Gaudeamus [Hardcover]

John Barnes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2004

Shatter the line between fiction and fantasy...

The life of an award-winning novelist probably bears more resemblance to "normal" than most fans would want to believe. But every once in awhile, strange things are bound to erupt around those most equipped to document them... so imagine what renowned science fiction writer John Barnes might do when he finds himself in one of the wildest, most rollicking hard-SF adventures to hit print in years.

Barnes' college friend Travis Bismark always brought back plenty of great stories from his job as an industrial spy. This time, over a few beer- and coffee-fueled chat sessions, Travis unravels a tale about his current case too tall for even an SF author to believe: a Gaudeamus machine that bends physics in order to make possible both teleportation and time travel, and how it gets stolen--twice; a grad student-cum-prostitute who deals in telepathy-inducing drugs that let her "download" top-secret documents from her client's brains, a romp through Colorado and New Mexico during which each episode and character is more bizarre than the last; and the internet meme that seems to tie it all together.

Barnes' playful commentary on Travis' story and his own life as a SF writer and drama teacher, interspersed with their everyday interactions with a group of funny, compelling friends, is related in a surprising and non-traditional narrative that blurs the line between fact, fiction, and metafiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Barnes (The Sky So Big and Black) has created a gonzo piece of metafiction that cleverly blurs the line between reality and fantasy. Private detective Travis Bismark turns up on the doorstep of his old friend, the science fiction writer John Barnes, spouting a bizarre story about prostitutes with degrees in physics, pills that facilitate telepathy and great sex, and a mysterious technology called Gaudeamus that people are willing to kill for. Oddly enough, Barnes himself is already addicted to a complex, hypertextual Web cartoon, also called Gaudeamus, that seems to contain a number of references to Bismark's adventures. The detective disappears soon thereafter when Barnes's pickup is attacked by a cybernetically enhanced elk, but shows up repeatedly over the next year with increasingly wild tales of industrial espionage, alien entrepreneurs and Native Americans who dress in clown suits and travel in flying saucers. What's most fascinating about the novel is the way in which Barnes entangles real autobiographical material, including appearances by his wife, fantasy writer Kara Dalkey, with an increasingly outlandish and highly improbable plot. Also interesting is that Barnes makes little attempt to portray himself sympathetically and is very open about his dislike for hardcore SF fans. This fascinating book is quite unlike anything else on the market today, but it's hard to know how the author's regular readers will react.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In his latest inventive novel--part detective thriller, part mind-boggling speculative fiction--Barnes casts himself as narrator and the protagonist's best friend. Barnes is absorbed in writing one morning when old friend and corporate espionage specialist Travis Bismarck appears on the front porch looking frazzled and afraid. What follows is Bismarck's increasingly bizarre story, involving a revolutionary teleportation device invented by his latest corporate client, the device's theft by a competing corporation, and a breakneck pursuit to recover it at any cost. Along the way, Bismarck tangles with Lena, a prostitute turned drug dealer turned corporate spy, whose only ware is a sex-enhancing, telepathy-inducing pill. Not coincidentally, the teleportation gizmo, the telepathy pill, and a Web-based animated cartoon, which may or may not be Lena's brainchild, all bear the mysterious moniker Gaudeamus. Sprinkled with wry humor and colorful plot twists, Barnes' ingeniously imaginative yarn should garner a nomination or two during the next round of sf awards. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (October 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765303299
• ISBN-13: 978-0765303295
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,584,977 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

My thirtieth commercially published novel will be coming out in spring 2012. I've published about 4 million words that I got paid for. So I'm an abundantly published very obscure writer.

I used to teach in the Communication and Theatre program at Western State College. I got my PhD at Pitt in the early 90s, masters degrees at U of Montana in the mid 80s, bachelors at Washington University in the 70s; worked for Middle South Services in New Orleans in the early 80s. I do paid blogging mostly about the math of marketing analysis at TheCMOSite and All Analytics. If any of that is familiar to you, then yes, I am THAT John Barnes.

There are also many Johns Barneses I am not. I am not the British footballer, the Australian rules footballer, the former Red Sox pitcher, the Tory MP, the expert on ADA programming, the biographer of Eva Peron, the authority on Dante, the mycologist, the travel writer, the guy who does some form of massage healing that I don't really understand at all, the oil executive, the film historian, or that guy that Mom said was my father. I do wish I'd written that book on titmice, though.

I used to think I was the only paid consulting statistical semiotician for business and industry in the world, but I now know four of them. So now I have a large market share of a growing field.

Semiotics is pretty much what Louis Armstrong said about jazz, except jazz paid a lot better for him than semiotics does for me. If you're trying to place me in the semiosphere, I am a Peircean (the sign is three parts, ), a Lotmanian (art, culture, and mind are all populations of those tripartite signs) and a statistician (the mathematical structures and forms that can be found within those populations of signs are the source of meaning). The branch in which I do consulting work is the mathematics and statistics of large populations of signs, which has applications in marketing, poll analysis, and annoying the literary theorists who want to keep semiotics all to themselves.

