Customer Reviews

The Glass Hammer

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4 star:		(4)
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Not having been real impressed with Jeter's take on Blade Runner, it was almost amazing that I gave The Glass Hammer a try. It was a difficult book to begin reading, and I almost gave up. But it paid off in the end. The Glass Hammer is undoubtably one of my favorite books of all time. Having just finished it -- again -- I felt compelled to let others know that if you can find this book, read it. The first 30-40 pages of it are a difficult read. Jeter writes a story about a man, Schuyler, who races across the Arizona desert night amid hailing laser missiles to deliver illegal computer chips to European buyers. He has become a minor celebrity by apparently being the father of the second coming of God. A production company is doing a bio of Schuyler and the story is writen as part present and part past, told as both video images and memories. Difficult to follow at first, but once you get into the flow, the story becomes engrossing, and the plot even more intricate. Well worth reading, even if you are not a fan of the genre.

Jeter has sometimes been compared to the incomparable Philip K. Dick. In the case of The Glass Hammer, the comparison is apt. The story has the religious overtones that characterize Dick's later novels. The novel's presentation of religion is ambiguous: often satirical yet, in the end, raising the possibility of true belief. The satire is hilarious: the Godfriends, a female religious sect, believe that they will give birth to the child of God if they become pregnant and so avoid pregnancy--until one of them becomes pregnant by the novel's protagonist. A more mainstream religious organization devotes extensive resources to the reconstruction of stained glass windows, using elaborate computer programs to calculate the probable arrangement of the glass before the windows were destroyed. The rest of the novel deals with a post-apocalyptic future in which industrial forces use the media and religion to control and placate the uneducated workforce.

The Glass Hammer is written in an interesting style, switching between conventional narrative and the format of a shooting script. Characterization is sometimes weak and logic is sometimes lost, but Jeter's ideas are powerful and the payoff at the end makes the novel worth reading.

Not having been real impressed with Jeter's take on Blade Runner, it was almost amazing that I gave The Glass Hammer a try. It was a difficult book to begin reading, and I almost gave up. But it paid off in the end. The Glass Hammer is undoubtably one of my favorite books of all time. Having just finished it -- again -- I felt compelled to let others know that if you can find this book, read it. The first 30-40 pages of it are a difficult read. Jeter writes a story about a man, Schuyler, who races across the Arizona desert night amid hailing laser missiles to deliver illegal computer chips to European buyers. He has become a minor celebrity by apparently being the father of the second coming of God. A production company is doing a bio of Schuyler and the story is writen as part present and part past, told as both video images and memories. Difficult to follow at first, but once you get into the flow, the story becomes engrossing, and the plot even more intricate. Well worth reading, even if you are not a fan of the genre.

Jeter was not the first to write a Cyberpunk novel (Shockwave Rider was arguably first) but his Dr. Adder helped define what Cyberpunk is. Also the man who invented the term 'Steampunk' Jeter's visions are influential, if obscure to many.
The Glass Hammer is my favorite of his books and showcases his gifts as a writer, if also emphasizing what some find disturbing. Easily switching between writing styles and points of view, Jeter takes his time to slowly reveal a world that may be worse than post-apocalyptic full of people who have no idea how grim and bleak their lives are in the grip of forces beyond their awareness, let alone grasp. The focus of the book, Shuyler, is trying to get by and live as he comes to realize that he may be the most helpless of them all.
A tough read, but a rewarding book.

If, when reading or hearing about helicopter gunships firing missiles with pinpoint accuracy, you wonder what the world has come to, K.W. could be therapy for you. In addition to that particular horror which is a background to "Glass Hammer," what Jeter's world is coming to is much, much worse.
This novel is not likable, nor are its likenesses, "Dr. Adder" and "Noir," yet there is reader value extant especially for (you) genetically created optimists. I know what you want, I know what you married, but you'd still get a frisson from K. W. Jeter; an intelligent depressive that you can put down and pick up at your pleasure (vis a vis 'spousey') and whose unspeakably horrid prognostications seem to be coming true with alarming frequency.

The Glass Hammer is a completely freaked out story about a guywho is trying to break out of a quasi Religious/political web in hiscar. Think of Mad Max or Death Race 2000, but written by someone who is very paranoid and complicated