Customer Reviews

Anarchaos

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Anarchaos was originally published under the pseudonym Curt Clark in 1967, so you may well find cheaper copies under that name. Westlake is best known for his comic capers and hard crime novels under his own and pen name Richard Stark but has also tried his hands at mysteries, a Western and here with Anarchaos, science fiction. I will admit I'm not much of a reader of science fiction, especially stuff set in space or on other planets and only picked this up as it was written by Westlake so I can't compare it to many others in that genre. I do however rate Anarchaos extremely highly as a Westlake or any general fiction novel. I'd actually like to point out that the cover illustration on the version I read and am reviewing (2004 Severn House Publishers, Great Britain) was obviously designed and approved by people who have not read this great story as the planet Anarchaos is not as science fiction looking as the city landscape on here nor do any of the inhabitants need to wear a spaceman helmet. In fact the setting is the complete opposite with the planet's buildings mostly being in utter decay, and many people wearing rags or torn clothing, in fact if you substituted the planet Anarchaos, for on present day Earth, say Iraq or somewhere (this review is written in 2008) where there is pretty much no protection for the traveller outside of the safe militarised zones, the novel becomes a lot less sci-fi and a lot more realistic for the reader.

Anarchaos is basically the tale of an ex prisoner, Mandell Malone, who upon release is asked by the only person who cared about him at all, his brother Gar to come and work with him on the isolated, mostly abandoned lawless planet of Anarchaos. Just before taking the shuttle Malone learns his brother has been murdered. He is advised by the shuttle crew and everyone else to forget about Anarchaos as he will certainly be killed or worse himself but Malone cannot abandon his brother. Malone is determined to find out what happened to his brother and have vengeance against those who killed him. He will soon learn though, that prison may have seemed like Hell but in reality was like Heaven compared to Anarchaos.

Malone is a very likeable character and this novel sort of has a Richard Matheson, sort of what would you as an average guy do if in this situation slant to it as well.

If you haven't already done so check out Westlake's comic capers. The best three at an absolute masterpiece level are, Smoke, The Spy in the Ointment and a New York Dance (also published as Dancing Aztecs). Other comic capers also worth checking out are The Fugitive Pigeon, The Busy Body, God Save the Mark, Who Stole Sassi Manoon?, Help I am Being Held Prisoner, Castle in the Air, Enough and High Adventure.

Of course you've also got to read the Dortmunder series and the Parker series (written under the pen name Richard Stark) as well.

If you do nothing else thought, you've also got to read his greatest stand alone story novel of all time The Ax the ultimate solution to unemployment. Check out a Westlake novel today!

Famous crime writer Donald Westlake constructs a solid adventure story in Anarchaos, a noirish tale set on a planet with no government. He incorporates a lot of elements you have probably seen before, like evil corporations, mines worked by slaves, a femme fatale, and a first person narrator on a mission of revenge, but Westlake has a good writing style and supplements the thrills and chills you expect with a main character who evolves psychologically over the course of the story, which adds an enjoyable dimension to the novel. The "point" of the novel seems be a banal criticism of laissez faire economics and the cult of rugged individualism (maybe it wasn't quite so banal in 1967) but the novel is never preachy and the fact that the narrator who is telling you how important government is is himself a criminal and terrorist adds some nuance and ambiguity.

Definitely recommended to people who like SF adventure stories like Burroughs's or Vance's or Harrison's novels about a guy landing on a planet and then trying to survive/escape/achieve his mission. People who are into crime novels should also give it a shot, as it really is one of those hard boiled "somebody killed my buddy and I gotta find out who" capers, just not set on Earth.

I never realized that the great crime writer Donald Westlake had written this book, but it figures.

It's a combination of fine science fiction and crime fiction that compelled me to finish it in a single day.

The theme of anarchy as a planetary political system is well developed, and it is not the libertarian paradise that libertarians like to describe.

Excellent story telling.

The viciously anarchistic society Westlake depicts in this book is so contrary to human nature that it's laughable. Surely the author intended this as an absurdist satire on anarchist theory, just to see how far he could go and still get the thing published.

There is no conceivable set of human circumstances which would produce such a society, much less maintain it as a functioning planet-wide culture. And the plot itself is rickety and splintered, with an unlikeable (and unlikely) "hero" who commits cold-blooded murder on multiple occasions with no twinge of conscience, while blundering from one set of ridiculous circumstances to another and making no progress in his initial aim, that of finding who killed his brother and why.

The middle section of the book, fully a third of the novel, consists of a side-tracked Malone in hellish bondage to an evil mining corporation. He languishes here for either three or four years (Westlake apparently wasn't sure), to no ultimate purpose whatsoever in terms of the plot. He makes an impossible escape before stumbling into a resolution of the situation which could have easily occurred in the first twenty or so pages of the book. This climactic sequence feels hurriedly conceived and is patently unbelievable.

The whole thing has the flavor of something Westlake made up as he went along, with no clear idea of where he was going or how to get there. It is easy to see how the book could be sold only to a poverty-row paperback house under a pseudonym (I wouldn't have published it under my own name, either). It does have certain cult-like qualities, thus presumably explaining its appeal to other reviewers here, but, take it from me, there is little or nothing which would appeal to the average sci-fi reader or the average reader in general. Unless you like to wallow in violence, confusion and absurdity, avoid this one.