. A fun read but nothing outstanding.
Unlimited Daylight: Anoushka is a bibliophile. She loves books and one day comes upon a small bookstore run by a Tikihotto named Kress. Except Kress has an eye disease. His eye-tendrils are rotting away. And Anoushka finds herself falling for him.
This I think is one of the sweetest stories in the whole book. The sci-fi angle is downplayed in favour of being a quiet character drama of two people from two different cultures/races falling for each other. Kress's condition isn't played for melodrama or needless suffering. It becomes something of a linchpin for Anoushka to develop from and the ending is probably the most genuinely happy ending in the whole anthology.
The Library of Sorrows: MacDiaz is a cop. At the age of ten he was implanted with a Mnemosyne, a tiny computer chip that records everything he sees. Every memory he has ever had is there. But sometimes remembering everything is not a blessing.
A slow character piece about a man grappling with the pain and suffering he has to endure throughout his life and work and the effect the computer chip has on him. A sad melancholy piece that actually ends happily. I'm surprised I forgot this one. It's actually very beautiful in a sad way.
Nom De Guerre: Jasper Conch and his assassin mates have been contracted for a job for Ziggurat Pharma. They are to take part in a four-on-four duel against Rescue Pharma's own assassins for the right to produce a medication for the epidemic (seen in Pink Pills). Except the rival assassins are Vlessi. The Vlessi are an alien race that believe that every Vlessi has a shadow self, another entity that is their doppleganger, their double. And the Vlessi have Jasper and his mates in their sights....
In concept, I like this story. The Vlessi are an interesting species in the world of Punktown, a race I don't think Thomas has explored that much. But in execution the story kind of falls flat in the second half. The entire shtick of the story is literally spilled out in something that's almost like a plot dump and none of it feels organic. This could have been such a deeper, more compelling piece but its a bit of a flub.
The Color Shrain: My copy doesn't have this one, but apparently some copies do. This one popped up in Voices from Punktown (reviewed here
The Color Shrain: Specola is a professional thief and he's very good at it. Because Specola has a mutant talent. He can fold things up inside himself, locked away in a dimensional safe place. Except his latest assignment has his latest item stuck. And his employers are going to get it out one way or another....
This is an oddball piece. The chapters are written in chronogical order, but the chapters are out of sequence. Ten chapters with chapter 1 coming right near the end of the story. This was kind of a weird one for me, and not just because of the strange structure. It was also a little bit surreal and disjointed and there were times when I wasn't sure what Thomas was trying to get at, especially with the flashbacks to Specola's childhood. Maybe it was analogous for how we lock away our memories and I'm just a stupid git for not realising it, but....I dunno. Interesting but not one I enjoyed as much as others.
So that's Punktown. I think overall the biggest weakness in the anthology is inconsistency. Some of the stories like Moosecock Lip feel like Thomas experimenting and while others like Precious Metal are not up to the best quality. The characters across the board are genuinely interesting while some of the storylines feel a little underdeveloped or a tad cliche. The tone of the book is overall bleak and depressing - although I knew that going in - but there are a few stories scattered throughout that are at least somewhat uplifting in small ways. Overall Punktown is decent, but Voices from Punktown is still a better overall read.
May 4, 2021
Dark, gritty cyberpunk stories. I really enjoyed this a lot. The city of Paxton (Punktown) really comes alive as Thomas explores it from so many different angles. Like a more immersive, cohesive season of Black Mirror in book form.
October 9, 2015
I cannot express enough how amazingly -good- this collection is. Whatever your favorite genre is, you should appreciate and enjoy and -devour- this collection. This is Cloud Atlas good. This is 100 Years of Solitude good. This is The Birthday of the World good. There are very few things I will give my absolute highest rating but Punktown is at the absolute top of skillful writing style mixed with engrossing subject matter, mixed with emotionally and socially complex material, mixed with just FUCKING READ IT ALREADY! I just finished reading it and I will fucking pay you to read this because it is so amazingly good, it should be at least as well known as the Dark Tower series
April 3, 2017
Punktown is an exceptional collection of stories. Jeffrey Thomas blends science fiction, horror and cyberpunk in these tales. Though many of the stories are quite dark, Thomas brings his own particular brand of humanity to the most alien of his characters, and some of the tales are surprisingly hopeful. This was the first work by Jeffrey Thomas I've read, and I look forward to further exploration of Punktown and its infinitely interesting denizens.
