Appleseed (Paperback)

~ (Author) "there had always been something about a planet of cities that made Freer long for the sky..." (more)
Key Phrases: conclave space, flesh sapients, tile dance, Uncle Sam, Johnny Appleseed, Made Mind (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Appleseed is an exuberant and erudite new take on one of science fiction's oldest themes from respected SF critic and scholar John Clute, coeditor of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy and The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

On a routine interplanetary delivery run, trader Nathaniel Freer is almost assassinated and forced to flee with a cargo that represents the best hope against the data-destroying "plaque" threatening the universe. The novel chronicles his fight against the forces of entropy, with the help of AIs, aliens, and Johnny Appleseed. It's not plot that drives this book--it's the turbine of Clute's joy in language coupled with layers of allusion to literature, pop culture, and the history of science fiction. This dense, literary postmodern space opera won't appeal to readers who prefer their SF easily digestible: most of the far-future background and lingo aren't defined, and it's possible to feel at sea as new ideas are introduced at a relentless pace. The reader willing to undertake the journey, however, will find a marvelous richness of ideas wrapped in a champagne fizz of language. --Roz Genessee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Rarely has there been a space opera with such zeal for language, such a concatenation of ideas archaic and intergalactic and such irreverent reveling in humanity's stinky, steamy, singular sexuality. From the author's notes, which include a definition of the archaic mappemonde, to the novel's final sentence ("The War Against God dates from this moment"), Clute keeps the verbal pyrotechnics bright and the ideas flowing. Nathanael "Stinky" Freer captains his ship, the Tile Dance, through space with the aid of a conjoined AI. He spends his time making lucrative deliveries, learning stories that his ship's many faces act out for him, trying to avoid plaque (the darkness that's left when God eats the universe) and missing his deceased lady love, Ferocity Monthly-Niece. On a seemingly routine mercantile contract to the planet Trencher, he's nearly killed by the rampaging, cannibalistic, self-devouring alien, Opsophagos. On returning to his ship, Stinky discovers that he's somehow acquired two new AIs and that he has a stowaway: a topiary parthogenete, Mamselle Cunning Earth Link, who holds the key to the location of the planet where there are plaque-eating lenses. Opsophagos remains in hot pursuit as Stinky meets the mythic Johnny Appleseed, rediscovers his lady love and has a sexual encounter that just might save the universe. Clute (The Disinheriting Party) has produced a space opera that, though short on characterization, is brimful of both a love of language and the tropes of science fiction. (Feb. 1)Forecast: Best known for his SF criticism and co-authorship of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Clute is well placed within the field to ensure that this first novel gets plenty of attention.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books (February 22, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765303795
• ISBN-13: 978-0765303790
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,501,534 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Luxuriant language conceals a thin story, April 20, 2002

By	flying-monkey (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Appleseed (Hardcover)

John Clute is a singular SF critic: he writes with verve and style and with a unashamedly vaste vocabulary. Indeed his unapologetically fertile use of words, his love of language as a sensuous and liquid thing, alienate some who prefer a more direct and uncomplicated approach. His knowledge of the genre is also unmatched, and would be called 'encylopaedic' had he not in fact edited the definitive encyclopaedia in the field.

Given this background one might expect his first SF novel, a dense and intense reimagining of the classic space opera, to be a unique confection, and this it certainly is in these two respects at least.

This book delights in words, it explodes with linguistic pyrotechnics, it exalts in unexpected juxtapositions of the obscure and the mundane, of the arcane and the obscene, it drowns the reader is an almost cloyingly rich thesauric stew. In this sense it is an astonishing book, a novel whose language both makes and mirrors the baroque universe in which it is set. Because the language does work. It is not simply filagree, it is the substance and structure of the book and it does its job: I have never read a more utterly atmospheric and engulfing description of the process of landing on an alien trading world as Clute presents in the first two dozen pages of Appleseed.

Secondly, Clute's vast knowledge of SF enables him to play with tropes, concepts and situations in away that is a delight for the afficianado. There are references everywhere, only some of which are credited in the afterword. There are also some fascinating inventions of his own: the azulejaria tiles which line 'Tile Dance', the ship piloted by the protagonist, Nathanial Freer, and which are simultaneously story and storage; the world of Klavier as a multi-dimensional palimpset, layer upon layer, twist within turn; and the hilarious treatment of human odour and sexuality within a universe where most species find sex offensive and use smell to communicate subtle and complex matters.

But... and this is a big 'but'...

Some of the borrowings are more than references. The central notion of the entropic data 'plaque' infecting the universe, and indeed many of the situations, species, and general 'feel' of Clute's universe, while by no means exactly the same, certainly appear to have a lot in common with Vernor Vinge's 'A Fire upon the Deep', a work that is not mentioned by Clute in his afterword. While I would never go so far as to accuse SF's greatest critic of plagiarism, I would say that Clute certainly owes more of a debt to Vinge, who is neither as culturally-central or as highly-regarded as those whom Clute does namecheck, than he admits. In addition, his 'made-minds', Artifical Intelligences, are also strongly reminiscent of Iain M. Bank's darkly witty and bizarre Culture minds.

