Customer Reviews

Dr. Adder

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Dr. Adder is one of those books that gets better the longer you read it. The story starts off thrusting the reader into the disturbing streets of a future L.A. where the title character is a specialist in transforming prostitutes into mankinds most twisted desires. Tempting to put down (as I did, regrettably, the first time I started to read it), the story begins to take on a live of its own.

The story focuses not on Dr. Adder, but instead on E. Allen Limmit and his discovery of life outside the corporate home he spent much of his life. As his life becomes inevitably intermixed with Adder and Adder's arch-nemesis, he learns he is a pawn in a much larger story, one he was, literally, born to be. Writen 12 years before it was published, the book is brilliant, one of those incredible first novels that shows the author knows more about writing than some long-established authors. The ending had me laughing for minutes, and though I had once told a friend that I would never read it again (while still in the disturbing subject matter of the first fifty pages) I look forward to additional readings of this classic in the years to come.

I highly recommend this book to any fan of Philip K. Dick. (At times Jeter's fiercely ironic style made me wonder if I was in fact reading a "lost" Phil Dick novel!) Jeter's perverse, dark vision of the L.A.of the future envelops your senses with a mixture of revulsion and fascination as the story unfolds. Other reviewers here have already summarized the plot and setting, so let me just add that the book is disturbing and brilliant, and if you can stomach the sexual perversions and gore, you will come away astonished that somehow "Dr. Adder" (written pre-1972, anticipating cyberpunk by at least 12 years) has escaped your attention until now. The afterword by Dick is noteworthy too. One of the characters in the novel is based on Dick, although Phil mis-identifies that character in his afterword, in my opinion.

_Dr. Adder_ by K.W. Jeter is about a dark and violent Los Angeles of the future in which terrorists can be heroes to a disaffected youth.

One of society's idols, Dr. Adder, can, for price, plunge into a client's subconscious and dig up his or her deepest sexual desires, then provide the necessary surgical modifications to fulfill those desires. Hoping to wreak vengeance upon Dr. Adder and break his stranglehold upon society, his equally dark foe stages a violent end for Dr. Adder which is ultimately fought in a cyberspace-like melding of minds and television networks.

Action-filled and a quick read, this book is recommended for fans of a sort of dark, pre-cyberpunk in the style of Philip K. Dick.

I looked for this book for a couple of years (before the net's book search engines) because it was considered a banned scifi book in the vein of Dick. Jeter's book does have the singular universe appeal of Dick but not a variant of Dick. Jeter is his own righter. The book is dark and never lets up. I will admit that it is an early work and shows some of the failures of a new author, but I will take this over his schck work (i.e. Star Wars and Star Trek)any day. I don't begrudge Jeter for making a living only I am not a fan of that work. I am surprised by how accurate much of Dr. Adder is. It is a scary version of speculative fiction that becomes less speculative with every passing year.

The first novel by K.W. Jeter, it was considered at it's time to be too taboo or just plain "sick" and so took a lot of struggle and a healthy dose of Phillip K. Dick to get it published. Apparently the world was a much more conservative place back then because by today's standards, it's fairly light reading.
While there is an overt theme of sexual perversion, violence, and drug use, it is not excessive; the story seems to focus on the events surrounding these activities, but not necessarily as a direct result of such.
The characters take a while to develop and the reader is able to keep them at arms length throughout most of the book so the suspension of disbelief is not as well developed as often occurs in Jeter's short stories and later works.
Although vacillating between sparks of eureka prose and post-adolescent mumbling with the occasional Jeter fifty-word sentence, it is a quick read and, for being his first novel, wasn't too bad.
As a special treat, I found the "illustrated" version. --Don't buy it for the artwork.
Those already familiar with Jeter's work will appreciate the budding seed of the writer's voice in Dr. Adder; the rest may likely only consider the book a misogynistic dystopia of mutilated hookers and oddly segmented prose.

weeeeeird, man. prostitutes deform themselves to corner speciality markets, as in vagina dentata, which brings them to the dr., drug-addled psychopath. the first of jeter's la trilogy (the glass hammer and death arms follow), definitely a must for phil dick fans (he wrote the intro)

K.W. Jeter's "Infernal Devices" was a very good book, and I therefore presumed that "Dr. Adder" would be, too. I was very much mistaken.

I'm aware that "Dr. Adder" is regarded as some sort of alternative classic, but I really can't imagine why; it's one of the most "so what?" books I've ever read. We're not given any reason to particularly care about the two-dimensional title character (who comes across as a misogynist, a homophobe, and an overall bigot against anyone who doesn't want to live the way he does, all traits that are customarily associated with the very "moral forces" that oppose him), we almost never see the ONE-dimensional villain (in the end it's revealed the villain is an A.I., but since we knew almost nothing about him in the first place, the revelation falls flat and his "defeat" flatter yet), and we get only a surface view of the futuristic society and no clue as to what motivates its citizens. Extraneous concepts are introduced and then abandoned, taking up space that could have better been used to make the main setting more real.

I also really have to say that the book's depiction of women is contemptible. Almost every female character is either a prostitute or a drugged drone, and that's only part of the general flatness of the future depicted here. There's little explanation for why Dr. Adder would be a "hero figure" for surgically altering prostitutes to better please their clientele because, frankly, the book doesn't depict prostitution in a positive light (perhaps this isn't supposed to matter since we get almost no serious look at the people who oppose it), and the notion that women should re-make themselves in order to better service men isn't a good one. Even a half-hearted attempt to explain why, in this future, prostitution is now something that young women would actually ASPIRE to (instead of the last resort that it usually is) would've helped tremendously.

In addition, while I don't have a problem with "foul language" per se, I felt the author was overusing it for no real reason but shock value, and IMHO overuse of such language isn't "mature," it's entirely the opposite. It doesn't matter what sort of language or images are used if nothing ever gets SAID.

Maybe my failure to get much out of the book stems from a misunderstanding of what "cyberpunk" is supposed to be; maybe I looked at it from the wrong perspective. Maybe I wasn't SUPPOSED to get anything out of it but a few vague concepts connected by profanity. If that was the point, then mission accomplished.

As noted, I am aware that K.W. Jeter has written at least one good book; however, I'd have to say this one wasn't it. But very few writers succeed every time, and judging by the other reviews, it obviously appeals to others. Okay.