August 22, 2011
Jeffrey Thomas is a great writer and I love this Punktown universe he has created. Highly imaginative and constantly surprising. Reading this very cool collection of stories prompted me to download "Monstrocity" to my Nook and I'll read that soon.
December 11, 2017
Most stories were 4s and 5s, but a couple didn't pique my curiosity and interest as much as the rest did. Definitely interested in checking out more of the author's work, and more Punktown in general. It's cyberpunk kind of interplanetary with hints of New Weird, what more could you ask for?
November 20, 2008
Very good collection, though I would say that some of these are better than others. Thomas' Punktown is the kinda world I'd wanna live in if I weren't scared poopless of it.
Read
March 11, 2016Punktown is a must read!
I love how each story is related to the story immediately following it. And I even got a mention by name in the last story.
I love how each story is related to the story immediately following it. And I even got a mention by name in the last story.
September 12, 2020
Not necessarily horror but disconcerting and I actually had to put it down because one of the stories was so intense
May 2, 2020
Punktown is a powerful collection of short stories that creatively pose age-old questions through bizarre and intriguing circumstances on another planet in the future.
As in Dali's paintings, this is a tangible, three-dimensional world, with shadows and depth. Regardless of the species or origin of the characters or even whether they are robotic, they exhibit credible emotions and motivations. You can understand why they do what they do, and may empathize with them, regardless of whether they have non-human characteristics and abilities. The longer you stay, the more real this bizarre landscape feels.
Meet Drew in "Reflections of Ghosts." He's an artist whose medium is his own DNA. He makes clones of himself and deliberately reduces their intelligence to near zero (so they can't be considered intelligent beings and, technically speaking, he won't be breaking the law), and sells them to the wealthy who enjoy sadistically playing with and destroying them. But when a client requests a female, and he makes a female version of himself, he finds he has feelings for her, and is repulsed by what the purchaser is likely to do to her, but yet he can't cancel the deal.
Meet Magnesium Jones in "Immolation." He is a slave worker clone who has broken free. But in the midst of "his newfound pride" looking back on his former life, he wonders, "Had he been better off in his first days, not yet discontented? Disgruntled?" "...he felt like a human boy who longed to be a wooden puppet again."
Meet MacDiaz in "The Library of Sorrows." He's a policeman whose successful career is based on a chip his parents had implanted into his brain as a child -- a very expensive operation that made it so he remembered everything. But the burden of horrible memories from all the bizarre cross-species crimes he has investigated is simply too much for him to endure. His mother is in a nursing home, which in this world means that she is kept in a coffin-like drawer, on life-support. "He smiled down at her, and she smiled weakly through her bubble up at him. Her headset, on which she spoke with him when he called and on which she and the other tenants of this nursing home spent their days watching movies, soaps, talk and game shows, lifted out of her way so she could see him with her naked eyes. She had to squint them to adjust. She was a skeleton which he doubted could have taken two steps, were it freed from its glass sarcophagus." When his mother dies, MacDiaz decides to have the chip surgically removed from his brain -- regardless of cost, and regardless of the fact that without it he will lose his livelihood. After the operation, "...days passed, weeks, months, and the faces of the dead -- burst by bullets, grinning mysteriously at their own fates, bloated like the faces of pudgy plastic dolls and shriveled to crusted skulls -- began to fade to smoke and shadow. Gray and difficult to see. As elusive and vague as ghosts -- and memories -- should often remain."