Most importantly of all however, the plot and resolution, character development - such as it is possible in a universe where identity is so malleable - and emotional content, are flimsy and ramshackle affairs when stripped of the dense superstructure of description. The lack of connection to what we know of as human emotion is a common and perhaps insoluable problem in any reasonable far future setting - it seems to go with the territory - although Attanasio's Last legends of Earth is a magnificent exception. However Appleseed's lack of substantial 'story' is far less forgiveable.

Still, this book should be read. For all its failings as a tale, stylistically there isn't much like it in SF (or elsewhere), and in many ways it is brave: the outrageous lovechild of a menage a trois between Vernor Vinge, Iain M. Banks and the Oxford English Dictionary, it won't be easily read, but certainly not easily forgotten.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth the effort, May 24, 2003

By	Alex (Natick, MA United States) - See all my reviews

I'll agree, Clute borrows heavily from a number of authors in imagining the glactic stage on which Appleseed is set, including Vinge and Banks, as noted, but didn't they draw on those who came before as well? Rich, baroque, and minutely imagined post-human galactic cultures date back at least to Dune and Ringworld, if not long before. What made me enjoy Appleseed so was Clute's insistance on giving the reader a full-immersion introduction to his unique flavor of galactic civilization, painting his picture as he will, and leaving interpretation up to the viewer. So much nicer than endless dull straightahead descriptive paragraphs. In this he reminds me of Gene Wolfe at the height of his powers (the Torturer series), providing us with an alternate universe seemingly imagined down to the most mundane, yet shockingly out-of-the-ordinary, details. I for one will grab the next volume as soon as I see it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars surface and vastation, December 22, 2007

By	Forrest L. Norvell (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is the product of formidable intelligence, learning and guile. John Clute spends hundreds of dense, recomplicated pages telling what essentially boils down to a science fictional, Rabelaisian shaggy dog story about how sex will save the universe, and throws everything he has at it. The result is many things: a classic, deeply English fantasy story disguised as a science fiction novel; a recapitulation of Renaissance theories of mind and memory, and their visual expression in both the figurative (the azulejaria, the mappemonde and the masks) and dramatic (the frequent invocations of the commedia dell'arte) arts; a late flowering of British science fiction's New Wave; a tarry concentrate derived from the endless sea of Idea that was Clute's contribution to the Encyclopedias of Fantasy and Science Fiction; and a vastly entertaining, slight example of the modern, high camp space opera, with can-do heroes, alien queens and gnashing, wailing, despicable villians who in the end receive their just desserts. It is also not particularly easy to read.

To claim that Clute has not acknowledged his debts is silly; the entire book is a sloppy wet kiss (with tongue) for everyone who has ever written a spirited, exuberant, idea-heavy space adventure. Other reviewers mentioned Iain Banks, Samuel Delany, Vernor Vinge and Bruce Sterling. To that list I would add Michael Moorcock, E.C. Tubbs, John Crowley, Michael Swanwick, Elizabeth Hand, Mervyn Peake, Cordwainer Smith, Jack Vance, Avram Davidson, and about 2,000 years' worth of fantastic literature, including both the Bible and the Arthurian Grail quest. "Appleseed" is not so much an original story as an assemblage or pastiche of the corpus of science fiction, held together by Clute's arcane, unstoppable manipulation of the English language. It can be seen as Clute's conception of science fictional narrative made manifest as Story itself.

Much is made of masks in the book, both as signs of presence and as signifiers of intentional artifice as an ontology enabling communication between vastly differing societies and species. More so than anybody else I've read, Clute makes clear the staggering complexity implicit in a pan-galactic society composed of hundreds of different species, and does so with an admirable (if somewhat opaque) conciseness.

Masks also figure in their more traditional sense of concealment, both in the sense of being surfaces stretched tight over emptinesses or hidden depths, and in the sense of hiding strategically valuable truths and lies. The whole story is on one level a formal drama (a la the commedia dell'arte), and as such it makes sense for the characters to function as nearly bare archetypes, and not 3-dimensional characters that stand outside of the story. Every actor in the story is a puppet, and it is never immediately obvious what lies behind the mask or who is pulling the puppet's strings (in one very important case, a puppet pulls its own strings).

The language is a little overwrought and at times the narrative verges on seeming febrile, but whether or not it works for you as a reader, it seems to me that Clute always has things under his control, and most of his effects are intentional. Space is huge and strange, and the role of space opera has always been to show our tininess and, paradoxically, our essentialness, in the face of its vastness. All Clute really adds to the good old stuff is the shared history and culture we as science fiction readers usually try to keep at arms' length, and a generous impulse to see the two as being of equivalent value. Have a little faith in him and his story and you will be amply rewarded in the end. Just prepared to work some to get there.