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Doctor Adder #1
Dr. Adder
Set in a future where the United States has largely broken down into reluctantly cooperating enclaves run by a wide variety of strongmen and warlords, with a veneer of government control that seems largely interested in controlling technology. Dr. Adder is an artist-surgeon, who modifies sexual organs of his patients to satisfy the weirdest of perversion; he is clearly depicted as a partly criminal, partly countercultural figure in a future Los Angeles.
237 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
K.W. Jeter
108 books346 followersKevin Wayne Jeter (born 1950) is an American science fiction and horror author known for his literary writing style, dark themes, and paranoid, unsympathetic characters. He is also credited with the coining of the term "Steampunk." K. W. has written novels set in the Star Trek and Star Wars universe, and has written three (to date) sequels to Blade Runner.
Series:
* Doctor Adder
Series contributed to:
* Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
* Alien Nation
* Blade Runner
* Star Wars: The Bounty Hunter Wars
* The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror
* The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
Series:
* Doctor Adder
Series contributed to:
* Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
* Alien Nation
* Blade Runner
* Star Wars: The Bounty Hunter Wars
* The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror
* The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
Ratings & Reviews
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 66 reviews
May 26, 2012
Dr. Adder is a brilliant surgeon in the horrible wreck of future Los Angeles, a messianic figure who earns his keep by re-sculpting the various teenage runaways of Orange County into the whores of Los Angeles - amputating and reconfiguring various body parts, wiping away their minds if necessary. This sickeningly sick character is an unrepentant woman-hater and homophobe; he is also the wildly popular and beloved symbol of freedom for both L.A. and the O.C. John Mox is a brillant corporate strategist and voice of moral authority in the drug-addled suburban sprawl of future Orange County, a messianic figure who keeps his power by out-maneuvering his fellow corporate shareholders and by addressing the denizens of Southern California during his daily televised hour of folksy, grandfatherly sermons. This sickeningly sick character is an unrepentant hater of all things associated with the body's desires; he is also the commander of a legion of bloodthirsty stormtroopers called The Moral Force. E Allen Limmit is a disaffected young man, fresh off the giant-mutated-chicken farm, once a soldier and later the manager of the farm's mutated-chicken-whore brothel. A somewhat bland and often irritable lad with vague ambitions to be somebody, do something, whatever, just getting the hell off of the farm. Limmit travels to The Interface - a terminally seedy street that functions as a meeting place for the degraded, drugged-up, fuck-happy denizens of L.A. & O.C. And he has brought a terrifyingly effective death-weapon with him - an instant-massacre machine. Woot! Guess who gets caught between a rock and a hard place.
The novel "Dr. Adder" is perhaps the first cyberpunk novel, being completed in 1972 (although not published until 1984). It certainly has that grim, tarnished, dirty urban feeling that is key to the subgenre. It has the nonchalant violence and misanthropy, the cynicism, the snark; its narrative includes violent corporate interests, casual murder & slaughter, bad-trip imagery, and a strange kind of psychic pre-internet that exists somewhere in between the mind and the electromagnetic static of radio waves & television transmissions. It is certainly a distinctive book: angrily snappy, grimly jokey, gleefully vindictive. An adventure and an excoriation.
I didn't particularly care for it. I do admire how forward-looking it turned out to be. As a person who lived for many years in So-Cal, I appreciated and shared the equal-opportunity contempt for both Los Angeles and Orange County. (Have there ever been such radically different neighbors?) The novel also has admirable chutzpah when it comes to the sheer imagintion on display - the seedy 'Rattown' of L.A., the sewers beneath it, the mind-numbing & hypocritical lifestyle of O.C., the casually bizarre chicken farm, various vividly characterized cast members, a tremendous dream-battle, gruesome & revolting sexuality, a bloodbath on the Interface, even an extraterrestrial Visitor... all quite strikingly stylized, all of these things practically popping off of the page. Jeter has a way with words. Although often lamentably sloppy (particularly in terms of plotline), the man is still a creative and often surprising wordsmith, with ideas that are well ahead of their time and are often fairly sophisticated. He knows how to write a great sentence and he knows how to create savage alternates to our reality. But the constant misanthropy - and, most obnoxiously, the constant misogyny - really began to annoy me. It seemed facile. Like an angry teenager from a cushy middle class background. All of the posturing felt shallow and unearned.
I am not a moral relativist. Sorry. I don't care what the fookin' era is all about or if this is just how a particular culture operates... if a specific demographic is demeaned over and over again, in a work of fiction or elsewhere, I am not going to make excuses for it. I may not completely dismiss the piece in question, but I'm not going to overlook bullshit or come up with reasons why it's not so bad. And so it is with the novel Dr. Adder: fearless, clever, boldly imaginative; the first cyberpunk novel; a sardonic encapsulation of the moral battles & culture wars between counties Orange & Los Angeles; concepts from Burroughs moving about in a world of Sadean cruelty; a deranged & violent sci fi farce; a gushing blood-fountain of excessive, crypto-techno-organic deviance... all that, yes, great... but also constantly WOMAN-HATING. Ugh. You may be ingenious... but still: Fuck Off, novel! Your attitude sucks.
The novel "Dr. Adder" is perhaps the first cyberpunk novel, being completed in 1972 (although not published until 1984). It certainly has that grim, tarnished, dirty urban feeling that is key to the subgenre. It has the nonchalant violence and misanthropy, the cynicism, the snark; its narrative includes violent corporate interests, casual murder & slaughter, bad-trip imagery, and a strange kind of psychic pre-internet that exists somewhere in between the mind and the electromagnetic static of radio waves & television transmissions. It is certainly a distinctive book: angrily snappy, grimly jokey, gleefully vindictive. An adventure and an excoriation.
I didn't particularly care for it. I do admire how forward-looking it turned out to be. As a person who lived for many years in So-Cal, I appreciated and shared the equal-opportunity contempt for both Los Angeles and Orange County. (Have there ever been such radically different neighbors?) The novel also has admirable chutzpah when it comes to the sheer imagintion on display - the seedy 'Rattown' of L.A., the sewers beneath it, the mind-numbing & hypocritical lifestyle of O.C., the casually bizarre chicken farm, various vividly characterized cast members, a tremendous dream-battle, gruesome & revolting sexuality, a bloodbath on the Interface, even an extraterrestrial Visitor... all quite strikingly stylized, all of these things practically popping off of the page. Jeter has a way with words. Although often lamentably sloppy (particularly in terms of plotline), the man is still a creative and often surprising wordsmith, with ideas that are well ahead of their time and are often fairly sophisticated. He knows how to write a great sentence and he knows how to create savage alternates to our reality. But the constant misanthropy - and, most obnoxiously, the constant misogyny - really began to annoy me. It seemed facile. Like an angry teenager from a cushy middle class background. All of the posturing felt shallow and unearned.