Meet Soko in "Wakizashi." A prison guard of Japanese descent, he has to deal with a L'lewed, a creature that by nature and by culture must periodically, slowly and cruelly kill humanoid creatures, being renewed by the vibrations of their death throes. This particular L'lewed is an ambassador, with diplomatic immunity, and while he is waiting to be removed to his home planet for having brutally killed humans when his regular supply of victims ran out, he needs a new victim, and the government of Paxton (AKA Punktown) is trying to arrange that for him. They have found a volunteer -- a Waiai, a kind of human-like creature that "sees" not with eyes but with a sort of sonar, like bats. This Waiai, Oowah Kee, is on death row for having killed several young men in defense of his wife's honor. He explains, "We do not turn away from those women who are degraded. We avenge their honor. It is the very least we can do for them. Dying for my woman... it will be an honor, in a way. Because I am dying for all our women, who bring us our lives." Now he is willing to not just to die, but to undergo the horrible painful death the L'lewed wants to inflict, in exchange for a large sum of money -- enough money so his wife will be able to return to their home planet, where she will be safe. But before the ritual death can be carried out, Oowah Kee is murdered by another inmate, which means his wife will get nothing. Soko visits her and presents her with an antique samurai sword, his most valued possession. He wants her to sell it and use the money to return to her world. When she objects that she couldn't accept such a valuable gift from him, he explains, "'If I used that money, I would dishonor my father, Mrs. Kee. I have no son to pass the sword along to. Beyond me, I don't know what fate that sword has. This is the only honorable fate I can think of for it. I want this sword in effect to have been the weapon that killed those men who disgraced you. I want this sword... to protect you." In response, "The Waiai lowered her head. She had no eyes from which she could weep, but a strange soft whistling came from her; whether from her mouth or the aperture in her forehead, he couldn't tell. 'You do me great honor, Mr. Soko,' she told him. 'I accept your gift.'" So a tale of alien brutality becomes a lesson in honor -- honor mediated and modified by culture and species, but fundamentally transcending such minor differences.
Time and again, the author presents us with totally bizarre, futuristic, and alien sets of circumstances and then uses that situation to illuminate emotions and values, showing them as timeless and not just limited to humanity. The book itself is far too short -- you end it wanting and expecting more.
Fortunately, more is available and in the works. For followup reading, check Punktown City Limits at msnhomepages.talkcity.com/TimesSquare... There you'll find additional stories set in Punktown, as well as photos of characters.
For more about the author, Jeffrey Thomas, and his other books, visit the Web site for his Necropolitan Press at www.necropolitanpress.com
As in Dali's paintings, this is a tangible, three-dimensional world, with shadows and depth. Regardless of the species or origin of the characters or even whether they are robotic, they exhibit credible emotions and motivations. You can understand why they do what they do, and may empathize with them, regardless of whether they have non-human characteristics and abilities. The longer you stay, the more real this bizarre landscape feels.
Meet Drew in "Reflections of Ghosts." He's an artist whose medium is his own DNA. He makes clones of himself and deliberately reduces their intelligence to near zero (so they can't be considered intelligent beings and, technically speaking, he won't be breaking the law), and sells them to the wealthy who enjoy sadistically playing with and destroying them. But when a client requests a female, and he makes a female version of himself, he finds he has feelings for her, and is repulsed by what the purchaser is likely to do to her, but yet he can't cancel the deal.
Meet Magnesium Jones in "Immolation." He is a slave worker clone who has broken free. But in the midst of "his newfound pride" looking back on his former life, he wonders, "Had he been better off in his first days, not yet discontented? Disgruntled?" "...he felt like a human boy who longed to be a wooden puppet again."
Meet MacDiaz in "The Library of Sorrows." He's a policeman whose successful career is based on a chip his parents had implanted into his brain as a child -- a very expensive operation that made it so he remembered everything. But the burden of horrible memories from all the bizarre cross-species crimes he has investigated is simply too much for him to endure. His mother is in a nursing home, which in this world means that she is kept in a coffin-like drawer, on life-support. "He smiled down at her, and she smiled weakly through her bubble up at him. Her headset, on which she spoke with him when he called and on which she and the other tenants of this nursing home spent their days watching movies, soaps, talk and game shows, lifted out of her way so she could see him with her naked eyes. She had to squint them to adjust. She was a skeleton which he doubted could have taken two steps, were it freed from its glass sarcophagus." When his mother dies, MacDiaz decides to have the chip surgically removed from his brain -- regardless of cost, and regardless of the fact that without it he will lose his livelihood. After the operation, "...days passed, weeks, months, and the faces of the dead -- burst by bullets, grinning mysteriously at their own fates, bloated like the faces of pudgy plastic dolls and shriveled to crusted skulls -- began to fade to smoke and shadow. Gray and difficult to see. As elusive and vague as ghosts -- and memories -- should often remain."