I have been married three times, and divorced twice, and I believe that's quite enough in both categories. I'm a hobby cook, sometime theatre artist, and still going through the motions after many years in martial arts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent work of (non)fiction, November 15, 2004

By 

A. Watson (20910) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gaudeamus (Hardcover)

Gaudeamus begins with an excellent premise... well, several. It's first person enough that you realize from his standpoint the events in the book are quite possibly entirely true. The Gaudeamus movement/device/drug/concept, as well, is quite novel. Barnes then throws in enough hand-waving to justify the occasional lack of details, mixes it equally with his usual wackily referenced but precisely placed oddball gems of knowledge, and presents it in a manner such that anyone who grew up with the internet (that is to say, all of us who are indeed still growing up) will be at once enthralled and amused by the results. If you've made it through Orbital Resonance, been shocked by parts of Kaleidescope Century, identified with the characters in The Sky So Big and Black, and enjoyed the romp (with sweet conclusion) that was Mother of Storms, you will go nuts over this weekend's worth of light reading. Barnes pokes fun at anything and everything, most of all himself, in this excellent take on what could be happening right under (and over, and folded 90 degrees outside of normal space from) our noses. Sure, the book's not perfect, but the imperfections haven't made themselves apparent in my first reading. I'm promptly going to mail it to the guy who's stolen my copy of Candle. And since he outright says as much in the book: Mr. Barnes, thanks for reading, and bravo.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Box That Sold the World, April 17, 2006

By 

doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Gaudeamus (Hardcover)

The cover blurb for this book says "shatter the line between fiction and fantasy..." Well not quite, but this is a very funny and entertaining slab of experimental sci-fi. The fact that John Barnes inserted himself and his real-life friends into the story as characters is not really so innovative, but here he makes great use of irony and alternative storytelling techniques to poke fun at sci-fi stereotypes, and to make the reader wonder if the story should even be taken seriously. In short, Barnes' friend Travis appears and tells a wild story of an industrial espionage assignment, in which he uncovered a bodaciously wacky conspiracy of corporate goons, rednecks, hippies, drug pushers, an underground internet cartoon, and aliens who are trying to buy the world and liquidate the assets. All of this is built around a futuristic technology called Gaudeamus, which effortlessly powers all the advanced cultures of the galaxy, and which humanity is accidentally stumbling into as part of cultural evolution. A large cast of human and alien weirdos hold the fate of the Earth in their hands as they connive for control of the technology.

But since this is a second-hand story from Travis, the whole thing could be a whole lotta hooey, and everyone else in the book barely notices the doom-bringing drama. Barnes does a great job with this storytelling device, making fun of stock plot devices (such as the bad guy explaining his entire villainous scheme voluntary) while ironically using the same corny devices himself. Barnes also does a great job poking at the absurdity of trends in fandom and geekworld. At some points the plots and subplots in this book get a little too ambitious for their own good, and there are a few gaps and loose ends here and there. But this is a very funny novel built on upon a pretty offbeat premise, and it's one of the most creative uses of science fiction that you're likely to see for a while. [~doomsdayer520~]

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What this is, is a long shaggy-bar story...., September 6, 2005

By 

Peter D. Tillman (Taos, NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gaudeamus (Hardcover)

_____________________________________________

What this is, is a long shaggy-bar story, with a fictional version of the author as narrator. The protag is one Travis Bismarck, who appears to be a real-life friend of Barnes. The book opens with (literally) loopy scene-setting that circles around the actual start in amusingly recursive spirals, as Barnes old pal ficto-Travis, who is some sort of technical PI, relates his current case, and how it went weird.

Now, I'm assuming that Barnes's Real Life isn't too different (in its non-fantastic day-to-day details) than the fictional JB -- the broad outlines match, it isn't a very flattering portrait, and it's just easier to write what you know. I was pretty consistently entertained by Barnes "what is reality?" mind-games, but you might not be:

"I found that every now and then I'd be pulled out of the book by the character of John Barnes talking about being a science fiction writer. I couldn't help but wonder if he really thinks about SF conventions like that, or the fans, or the genre. Every time I came upon some Barnes POV stuff I'd get jerked out of the story. At times, reading the book was like peeking into someone's diary and wondering, would I get caught." -- Gayle Surrette, Google sfrevu.com

"Barnes has done a bang-up job creating a rich air of verisimilitude and a thickness of believable details. His self-portrait is unsparing and modest, even self-abasing, and the humility and skepticism of the narrator allow us easy entrance into the wacky doings described by Travis. Generous dollops of humor and satire-Barnes and Travis have a lot of wry opinions about academia, entertainment and other demented aspects of our culture-grease the telling as well." -- Paul Di Filippo at scifi.com, the best review I saw online.

Anyway, if you're in the mood for a cozy, clever, twisty, sexy, crackpot, meandering, recursive, wonderfully implausible piece of metafiction that's full of wisecracks and is just a whole lot of fun to read (plus, it's short!), go for GAUDEAMUS. A fine, semi-mindless read for a mental winter vacation. Caveat: if plot holes and logic-lapses offend you, Gaudeamus might not be for you. Then again, it moves so fast, you might not notice...

-- though few will miss the one where the Bad Guy is required [minor *SPOILER* WARNING] to overlook the *enormous* Rhodesian Ridgeback lurking inside the Good Guys' Range Rover...

Review copyright 2005 by Peter D. Tillman