I am not a moral relativist. Sorry. I don't care what the fookin' era is all about or if this is just how a particular culture operates... if a specific demographic is demeaned over and over again, in a work of fiction or elsewhere, I am not going to make excuses for it. I may not completely dismiss the piece in question, but I'm not going to overlook bullshit or come up with reasons why it's not so bad. And so it is with the novel Dr. Adder: fearless, clever, boldly imaginative; the first cyberpunk novel; a sardonic encapsulation of the moral battles & culture wars between counties Orange & Los Angeles; concepts from Burroughs moving about in a world of Sadean cruelty; a deranged & violent sci fi farce; a gushing blood-fountain of excessive, crypto-techno-organic deviance... all that, yes, great... but also constantly WOMAN-HATING. Ugh. You may be ingenious... but still: Fuck Off, novel! Your attitude sucks.
August 24, 2023
IF you can look past the poor storytelling and extreme grotesqueries and misogyny there are some interesting early cyberpunk elements at play here. Jeter depicts a depraved, broken down society populated by the mutilated, drug addled and destitute. The two main societal forces are the morally righteous "MFers", led by the devious TV evangelist John Mox, and those obsessed with more bodily delights who worship Dr. Adder, an artist-surgeon who mutilates and modifies the sexual organs of his patients to satisfy the most perverse of sexual fantasies. Plotting is weak, if not absent entirely, with things just happening at seeming random to propel the narrative forward. Written in 1972, though not published until 1984, I suspect this would only appeal to cyberpunk die-hards interested in the early origins of the genre.
November 15, 2013
Ok, I’m not sure where to even start. The book starts off in a giant chicken farm. Where people raise, eat, and have sex with, giant chickens… Even the girls… Cuz as we all know…
***Chicks Love Giant Cocks***
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Anyways, the book goes from weird to weirder as the tale slowly unravels. The first 3rd of the book I didn’t really know what was going on. But, there was some important character development going on. After that, it’s almost like KW said, “OK, now that that’s out of the way. It’s adventure time!”
And BAM! Action, fights, shootouts, sex, drugs, a glove that makes people explode… You get the point.
The book has a few editing errors, and some awkward sentences that you have to re-read a few times. But I’m no Grammar Nazi, so I saw the underlying beauty of the book. At its core it’s about very real social issues that are just as relevant today as they were in 1972, and it’s about a son growing up with an absent father. An absent father that stole alien technology to make sexy giant chickens, gloves that explode people, and some very powerful drugs.
Oh, there’s a vagina that has teeth too.
***It’s been a few months since I’ve read this but I’m watching the movie “American Mary” and the extreme body modification that goes on in this movie really reminds me of this book. Hopefully somebody bangs a giant chicken soon.
***Chicks Love Giant Cocks***
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Anyways, the book goes from weird to weirder as the tale slowly unravels. The first 3rd of the book I didn’t really know what was going on. But, there was some important character development going on. After that, it’s almost like KW said, “OK, now that that’s out of the way. It’s adventure time!”
And BAM! Action, fights, shootouts, sex, drugs, a glove that makes people explode… You get the point.
The book has a few editing errors, and some awkward sentences that you have to re-read a few times. But I’m no Grammar Nazi, so I saw the underlying beauty of the book. At its core it’s about very real social issues that are just as relevant today as they were in 1972, and it’s about a son growing up with an absent father. An absent father that stole alien technology to make sexy giant chickens, gloves that explode people, and some very powerful drugs.
Oh, there’s a vagina that has teeth too.
***It’s been a few months since I’ve read this but I’m watching the movie “American Mary” and the extreme body modification that goes on in this movie really reminds me of this book. Hopefully somebody bangs a giant chicken soon.
October 8, 2023
I don’t write reviews.
What a wild ride! At first I was apprehensive due to the graphic violent nature of this story. Can you believe me when I tell you it’s totally not pornographic gore? The ideas are truly sickening, but they aren’t described. I’m not into grotesqueries and this didn’t bother me much. E. Allen Limmit has a series of… well, limit experiences as he discovers the truth about LA and Orange County, his father, Dr. Adder and John Mox. It’s quite picaresque and there’s never a dull moment.
Later, Jeter and Philip K. Dick would become friends. In this book there is a character based on Dick: KCID, the name of both the character and his traveling pirate radio station. He is a philosopher in the wasteland, a reader of the future, a student of history and unfortunately, not a very developed member of the cast.
Dr. Adder is like a mix of William S. Burroughs’ Dr. Benway and Hunter S. Thompson. (I didn’t realize the same middle initial thing until I typed it). It would’ve been nice to get more of a backstory on him. The story works without it, of course, and not every story needs to be epically long and detailed.
Many were disgusted by this story, quick to label it misogynistic and the like. It was definitely misanthropic and pessimistic, but to write it off as woman-hating is kind of missing the point. Most of the characters were one-dimensional jerks, men and women alike. The strongest character happens to be Mother Endure. Limmit comes off brutish, yet seems to grow as the story goes on. Regardless, it’s an unpredictable page-turner, deserving of its place in sci-fi history.
What a wild ride! At first I was apprehensive due to the graphic violent nature of this story. Can you believe me when I tell you it’s totally not pornographic gore? The ideas are truly sickening, but they aren’t described. I’m not into grotesqueries and this didn’t bother me much. E. Allen Limmit has a series of… well, limit experiences as he discovers the truth about LA and Orange County, his father, Dr. Adder and John Mox. It’s quite picaresque and there’s never a dull moment.
Later, Jeter and Philip K. Dick would become friends. In this book there is a character based on Dick: KCID, the name of both the character and his traveling pirate radio station. He is a philosopher in the wasteland, a reader of the future, a student of history and unfortunately, not a very developed member of the cast.
Dr. Adder is like a mix of William S. Burroughs’ Dr. Benway and Hunter S. Thompson. (I didn’t realize the same middle initial thing until I typed it). It would’ve been nice to get more of a backstory on him. The story works without it, of course, and not every story needs to be epically long and detailed.
Many were disgusted by this story, quick to label it misogynistic and the like. It was definitely misanthropic and pessimistic, but to write it off as woman-hating is kind of missing the point. Most of the characters were one-dimensional jerks, men and women alike. The strongest character happens to be Mother Endure. Limmit comes off brutish, yet seems to grow as the story goes on. Regardless, it’s an unpredictable page-turner, deserving of its place in sci-fi history.
September 30, 2012
just a furious visionary mindfuck of a book, good lord. somewhere between dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition. with maybe some MAD magazine thrown in. i'd heard about this book as a forerunner of cyberpunk (it was written in '71 but remained unpublished until the 80s) but had no idea it could be like this. makes Neuromancer look like a jane austen novel. just some really incredible (and incredibly dark) stuff-- though not a whole lot of feeling (other than MAD and BAD).
sorta sad that they gave it the worst cover of all time. i mean, come on guys, a book like this, make an effort.
Limmit reached in and pulled the shattered head out of the bowl, dripping. Little clumps of brain tissue, like soft pink cauliflower, and one perfect staring eye floated in the red water. Ah, fuck it, he thought, and squatted on the toilet seat after dropping his pants down to his knees. Living in L.A. sure makes you callous.
sorta sad that they gave it the worst cover of all time. i mean, come on guys, a book like this, make an effort.
Limmit reached in and pulled the shattered head out of the bowl, dripping. Little clumps of brain tissue, like soft pink cauliflower, and one perfect staring eye floated in the red water. Ah, fuck it, he thought, and squatted on the toilet seat after dropping his pants down to his knees. Living in L.A. sure makes you callous.