Meet Soko in "Wakizashi." A prison guard of Japanese descent, he has to deal with a L'lewed, a creature that by nature and by culture must periodically, slowly and cruelly kill humanoid creatures, being renewed by the vibrations of their death throes. This particular L'lewed is an ambassador, with diplomatic immunity, and while he is waiting to be removed to his home planet for having brutally killed humans when his regular supply of victims ran out, he needs a new victim, and the government of Paxton (AKA Punktown) is trying to arrange that for him. They have found a volunteer -- a Waiai, a kind of human-like creature that "sees" not with eyes but with a sort of sonar, like bats. This Waiai, Oowah Kee, is on death row for having killed several young men in defense of his wife's honor. He explains, "We do not turn away from those women who are degraded. We avenge their honor. It is the very least we can do for them. Dying for my woman... it will be an honor, in a way. Because I am dying for all our women, who bring us our lives." Now he is willing to not just to die, but to undergo the horrible painful death the L'lewed wants to inflict, in exchange for a large sum of money -- enough money so his wife will be able to return to their home planet, where she will be safe. But before the ritual death can be carried out, Oowah Kee is murdered by another inmate, which means his wife will get nothing. Soko visits her and presents her with an antique samurai sword, his most valued possession. He wants her to sell it and use the money to return to her world. When she objects that she couldn't accept such a valuable gift from him, he explains, "'If I used that money, I would dishonor my father, Mrs. Kee. I have no son to pass the sword along to. Beyond me, I don't know what fate that sword has. This is the only honorable fate I can think of for it. I want this sword in effect to have been the weapon that killed those men who disgraced you. I want this sword... to protect you." In response, "The Waiai lowered her head. She had no eyes from which she could weep, but a strange soft whistling came from her; whether from her mouth or the aperture in her forehead, he couldn't tell. 'You do me great honor, Mr. Soko,' she told him. 'I accept your gift.'" So a tale of alien brutality becomes a lesson in honor -- honor mediated and modified by culture and species, but fundamentally transcending such minor differences.
Time and again, the author presents us with totally bizarre, futuristic, and alien sets of circumstances and then uses that situation to illuminate emotions and values, showing them as timeless and not just limited to humanity. The book itself is far too short -- you end it wanting and expecting more.
Fortunately, more is available and in the works. For followup reading, check Punktown City Limits at msnhomepages.talkcity.com/TimesSquare... There you'll find additional stories set in Punktown, as well as photos of characters.
For more about the author, Jeffrey Thomas, and his other books, visit the Web site for his Necropolitan Press at www.necropolitanpress.com
April 20, 2024
Це було круто, глибоко, сюжетно і дуже реалістично.
Однозначно, в краще прочитане
Однозначно, в краще прочитане
November 26, 2022
Jeffrey Thomas is one of my new favorite authors now. This is the first book of his I have read and there was not a single bad story. He uses the cyberpunk-esque city as a background, but the real meat of the story resides in the characters, the emotions, things that everyone deals with. He paints the most vivid pictures with just a few pages and you connect to these characters almost immediately in every single story. His prose is masterful and beautiful. Stories made me cringe and cry and laugh. He is the best for giving you the final line in a story and just making you go 'oh my god that was perfect.' I will be reading the rest of his stuff immediately. Definitely more than five stars to me.
February 11, 2021
Overall, this was pretty good. Each story line was unique and interesting. But I would have preferred an actual story linking everything together. And, it's just a detail, but the repetition of ''Paxton, or Punktown...'' in every chapter got old really quick.
January 6, 2015
Punktown. A colony set on an alien world. A metropolis constructed and packed with humans, mutants, aliens, clones and sentient robots in an uneasy coexistence and the setting for a number of short stories and vignettes that touch on one life and another, showing characters from all situations, stations and strata of society and explores both the strangeness of the world, but juxtaposes with the eternal struggles and truths of humanity, although expressed in eldritch ways readers are treated to a man’s twisted, sadomasochistic activities with his own clones, an official of cultural sensitivity assisting an alien ambassador whose religion demands ritual sacrifice of sentient beings, a conflict between gangsters, striking union workers and cloned or robotic scabs.
