From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain | ||||||||
Minister Faust | ||||||||
Del Rey, 392 pages | ||||||||
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A review by Greg L. Johnson
Soon the super-heros are getting in touch with their true feelings and acting out their traumas in private psycho-dramas. Things
are going fairly well when real life intrudes. Hawk King, the greatest of them all, and leader of the Fantastic Order of Justice,
is dead. Amidst suspicions of murder, a power struggle breaks out over the question of who will succeed Hawk King. Fearing that
the positive effects of her therapy will be lost, Dr. Brain follows her patients as they battle each other while confronting their
own problems and the possibility that evil has not been vanquished after all.
That's just the beginning of From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain; from there, things get more and more complicated. And funny. The
world of Dr. Brain is a pastiche of our own and the comic book world where heros and villains slug it out in the streets, and accidents
of place and/or genetics can endow mere mortals with god-like powers, for good and bad. Minister Faust uses this world and the
observations of Dr. Brain to unleash a whirlwind of jokes, satire, obscure pop references, devastating cultural analysis and prose
poetry that never lets up from beginning to end.
As readers of Faust's previous novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad might suspect, there's a darker story
lurking underneath all the comic book violence and plot twists. Super-heros are, in one sense, an embodiment of the ideals and fears
of the culture that creates them. As Dr. Brain delves into the hidden psyches of her patients, she also exposes the darker trends
of a society that both values honesty and courage and indulges in racism and hate. Then, just as the reader is absorbing these
lessons, the book's ending sets up a scenario that gives new meaning to the word paranoia.
One trend continues with From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain, Minister Faust is following no one's lead but his
own. Coyote Kings and Dr. Brain are wholly original in their style and use of the traditions of SF and pop
culture. Like Coyote King, Dr. Brain uses humor and insight to expose an underlying horror, the horror all
the worse for the comparison. The jokes and commentary are fast, funny, and furious. This is political and cultural satire
of the highest sort, and Faust is earning a place among the masters of the craft. Read, laugh, wonder, and worry.
Reviewer Greg L Johnson has come to the conclusion that gaining super-powers is just plain more trouble than it's worth. His reviews also appear in the The New York Review of Science Fiction. |
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