March 21, 2019
It certainly goes through a gamut of nightmares: urban collapse nightmare, body horror nightmare, coked-up bourgeoisie ennui nightmare, 1984-style institutionalized cruelty nightmare, and so forth. So many nightmares, and each one has both a gut-punch and later an elegant poniard through the kidney. This is a book that revels in its ugliness and cruelty, with layers of corruption and complicity and cynical inhumanity among other layers of decay and entropy.
It leans hard into its Philip K Dick dystopia shtick, with all the off-kilter incidental ideas and delirious plot line.
Even the most sympathetic and even-keeled character, E Allen Limmit, came from an industrial farm that raises enormous intelligent dairy chickens, the attached brothel best not speculated about.
There is no redemption for this world other than cataclysm and rebirth. Tear it all down. This is a literary primal scream, the characters and the society damaged early on and purging themselves in violence and fire.
It is not a book to be liked, but one to read for its elegant ugliness and methodical brutality, to laugh and gasp at it the particulars and depth of its craftsmanship. You will not feel clean afterwards.
It leans hard into its Philip K Dick dystopia shtick, with all the off-kilter incidental ideas and delirious plot line.
Even the most sympathetic and even-keeled character, E Allen Limmit, came from an industrial farm that raises enormous intelligent dairy chickens, the attached brothel best not speculated about.
There is no redemption for this world other than cataclysm and rebirth. Tear it all down. This is a literary primal scream, the characters and the society damaged early on and purging themselves in violence and fire.
It is not a book to be liked, but one to read for its elegant ugliness and methodical brutality, to laugh and gasp at it the particulars and depth of its craftsmanship. You will not feel clean afterwards.
October 22, 2007
You don't get much weirder than this long out of print classic. A richly disturbing novel, Dr. Adder is cyberpunk dystopianism at its finest.
April 18, 2024
Philip K Dick said that this edgy book “destroys once and for all your conception of the limitations of science fiction.” And boy, do I agree.
This places the limits fairly firmly in the “this isn’t a book.” This is a dark, gross, misogynist, and completely disgusting take on the worst possibility imaginations of humanity.
Some say this proceeds cyberpunk before “The Girl That Was Plugged In” by James Tiptree Jr or even before “Neuromancer” by William Gibson. Perhaps they’re right in the sense that the dark low-life setting is there. But other than that, this is like a crude, guttural, primal fetish that can’t keep itself from spewing more dark filth every moment.
Avoid this unless you’re into mixing dark and grotesque fetishes with unlikable characters in a vaguely cyberpunk world.
No wonder this took years to get published. It should’ve stayed that way.
This places the limits fairly firmly in the “this isn’t a book.” This is a dark, gross, misogynist, and completely disgusting take on the worst possibility imaginations of humanity.
Some say this proceeds cyberpunk before “The Girl That Was Plugged In” by James Tiptree Jr or even before “Neuromancer” by William Gibson. Perhaps they’re right in the sense that the dark low-life setting is there. But other than that, this is like a crude, guttural, primal fetish that can’t keep itself from spewing more dark filth every moment.
Avoid this unless you’re into mixing dark and grotesque fetishes with unlikable characters in a vaguely cyberpunk world.
No wonder this took years to get published. It should’ve stayed that way.
July 1, 2018
My initial review:
I decided to read this novel for shits and giggles and now I stand corrected. There is indeed no limmit for sf and how sad it is that we needed a reminder of it both in early 70. and today?
The longer version of the same love poem:
There are people who don’t waste time for bad books. They read only the good stuff. Critically acclaimed masterpieces, literary gems, world-shattering nonfiction, life-changing philosophical dissertations. There are also people who by choice or trade read utter crap. I am not talking about people who just have poor taste, who lack education to properly assess things they read, who simply doesn’t know any better. I talk about people who know exactly what they’re doing, who look at the big stinking pile of excrement whether it is a worldwide bestseller or some self-published atrocity from the renown dino-erotica genre and scream GIVE IT TO ME. NOW.
You can call us adventurous. You can call us masochists. You can call us simply crazy and it is all true in one way or another. I love bad movies, horrible books and atrocious music. I watch Eurovision, I’ve seen “Daredevil” more than once and I’ve read “50 Shades”. I do that because I hate myself enough to try to commit suicide by unstoppable hysterical laughter.
So I came to the good doctor.
Goodreads itself recommended to me this strange book with campy cover. “Wow, that’s gonna be bad,” I thought adding it to to-read shelf. After reading one of the reviews stating:
what was I to do other than fall in love? I’ve created a bookshelf for this one title alone. DON’T JUDGE ME I HAVE A DEATH WISH. And so I started to read. There were, indeed, giant cocks. And I loved it.
I started reading bad book for shits and giggles and ended with a book I would’ve written my thesis about if I’ve read it earlier. And managed to convince my professor not to exorcise me.
What is it about then? Well, our main character is this guy named Limmit. And this is the only limit you’ll encounter in this wild ride of what speculative fiction should be manifesto. It’s probably because of its campy entourage that dr. Adders venom caught me so off guard. Or maybe it was the illustrations because some sick bastard decided we also need pictures to spice it all. Or maybe it was this lingering displeasure with most of the speculative fiction, accumulating for years. It was all to schematic, to… normal. By definition you can do anything and you do the same thing over and over again, the same tropes, sub-genres binding imagination with steel of conventions…
One of the things I find so powerful in “Dr. Adder” is that Jetter for the most part uses the same tropes as everyone else, he even evokes some authors and “classic sf” as a whole literary. But he mixes it up throwing all of the rules away. There is no limit, you can do whatever you want and it being sick and fucked up and stupid just makes it better – go extreme, be simply SPECTACULAR. (This scene with headshot kiss? Oh my god how beautiful that is) (or that one with Adder and Mother Endure? When she just uses his nickname?) (and omg that one in the bathroom where Limmit just don’t give a damn). A lot of the things I’ve read in this novel are so wild I don’t even know how to describe them. What happens here simply beggars belief. IT’S AWESOME.
Are there drawbacks to all of that? Not for me. But this is and immanent speculative fiction theory and that means it is by design lacking if you try read it as a simple novel. The plot is a very, very hot mess of different tropes and stereotypes and it’s purpose is to show that everything (AND I MEAN EVERYTHING) is possible in sf, not to convey coherent story.
What shocked me the most? That it is a debut. Thing so powerful, so bold, so brilliant and so arrogant. This bitchslap to the all of the sf. And so relevant today as it was in the early 70. It is so sad that we still need a reminder that there is no limit in speculative fiction. There are no sacred cows (and if there are you can probably fuck them or do other funny things with them), there is no morality, no standards, nobody to forbade you anything. Boldly go where no man had gone before. And, honey, you can simply jump over that final frontier.
I decided to read this novel for shits and giggles and now I stand corrected. There is indeed no limmit for sf and how sad it is that we needed a reminder of it both in early 70. and today?