In between are tender moments of normal, familiar life, given exotic cast. It’s strange to be able to clearly imagine yourself acting and reacting just as these characters would in such circumstance. But the most vibrant character of all, of course, is Punktown, the entity that all these broken and shining souls create. Recommended for fans of China Mieville’s Bas Lag books and Jeff Vandermeer’s Ambergris series. Five stars
In between are tender moments of normal, familiar life, given exotic cast. It’s strange to be able to clearly imagine yourself acting and reacting just as these characters would in such circumstance. But the most vibrant character of all, of course, is Punktown, the entity that all these broken and shining souls create. Recommended for fans of China Mieville’s Bas Lag books and Jeff Vandermeer’s Ambergris series. Five stars
June 26, 2016
This book is a collection of tales about Punktown, a megacity established by the denizens of Earth, on the planet Oasis. The people who live there are in many times aliens, hybrids and clones. Sometimes they are a mix or something else entirely. In many ways this is a noir crime novel, these stories just happen to take place on not-Earth. It is well written and has moments where you scratch your head and other moments where you are in open mouthed surprise. I just recently acquired two other books set in Punktown so I thought I would like to put down a few words to explain the original book. There was a time when these were much harder to get, as they were published in the UK, and even Amazon wasn't showing them for sale, just not a available.
There is Mythos undercurrent in Punktown and the stories within. H.P. Lovecraft is alive and well somewhere in the shadowed recesses of the megacity known as Punktown.
Danny
There is Mythos undercurrent in Punktown and the stories within. H.P. Lovecraft is alive and well somewhere in the shadowed recesses of the megacity known as Punktown.
Danny
August 6, 2018
Delirium Books signed by author and artist (Alan M Clark designed the foil stamp; author drew the illustration inset in the traycase, I think). Leatherbound in black leather traycase with foil stamping (design repeated on cover of book - as illustrated); Number 15 0f 26. Contains the stories in the 2000 Prime Books edition, introduction by the author (and not Michael Marshall Smith). There is a vanity appearance of my name in the final story, along with those of several other subscribers.
Twentyish stories set in Punktown (more properly named Paxton) the Earth-colonised city on the planet Oasis, built by the indigenous Choom and shared with several other alien races, some more humanoid than others. There are horor elements but the stories, which are cleverly linked by subtle references within the text, can be read as slightly disturbing sf.
Twentyish stories set in Punktown (more properly named Paxton) the Earth-colonised city on the planet Oasis, built by the indigenous Choom and shared with several other alien races, some more humanoid than others. There are horor elements but the stories, which are cleverly linked by subtle references within the text, can be read as slightly disturbing sf.
September 21, 2014
Horror and sci-fi are made for each other, and with this book, you get plenty of both. There was some inconsistency with how much I liked each story in the collection, and a few left me wondering what the hell I had just read, but all together they make for a solid multi-faceted glimpse of a huge story that I believe could be told in a hundred collections and still not be fully explored. I loved how each story, while independent of the rest, had a small reference to the preceding one (or several). One gets the feeling that all these stories are happening concurrently, and the reader is just getting glimpses of the totality that is Punktown. The last two in the collection stand out as sublime. Overall, I highly recommend the book.
June 23, 2017
This is an imaginative and unusual collection of stories that I would struggle to place in a single genre, and whilst the stories are fantastically vivid each one is grounded with emotion. The writing is amazing, and each story in the collection is nothing less than brilliant. The central idea of Punktown is so clever as well, as creating a city filled with aliens, mutants, far future technology and almost anything imaginable gives Jeffrey Thomas freedom to go all out and not restrict himself to a genre, style or theme!
I was really impressed with this collection and the talent of Jeffrey Thomas, I’ll definitely be picking up more of the Punktown books!
I was really impressed with this collection and the talent of Jeffrey Thomas, I’ll definitely be picking up more of the Punktown books!
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