Subject: Review: "Dr Adder" by KW Jeter

From: [email-masked] (p-m agapow)
Date: 20 Oct 1997 13:04:21 -0400

"Dr Adder" by K.W. Jeter
		A Postview, copyright 1997 p-m agapow

The gormless Limmit used to be just a worker on a chicken ranch, which had
certain fringe benefits, sex-wise.  But then a corporate type gave him a
briefcase and a mission: go to wartorn LA and deliver it to Dr Adder, who
can give you whatever you want.

"Dr Adder," in case you haven't heard, is a classic.  The first of Jeter's
cyberpunk trilogy (the others being "The Glass Hammer" and "Death Arms"),
this book was unpublished for 12 years.  Championed by no less than Philip
K. Dick, it finally appeared in 1984.  Inevitably, "Dr Adder" is not as
good as its reputation.

Viewed from this distance, it is definitely a lesser Jeter work and
perhaps best compared to a lesser Dick novel.  Crammed with hallucinatory
and grotesque images, the story is congested at times.  Like much of the
"cutting edge" work of the 70s, what was once provocative is now a little
silly and over the top.  Its aggressive posturing sounds hollow, its
radicalism simply for its own sake.  (Witness the "Dangerous Visions"
anthologies.)  Some books don't age well.

Conversely there are good moments that bubble up in the midst of this
chaos, more credit to those who recognised this.  Jeter's vision is vivid
if overplayed and there is a nice laconicly black section where Limmit is
an unhappy conscript in a doomed militia.  And there's an extended cameo
by Dick himself.  Not a bad book, this is just one whose time has passed.
Fans of Jeter and Dick will be interested to chase it up, others may find
its reputation overblown.  [**/interesting] and performance poetry on the
Sid and Nancy scale.

%A K. W. Jeter
%T Dr Adder
%I Grafton
%C London
%D 1987
%G ISBN 0-586-07076-1
%P 252pp
%O paperback, Aus$12.95

paul-michael agapow ([email-masked]), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse
"There is no adventure, there is no romance, there is only trouble and desire."
[archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/]