The longer version of the same love poem:
There are people who don’t waste time for bad books. They read only the good stuff. Critically acclaimed masterpieces, literary gems, world-shattering nonfiction, life-changing philosophical dissertations. There are also people who by choice or trade read utter crap. I am not talking about people who just have poor taste, who lack education to properly assess things they read, who simply doesn’t know any better. I talk about people who know exactly what they’re doing, who look at the big stinking pile of excrement whether it is a worldwide bestseller or some self-published atrocity from the renown dino-erotica genre and scream GIVE IT TO ME. NOW.
You can call us adventurous. You can call us masochists. You can call us simply crazy and it is all true in one way or another. I love bad movies, horrible books and atrocious music. I watch Eurovision, I’ve seen “Daredevil” more than once and I’ve read “50 Shades”. I do that because I hate myself enough to try to commit suicide by unstoppable hysterical laughter.
So I came to the good doctor.
Goodreads itself recommended to me this strange book with campy cover. “Wow, that’s gonna be bad,” I thought adding it to to-read shelf. After reading one of the reviews stating:
The book starts off in a giant chicken farm. Where people raise, eat, and have sex with, giant chickens… Even the girls… Cuz as we all know…
***Chicks Love Giant Cocks***
what was I to do other than fall in love? I’ve created a bookshelf for this one title alone. DON’T JUDGE ME I HAVE A DEATH WISH. And so I started to read. There were, indeed, giant cocks. And I loved it.
I started reading bad book for shits and giggles and ended with a book I would’ve written my thesis about if I’ve read it earlier. And managed to convince my professor not to exorcise me.
What is it about then? Well, our main character is this guy named Limmit. And this is the only limit you’ll encounter in this wild ride of what speculative fiction should be manifesto. It’s probably because of its campy entourage that dr. Adders venom caught me so off guard. Or maybe it was the illustrations because some sick bastard decided we also need pictures to spice it all. Or maybe it was this lingering displeasure with most of the speculative fiction, accumulating for years. It was all to schematic, to… normal. By definition you can do anything and you do the same thing over and over again, the same tropes, sub-genres binding imagination with steel of conventions…
One of the things I find so powerful in “Dr. Adder” is that Jetter for the most part uses the same tropes as everyone else, he even evokes some authors and “classic sf” as a whole literary. But he mixes it up throwing all of the rules away. There is no limit, you can do whatever you want and it being sick and fucked up and stupid just makes it better – go extreme, be simply SPECTACULAR. (This scene with headshot kiss? Oh my god how beautiful that is) (or that one with Adder and Mother Endure? When she just uses his nickname?) (and omg that one in the bathroom where Limmit just don’t give a damn). A lot of the things I’ve read in this novel are so wild I don’t even know how to describe them. What happens here simply beggars belief. IT’S AWESOME.
Are there drawbacks to all of that? Not for me. But this is and immanent speculative fiction theory and that means it is by design lacking if you try read it as a simple novel. The plot is a very, very hot mess of different tropes and stereotypes and it’s purpose is to show that everything (AND I MEAN EVERYTHING) is possible in sf, not to convey coherent story.
What shocked me the most? That it is a debut. Thing so powerful, so bold, so brilliant and so arrogant. This bitchslap to the all of the sf. And so relevant today as it was in the early 70. It is so sad that we still need a reminder that there is no limit in speculative fiction. There are no sacred cows (and if there are you can probably fuck them or do other funny things with them), there is no morality, no standards, nobody to forbade you anything. Boldly go where no man had gone before. And, honey, you can simply jump over that final frontier.
March 15, 2015
You are a fan of Philip Dick and you want to read an exceptional story similar to his paranoia and quality? If so, grab this novel, you'll find a treasure here. Few words can vividly describe the plot, the interesting ideas and the characters. Dr. Adder is a mixture of cyberpunk, dystopia and horror, with kinky sex and splatter scenes, doomed characters and dark atmosphere. Jeter's prose is tough and absolutely amazing. It's not a perfect 5-star book, but it's really good. Just read it and enjoy something different.
Ελληνικά:
Δεν ξέρω από που ν'αρχίσω και που να τελειώσω την κριτική μου. Πρώτα-πρώτα πρέπει να πω ότι το βιβλίο δεν είναι για όλα τα γούστα. Δεν είναι για ευαίσθητα στομάχια, δεν είναι για όσους θέλουν να διαβάσουν μια sci-fi περιπέτεια με αρχή, μέση και τέλος, δεν είναι καν εύκολο σαν ανάγνωσμα. Πάντως οι φαν του Φίλιπ Ντικ θα βρουν εδώ ένα βιβλίο αντάξιο της παράνοιας του.
Σε πολύ γενικές γραμμές, η ιστορία έχει ως εξής:
Βρισκόμαστε στο Λος Άντζελες των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών, κάπου στο κοντινό μέλλον. Ο Δρ. Άντερ είναι ένας αινιγματικός χειρούργος που έχει την δυνατότητα να εξερευνά στα βάθη της ψυχής των ανθρώπων και να υλοποιεί τα σκοτεινότερα σεξουαλικά τους όνειρα, πραγματοποιώντας τις κατάλληλες χειρουργικές επεμβάσεις. Πόρνες και προαγωγοί τον θεωρούν έναν ήρωα. Αντίπαλος του είναι ο τηλεοπτικός ιεροκήρυκας Μοξ, αρχηγός της φανατικής οργάνωσης Ηθικές Δυνάμεις, που σκοπός του είναι να δώσει ένα βίαιο τέλος στην κυριαρχία του παρανοϊκού Άντερ. Και στην μέση υπάρχει ένας νεαρός, ο Ε. Άλλεν Λίμμιτ, που θα παίξει σημαντικό ρόλο στην ιστορία.
Έκανα ό,τι μπορούσα για να σας δώσω μια ιδέα για την ιστορία, αλλά από την παραπάνω περιγραφή δεν νομίζω ότι μπορεί να καταλάβει κανείς πόσο καμένη αλά Φίλιπ Ντικ ιστορία έγραψε ο Τζέτερ. Πρόκειται για ένα συναρπαστικό μείγμα κυβερνοπάνκ, δυστοπίας και τρόμου που σίγουρα δεν θ'αφήσει κανέναν αδιάφορο.
Υπάρχουν διεστραμμένες σεξουαλικές καταστάσεις (ευτυχώς όχι πολλές) που περιγράφονται αρκετά γλαφυρά, σκληρές σπλάτερ σκηνές και η ατμόσφαιρα είναι αρκούντως σκοτεινή και παρακμιακή για να σου ρίξει το ηθικό. Οι χαρακτήρες στην πλειοψηφία του καμένοι, κάτι λογικό βέβαια στον κόσμο που ζουν. Οι ιδέες πολλές και ιδιαίτερα ενδιαφέρουσες και η πλοκή βοηθάει αρκετά στο ν'αναπτυχθούν με τον καλύτερο δυνατό τρόπο. Περιττό να πω ότι η γραφή μου φάνηκε εξαιρετική, σκληρή και ακριβώς του γούστου μου.
Δεν είναι ένα τέλειο βιβλίο, έχει τα προβληματάκια του, όμως είναι ένα βιβλίο που δεν κωλώνει πουθενά, έχει κάτι πρωτότυπο να πει και το λέει έξω από τα δόντια και δύσκολα θ'αφήσει κάποιον αδιάφορο. Και είναι πραγματικά από τα διαμαντάκια της επιστημονικής φαντασίας που μπορεί να βρει κανείς φτηνά στην ελληνική γλώσσα. Εγώ το τσίμπησα από ένα παζάρι βιβλίου με 2,5€.
Ελληνικά:
Δεν ξέρω από που ν'αρχίσω και που να τελειώσω την κριτική μου. Πρώτα-πρώτα πρέπει να πω ότι το βιβλίο δεν είναι για όλα τα γούστα. Δεν είναι για ευαίσθητα στομάχια, δεν είναι για όσους θέλουν να διαβάσουν μια sci-fi περιπέτεια με αρχή, μέση και τέλος, δεν είναι καν εύκολο σαν ανάγνωσμα. Πάντως οι φαν του Φίλιπ Ντικ θα βρουν εδώ ένα βιβλίο αντάξιο της παράνοιας του.
Σε πολύ γενικές γραμμές, η ιστορία έχει ως εξής:
Βρισκόμαστε στο Λος Άντζελες των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών, κάπου στο κοντινό μέλλον. Ο Δρ. Άντερ είναι ένας αινιγματικός χειρούργος που έχει την δυνατότητα να εξερευνά στα βάθη της ψυχής των ανθρώπων και να υλοποιεί τα σκοτεινότερα σεξουαλικά τους όνειρα, πραγματοποιώντας τις κατάλληλες χειρουργικές επεμβάσεις. Πόρνες και προαγωγοί τον θεωρούν έναν ήρωα. Αντίπαλος του είναι ο τηλεοπτικός ιεροκήρυκας Μοξ, αρχηγός της φανατικής οργάνωσης Ηθικές Δυνάμεις, που σκοπός του είναι να δώσει ένα βίαιο τέλος στην κυριαρχία του παρανοϊκού Άντερ. Και στην μέση υπάρχει ένας νεαρός, ο Ε. Άλλεν Λίμμιτ, που θα παίξει σημαντικό ρόλο στην ιστορία.
Έκανα ό,τι μπορούσα για να σας δώσω μια ιδέα για την ιστορία, αλλά από την παραπάνω περιγραφή δεν νομίζω ότι μπορεί να καταλάβει κανείς πόσο καμένη αλά Φίλιπ Ντικ ιστορία έγραψε ο Τζέτερ. Πρόκειται για ένα συναρπαστικό μείγμα κυβερνοπάνκ, δυστοπίας και τρόμου που σίγουρα δεν θ'αφήσει κανέναν αδιάφορο.
Υπάρχουν διεστραμμένες σεξουαλικές καταστάσεις (ευτυχώς όχι πολλές) που περιγράφονται αρκετά γλαφυρά, σκληρές σπλάτερ σκηνές και η ατμόσφαιρα είναι αρκούντως σκοτεινή και παρακμιακή για να σου ρίξει το ηθικό. Οι χαρακτήρες στην πλειοψηφία του καμένοι, κάτι λογικό βέβαια στον κόσμο που ζουν. Οι ιδέες πολλές και ιδιαίτερα ενδιαφέρουσες και η πλοκή βοηθάει αρκετά στο ν'αναπτυχθούν με τον καλύτερο δυνατό τρόπο. Περιττό να πω ότι η γραφή μου φάνηκε εξαιρετική, σκληρή και ακριβώς του γούστου μου.
Δεν είναι ένα τέλειο βιβλίο, έχει τα προβληματάκια του, όμως είναι ένα βιβλίο που δεν κωλώνει πουθενά, έχει κάτι πρωτότυπο να πει και το λέει έξω από τα δόντια και δύσκολα θ'αφήσει κάποιον αδιάφορο. Και είναι πραγματικά από τα διαμαντάκια της επιστημονικής φαντασίας που μπορεί να βρει κανείς φτηνά στην ελληνική γλώσσα. Εγώ το τσίμπησα από ένα παζάρι βιβλίου με 2,5€.
October 25, 2022
So strange it couldn’t possibly be a phenomenal read. I’ll likely have to read it again to take it all in. I seem to have digested and remember it in strange vignettes. Body modification and horror mixed with sci-fi technology. An outlaw radio personality. A mad scientist doctor. Assassins and executions. Sexual perversions (I distinctly remember a toothed vagina). All set in a dystopian wasteland controlled piecemeal by local dictators. The only thing I can guarantee is I wasn’t able to absorb it all.
October 20, 2019
I went ahead and tagged this ballardian, kafkaesque, lynchian, palahniukian, and phildickian. In other words, some really fucked up shit
December 12, 2022
Perverse and raw and edgy and honestly refreshing cyberpunk after getting used to so many books aping Gibson. It's a shame the book is so weird and tricky to get, outsider genre fiction like this is at risk of being lost media. Who knows what has gone unpublished.
July 21, 2017
Had I read this book when it was written it might have been all I talked about during my last year in high school. K. W. Jeter wrote this book in 1972, then spent twelve years trying to find a publisher. In Russia the Strugatsky brothers were censored by committees. Jeter was "self-censored" by publishing houses afraid to take on something this unusual, where the core of the book deals with sexual perversions and violence. This despite encouragements from Philip K. Dick. When the book was finally picked up in 1984 it was by a company that had never before published fiction.
I'm sad to say that all this was under my radar until Joachim Boaz at Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations asked if I'd read it. Some of Jeter's books are hard to get hands on these days. The author is still alive and well in Ecuador and has been adding his books in Kindle format to Amazon, saying that the glory of electronic publication is that authors can circumvent the publishing companies and appeal directly to readers.
So I was happy when I found this book in a Kindle version and downloaded it. I was already in the middle of another book. I took a peek inside to the first page and was immediately sucked into the whole book ... much the way shotgun weddings and heroin habits happen.
I love a book that pushes into strange areas and defies convention, and this book certainly does that. It's mentioned as an early cyberpunk book, and there are some of those elements. The action takes place on a boulevard called Interface, a blind and deaf girl is able to psychically enter her television to trace the technology cabled to it, and people's personalities can be downloaded into computers. Had it been published sooner it might have stood out as the amazing and pioneering book it is. 1984 was a different time.
The book reads like Candide in the underworld. E. Allen Limmit is the orphaned son of an infamous CIA agent named Gass. In Phoenix Limmit now runs the egg farm he inherited, featuring giant semi-sentient chickens that lay huge eggs which are boiled and cut up into different foods. The farm also features a chicken brothel in which people pay to have sex with giant chickens. One day an old friend of his father arrives with an offer for Limmit. If he will take a briefcase to a Dr. Adder in Los Angeles he can sell it and keep the proceeds.
He flies to southern California, where Los Angeles is completely separated from Orange County. Los Angeles has become a battered and rundown city where on Interface Boulevard the street is lined with hookers. Most of these hookers have been physically modified by Dr. Adder, who uses an old CIA drug to determine what kind of perversions the hookers can accept. The most common fetish is for men interested in amputees, so many of the women are legless, armless, or both.
The street is also frequented by MFers (short for Moral Forces) under the leadership of a television evangelist named Mox. As they always wear gray they are often the target of snipers as they evangelize along the boulevard.
Through the book things come to a battle between fans of Adder and followers of Mox. Meanwhile we get to meet a group of revolutionaries trying to save the LA population; a dying alien who babbles depressing thoughts in isolation; a gypsy who lives in the sewers under LA; a group of Orange County men calling themselves the Prodigal Fathers who have lost sons to the sins of LA and now kidnap young men to return them to the Orange County lifestyle. Limmit becomes one of the kidnapped and begins to see that if he did stay there he'd be dead inside without anyone seeing it until the skin fell off his bones. Meanwhile there are frequent references to an Orange County high school called Buena Maricone (which translates as Good Fagot) and an underground radio station called radio KCID, which is a jumble of DICK in honor of P. K. Dick. (It's also an actual radio station in Caldwell, Idaho, where I was working after school at the time the book was written.) Like Dick, Jeter is an opera fan and Alban Berg's opera Wozzek figures into the plot as well.
It is a book with violence and strange sex fetishes, but is mostly presented through the wide-eyed perceptions of someone for whom it's all as bizarre as it is for the reader. You can pull out deeper ideas about moral choices, conventional choices, and existential crises. As Limmit muses at one point "Life's nothing but the beating you take before you die."
I'm forever grateful to Boaz for introducing me to what now stands as the favorite book I've read in the past 12 months and in my top 10 for science fiction out of all my reading.
I'm sad to say that all this was under my radar until Joachim Boaz at Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations asked if I'd read it. Some of Jeter's books are hard to get hands on these days. The author is still alive and well in Ecuador and has been adding his books in Kindle format to Amazon, saying that the glory of electronic publication is that authors can circumvent the publishing companies and appeal directly to readers.
So I was happy when I found this book in a Kindle version and downloaded it. I was already in the middle of another book. I took a peek inside to the first page and was immediately sucked into the whole book ... much the way shotgun weddings and heroin habits happen.
I love a book that pushes into strange areas and defies convention, and this book certainly does that. It's mentioned as an early cyberpunk book, and there are some of those elements. The action takes place on a boulevard called Interface, a blind and deaf girl is able to psychically enter her television to trace the technology cabled to it, and people's personalities can be downloaded into computers. Had it been published sooner it might have stood out as the amazing and pioneering book it is. 1984 was a different time.
The book reads like Candide in the underworld. E. Allen Limmit is the orphaned son of an infamous CIA agent named Gass. In Phoenix Limmit now runs the egg farm he inherited, featuring giant semi-sentient chickens that lay huge eggs which are boiled and cut up into different foods. The farm also features a chicken brothel in which people pay to have sex with giant chickens. One day an old friend of his father arrives with an offer for Limmit. If he will take a briefcase to a Dr. Adder in Los Angeles he can sell it and keep the proceeds.
He flies to southern California, where Los Angeles is completely separated from Orange County. Los Angeles has become a battered and rundown city where on Interface Boulevard the street is lined with hookers. Most of these hookers have been physically modified by Dr. Adder, who uses an old CIA drug to determine what kind of perversions the hookers can accept. The most common fetish is for men interested in amputees, so many of the women are legless, armless, or both.
The street is also frequented by MFers (short for Moral Forces) under the leadership of a television evangelist named Mox. As they always wear gray they are often the target of snipers as they evangelize along the boulevard.
Through the book things come to a battle between fans of Adder and followers of Mox. Meanwhile we get to meet a group of revolutionaries trying to save the LA population; a dying alien who babbles depressing thoughts in isolation; a gypsy who lives in the sewers under LA; a group of Orange County men calling themselves the Prodigal Fathers who have lost sons to the sins of LA and now kidnap young men to return them to the Orange County lifestyle. Limmit becomes one of the kidnapped and begins to see that if he did stay there he'd be dead inside without anyone seeing it until the skin fell off his bones. Meanwhile there are frequent references to an Orange County high school called Buena Maricone (which translates as Good Fagot) and an underground radio station called radio KCID, which is a jumble of DICK in honor of P. K. Dick. (It's also an actual radio station in Caldwell, Idaho, where I was working after school at the time the book was written.) Like Dick, Jeter is an opera fan and Alban Berg's opera Wozzek figures into the plot as well.
It is a book with violence and strange sex fetishes, but is mostly presented through the wide-eyed perceptions of someone for whom it's all as bizarre as it is for the reader. You can pull out deeper ideas about moral choices, conventional choices, and existential crises. As Limmit muses at one point "Life's nothing but the beating you take before you die."
I'm forever grateful to Boaz for introducing me to what now stands as the favorite book I've read in the past 12 months and in my top 10 for science fiction out of all my reading.
January 28, 2021
The eponymous character in this strangely mesmerising book performs surgery on prostitutes to create designer whores for wealthy clients with (to put it mildly) eclectic tastes. Amputees, dentured vaginas and a plethora of even more perverted modifications litter the CV of Dr. Adder, and when Limmit is sent from the giant chicken farm to take a flashglove to sell to him, the plot thickens. The glove must be surgically attached to Adder’s arm (requiring amputation) and attracts the attention of his old nemesis, Mox. Set in a hideously bleak dystopian L.A. where the inhabitants are flotsam or tranked out, and a huge alien lies abandoned in Orange County, Limmit must try to fathom the plot (much like the reader). Written in 1972, published in 1984, this might have been a dangerous book originally, but time has lent it a certain frenziedness - as if K. W. Jeter was trying for dangerous but only achieved a misogynistic, graphically violent ersatz pornography. It’s not a bad novel but it’s hard to relate to characters when there are no reference points in common. It’s subtext that SF as a genre badly needed this book, is amusingly self-congratulatory and makes it a product of its time and readable as such. Definitely not YA!
June 23, 2020
A deeply inscrutable & transgressive read
I'm only sure about one thing wrt this book: you will not read anything else like it. About the closest analogue I could come up with is Geek Love with its glamourization of amputation and its abiding surrealism & grotesquerie. But this is absolutely a novel about the counterculture and is crammed to the hilt with sex and drugs, both in much freakier manifestations than the average reader may be at all accustomed to. At first, I didn't know how to take the titular character, and in many ways, I still don't. About halfway through I was certain that Jeter wrote him as a sociopathic bastard & was using him to cast sinister aspersions upon the hippies. But now that I've finished the novel, I've come back around to regarding Adder as a particularly unlikable antihero but that ultimately he stood for life, while his nemesis, the cyberpunk televangelist John Mox, stood in for the death drive. But even gleaning that p much maxes out my interpretative skills, so you'll have to figure out any of the finer points for yourself...
I'm only sure about one thing wrt this book: you will not read anything else like it. About the closest analogue I could come up with is Geek Love with its glamourization of amputation and its abiding surrealism & grotesquerie. But this is absolutely a novel about the counterculture and is crammed to the hilt with sex and drugs, both in much freakier manifestations than the average reader may be at all accustomed to. At first, I didn't know how to take the titular character, and in many ways, I still don't. About halfway through I was certain that Jeter wrote him as a sociopathic bastard & was using him to cast sinister aspersions upon the hippies. But now that I've finished the novel, I've come back around to regarding Adder as a particularly unlikable antihero but that ultimately he stood for life, while his nemesis, the cyberpunk televangelist John Mox, stood in for the death drive. But even gleaning that p much maxes out my interpretative skills, so you'll have to figure out any of the finer points for yourself...
January 27, 2024
When a story has barely started and already there is a brothel with giant mutant chickens in it, you know its going to be unique, twisted, and wild. This is Ballard's Crash but television swapped in for cars.
The structure of the story is a little weak; there are chunks of extraneous world building that muddled my understanding of what was going on in the beginning. But eventually a more linear narrative shapes up and the gory sex filled Odyssey commences in and around the sewers and suburbs of L.A.
I won't waste my time delving into the coarse symbology or anarchic vision of the sedated and yet still very deviant middle class or the ruling interest of the talking head preacher with his zealot army or corporate interests who want to maintain the status quo. It's high school level deep. What you get is a bizarre and imaginative version of the future and that's what my lizard brain enjoys the most.
The structure of the story is a little weak; there are chunks of extraneous world building that muddled my understanding of what was going on in the beginning. But eventually a more linear narrative shapes up and the gory sex filled Odyssey commences in and around the sewers and suburbs of L.A.
I won't waste my time delving into the coarse symbology or anarchic vision of the sedated and yet still very deviant middle class or the ruling interest of the talking head preacher with his zealot army or corporate interests who want to maintain the status quo. It's high school level deep. What you get is a bizarre and imaginative version of the future and that's what my lizard brain enjoys the most.
May 6, 2021
DR. ADDER would have changed the entire trajectory of late-twentieth century science fiction had it been published in 1970-71 instead of in 1979. Cyberpunk and splatterpunk would have hatched years earlier, Delany might have scrapped or radically revised DHALGREN, P.K. Dick would have been a bigger name before he stroked out. Who knows what else? Maybe the Iranian hostage rescue mission would have succeeded and Hinkley would have taken his potshots at Jimmy Carter and instead of the Reagan Revolution culminating in the 1-percenters holding ninety percent of the country's wealth, we'd be living in Socialist Utopia under president Rudy Rucker. Prove it couldn't have happened. And read this book. It is NOT a nice book. Don't say I didn't warn you.
January 16, 2015
Scrittura pesante difficoltosa.
La storia potrebbe anche essere interessante, se si riuscisse a leggere
La storia potrebbe anche essere interessante, se si riuscisse a leggere
March 2, 2015
Okay, finally, a book I don't have to discount on the basis of it being a great book with an absolute shambles of an ending. A book I can feel proud to recommend despite it being one of the sickest books I have had the pleasure (and it was a pleasure) of reading. And maybe that's the point, that it's influential for not only the science fiction genre and the underground element of "bizarre fiction", but that it's also influential for the extreme horror genre, since it features one of the best gruesome operatic revenge stories this side of Sweeney Todd, only with a casual eye towards the kind of brutal grotesquerie that only the works of less well-known weird fiction like Geek Love and Freaks 'Amour (among others) can provide. While the book's plot is something of a series of potshots in a dark room centered around the titular doctor and the young man who is his assistant, the images are strong ones overall and stuck with me well after finally closing the pages. Even if I didn't necessarily understand the climax.
For those willing to brave the bizarre and sometimes downright sick and depraved (all good things in my opinion) world of the Interface and its inhabitants, you will find a hell of a good read, and one of the most shining examples of American dystopian fiction. For those who want something with a little less military grade hallucinogens, dying alien gods, and prostitutes destroying their own brains with permanent and harmful drugs, then you should probably look elsewhere, or at least get this out of the library before making a decision to commit fully to this classic act of lovingly poetic depravity.
More, as always, below.
“Life's nothing but the beating you take before you die. And I've died so many times already. Killed and lost so much..."
The Interface. A sprawling section of future Los Angeles designed as a monument to deviancy. In this area, you can experience literally anything you could ever desire as long as you make the appropriate tribute to its twisted god, a man known only as Dr. Adder. Adder, a sociopath with a penchant for drugs and an artist's eye when it comes to matters of the scalpel, provides two crucial services for the Interface: His first is performing surgery on the various denizens and prostitutes to turn them into the people they always knew they wanted to be-- be that drug-addled, missing several limbs, or even having their sex organs turned into frightening and elaborate traps designed to destroy clients-- Adder provides. Even if it would destroy them. Especially if it would destroy them. The second service he provides is matching these clients to the rich and powerful elite of Los Angeles County, giving them the sickening wishes they always wanted to act out but never dared say aloud or worse yet go looking for. And so, the Interface thrives, entirely on Adder's whims and the aid of the drug ADR*, a drug designed to create a telepathic link between two people, allowing Adder to look into his subject's subconscious and find their deepest, darkest secrets.
Opposing Adder and his indecent and horrifying freedom are the Moral Forcers, a fanatical cult of violent white-coated thugs under the rule of John Mox, a televangelist with ties to the Greater Production Corporation in the Orange County area. Where Adder advocates freedom of the flesh to the point of self-destruction, Mox advocates the opposite, a kind of purity that relies on giving up even one's own carnal desires and equipment, complete annihilation for moral devotion. These two men form opposite extremes, each contributing to the further decline of the urban sprawl they fight over in their own special way.
Into this tableau enters one E. Allen Limmit, a former brothel administrator for the Greater Production Corporation's giant chicken farm. Limmit has a very nebulous plan that involves a boot knife and moving to the interface, a plan complicated when a GPC executive asks him to deliver a mysterious briefcase to Dr. Adder. Adder takes Limmit under his wing as an assistant, getting him to help with various tasks with an eye towards further entrenchment in his business. But what both Adder and Limmit fail to realize is that they are pawns in a much larger game, a game played among the rich elite, and among the forces of the Midwestern Liberation Front, and all throughout the interface. And before they're through, Limmit will have to discover things he never even realized, things that draw the men closer and closer to a confrontation with John Mox and GPC.
So first things first, Dr. Adder is a misanthropic sociopath. There, got that out of the way. He hates women, he hates men, he hates gay people, he hates kink, he hates straight people, he sneers at people who have sex, and he thinks he's above the people that he surgically mutilates into their new shapes. There is not a single person in the entire novel he feels anything approaching empathy for, save maybe near the end of the novel. Much like The Stars My Destination, Adder is a deliberately unsympathetic character, Limmit kind of is, too, actually, considering he doesn't seem to view women as anything but objects and has a latent giant chicken fetish. But let's be perfectly honest here: You are not supposed to like these people. The central characters are two villains and an antihero because it's that kind of book. It's that kind of society.
But with that out of the way, there's something important about these characters-- well, two of them if not the third. They change. They actually change and grow over time. Limmit, who spends a lot of the book making nebulous plans and not actually taking a side, is actually the deciding factor in the final battle at the end of the book. Adder abandons his messianic sociopath persona and, though still a massive misanthrope, seems poised to actually truly help people in some way other than destroying them. This is, in some ways, a story about people abandoning the flawed coping mechanisms and cynical worldviews that kept them just as bound up as Mox and GPC's machinations. It's a different kind of story from the usual cyberpunk tropes because it shows the characters being bound by their cynicism and pessimism, rather than it being a useful survival tool. In fact, it's the one character who isn't a complete cynical shit who gets through the story intact. Maybe it's because it was written in the early Seventies when people were just starting to slide into cynicism, but for such a dark novel, it's got some incredibly optimistic flourishes.
It's also vivid. I think this is the thing I love most about K.W. Jeter-- the visuals. And for something so lurid and grotesque, Dr. Adder really puts it over the edge. There are descriptions of surgeries, of extreme body modification, and of The Visitor, which is something I wouldn't dare give away to anyone. The set piece that closes out the first section of the book ("Proud Flesh") is a brutal and bloody riot in the streets that manages to seem lurid without giving up any sense of consequence. The operations Dr. Adder performs are suitably stomach-churning and give off the exact vibe I believe they're supposed to-- dark, disturbing, and a little of 'why the hell would you want to?' The feel of the book, thanks to the visuals, has a grimy, pulpy sort of way about it. Everything feels covered in dirt and grit, and the parts that aren't are so polished that it feels like there's something inhuman and grotesque about them. The Orange County segments especially, with their pill-popping disaffection and the sex bot theme park.
And in the end, it's a brilliant book that's worth at least one read. If you can't get past the disturbing imagery and the rampant hatred of humanity as a whole that permeates a lot of the book, then this probably isn't for you. However, if a story of a creepy fallen messiah fighting a man who may only exist on television, a story that features giant talking chickens and amputee transgender prostitutes doped up with military-grade drugs doesn't frighten you away, there is a lot to like about Dr. Adder. A lot to dislike, but a lot to like.
And again, the only thing you have to lose by reading is time.
NEXT WEEK:
- Heathern by Jack Womack
- Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh
- City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
AND MANY OTHERS
*In my circles, ADR stands for "Additional Dialogue Recording", which made the book a little hard to read.
August 13, 2021
Wow, what a wild ride of a book this was! Dr.Adder was a truly original, imaginative, highly atmospheric story which had some serious flaws unfortunately.
Let’s start with the good stuff. First of all, if you like cyberpunk, this is your book. I’m, personally, not a huge cyberpunk guy but loved the cyberpunk atmosphere of LA in this one. Secondly, the story is filled with original and unique characters. I can give it 5 stars on that front. Most significantly, as I said before, this book is full of weirdness and craziness that make look the obvious comparison PKD pale on that aspect. If you like that kinda wild pulp SF, you’ll like this one.
As for what I didn’t like, Dr. Adder seriously lack a storyline. I mean, I’m all for unconventional storylines and plotless books, but there’s really nothing on that end you feel like you’re wondering around aimlessly. A lot of stuff happening in the book that either has nothing to do with the story or open a new door which leads nowhere. I can see this might be a huge dealbreaker for some, it wasn’t for me but I definitely can’t say I enjoyed it.
Overall, I’m glad I stumbled upon this book. It’s really good for that pulp Sf/PKD itch.
Let’s start with the good stuff. First of all, if you like cyberpunk, this is your book. I’m, personally, not a huge cyberpunk guy but loved the cyberpunk atmosphere of LA in this one. Secondly, the story is filled with original and unique characters. I can give it 5 stars on that front. Most significantly, as I said before, this book is full of weirdness and craziness that make look the obvious comparison PKD pale on that aspect. If you like that kinda wild pulp SF, you’ll like this one.
As for what I didn’t like, Dr. Adder seriously lack a storyline. I mean, I’m all for unconventional storylines and plotless books, but there’s really nothing on that end you feel like you’re wondering around aimlessly. A lot of stuff happening in the book that either has nothing to do with the story or open a new door which leads nowhere. I can see this might be a huge dealbreaker for some, it wasn’t for me but I definitely can’t say I enjoyed it.
Overall, I’m glad I stumbled upon this book. It’s really good for that pulp Sf/PKD itch.
April 11, 2015
When a book starts off on a farm full of chicken-fuckers, it's hard to predict what's next. The degenerate, decomposing America that Jeter creates is perhaps worse than any dystopia I've read about. It's confusing - especially because it's difficult to imagine that he came up with it without real world inspiration. Also, you never get the hang of where the book's going. The initial disorientation doesn't quite wear off.
PKD praised Dr Adder as the most important sci-fi work of its time, and laments the fact that it took years to find a publisher brave enough to release it. While I disagree on its importance, I have to acknowledge that it brings up thematic questions and explorations that are rare in the sci-fi (and sometimes the entire literary) world.
Although towards the beginning Jeter expresses contempt for writers who use info dumps, he does it a lot. For that, and for the fact that it was sometimes tedious, he loses a star.
PKD praised Dr Adder as the most important sci-fi work of its time, and laments the fact that it took years to find a publisher brave enough to release it. While I disagree on its importance, I have to acknowledge that it brings up thematic questions and explorations that are rare in the sci-fi (and sometimes the entire literary) world.
Although towards the beginning Jeter expresses contempt for writers who use info dumps, he does it a lot. For that, and for the fact that it was sometimes tedious, he loses a star.
November 20, 2017
I originally had this at 4 stars for 4.5 but went back to look at my ratings for Bret Easton Ellis and Henry Miller. Whatever genre those books are part of, is where I would put Dr. Adder. It's got sci-fi elements (some of which are similar to cyberpunk), but I feel that they are more setting than most other books of the genre.
The images from the author's words in this novel are horrific and gruesome. The novel is about hypocrisy, decadence, physical decay, hopelessness, death, and ego.
The author takes the elements and feelings of the present day and places them in a future physical setting able to mirror the non-tangible elements of the story.
This story made me depressed, and it was hard to separate my feelings from the work of fiction even with fantastical elements present. This is a great story with a great endorsement from Philip Dick.
The images from the author's words in this novel are horrific and gruesome. The novel is about hypocrisy, decadence, physical decay, hopelessness, death, and ego.
The author takes the elements and feelings of the present day and places them in a future physical setting able to mirror the non-tangible elements of the story.
This story made me depressed, and it was hard to separate my feelings from the work of fiction even with fantastical elements present. This is a great story with a great endorsement from Philip Dick.
December 21, 2007
I bought this book because I read an interview with KW Jeter in old issue of the music magazine Forced Exposure. I enjoyed this book. It's pretty thrilling in it's dystopian weirdness and there are lots of interesting ideas in it, such as concubines made from genetically modified chickens. Definatly a good fun pulp-y read, but I gave it three stars cause I couldn't really reccomend it to everyone. It reads a bit like a much trashier Willam Gibson. Also, since it was actually written in 1972, it is the definatly the first cyberpunk novel.
May 28, 2022
One of the true fathers of the cyberpunk movement from an actual student of Phillip K. Dick. This is a nihilistic fun-filled romp full of dystopic corporate culture, border-pushing amoral characters and middle-finger cynicism. It all boils down into a street satire of the future that still retains much of its bite.
November 18, 2009
athis book is not for the faint of heart - sexual perversion, violence, dystopian vision oh yeah that's here but all done with a unique outsider's view, a healthy, twisted imagination, and a sense of humor. Highly reccommended.
March 2, 2008
Everybody should read this book! A underground classic.
March 27, 2012
sick twisted cyberpunk
September 29, 2018
Still astonishingly bizarre.
July 21, 2018
Go read this book. Go read it NOW.
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